Abstract

Given the centrality of news media to democracy, it is concerning that public trust in media has declined in many countries. A potential mechanism that may reverse this trend is independent fact-checking to adjudicate competing claims in news stories. We undertake a survey experiment on a sample of 1608 Australians to test the effects of fact-checking on media trust using a real-life case study known as the “sports rorts” affair. We construct duplicate news articles from two national media outlets (i.e. ABC.net.au, news.com.au) containing a senior government minister’s real-life false claim that public funds were not used for political advantage immediately before an election. Half of the participants are exposed to a third-party fact check, which confirms the Minister’s claim is verifiably false, the other half are not. All respondents are asked to evaluate the story’s and news outlets’ trustworthiness. Contrary to our expectations we find a backfire effect whereby independent fact-checking decreases readers’ trust in the original news story and outlet. This negative relationship is not conditional on partisanship or the media source. Our study provides a cautionary tale for those expecting third-party fact-checks to increase media trust and we outline several avenues by which fact-checkers might overcome this.

摘要

鉴于新闻媒体对民主的中心地位，许多国家公众对媒体的信任度下降令人担忧。一个可能扭转这一趋势的潜在机制是独立的事实核查，以裁定新闻报道中的相互竞争的主张。我们对 1608 名澳大利亚人的样本进​​行了一项调查实验，以测试事实核查对媒体信任的影响，使用了一个被称为“体育骗局”事件的真实案例研究。我们从两家全国性媒体（即 ABC.net.au、news.com.au）构建重复的新闻文章，其中包含一位高级政府部长在现实生活中的虚假声明，即公共资金并未在选举前立即用于政治利益。一半的参与者接受了第三方事实核查，证实部长的说法是可核实的虚假，另一半则不是。所有受访者都被要求评估故事和新闻媒体的可信度。与我们的预期相反，我们发现了一种适得其反的效果，即独立的事实核查降低读者对原始新闻故事和媒体的信任。这种负面关系不以党派偏见或媒体来源为条件。我们的研究为那些期望第三方事实核查以增加媒体信任的人提供了一个警示故事，我们概述了事实核查人员可以克服这一问题的几种途径。