Poynter’s PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize–winning fact-checking newsroom, has launched a new Spanish-language experience, PolitiFact en Español (www.politifact.com/espanol), to help more than 40 million Spanish speakers in the US sort out the truth in politics.
A new Spanish-language website and a related social media presence are the culmination of an effort that began in 2023 when PolitiFact launched a Spanish-language team. The team’s fact checks have appeared on pages of PolitiFact’s existing website and via Telemundo stations in Florida through a partnership that brings fact checks to the stations’ newscasts and digital and streaming platforms.
“We are excited about taking this next step to better serve the millions of people in the United States who consume news primarily in Spanish,” said Katie Sanders, PolitiFact editor-in-chief. Deputy editor Miriam Valverde, who started fact-checking immigration claims for PolitiFact in 2016, leads PolitiFact en Español and its team of Spanish-speaking reporters.
“Our new website and social media presence will provide Spanish speakers with fact-based information and help them guard against dangerous misinformation that is increasingly pervasive across platforms,” Valverde said.
The free website features fact checks from the PolitiFact en Español team, who root out Spanish-language misinformation in its many forms and write in-depth stories and fact checks. Much of the fact-checking falls under Meta’s third-party fact-checking program, debunking misinformation on Instagram and Facebook. The team also translates trending fact checks and stories, both from English to Spanish and vice versa.
Valverde said the premise was not to simply copy PolitiFact.com into Spanish but to find ways to best serve the target audience. To that end, the effort has included launching a WhatsApp tipline to solicit reader ideas, as well as a WhatsApp channel. PolitiFact en Español also is active on TikTok and Instagram. With the 2024 US presidential election later this year, and Hispanic voters a coveted demographic from both parties, there will be no shortage of political claims to check, Sanders said.
“It’s especially important that PolitiFact en Español is a resource for Spanish-speaking voters, who will be bombarded with political messages, many of them false, during the campaign season,” she said.
Other partnerships include Factchequeado, a fact-checking organization that shares PolitiFact’s work with its network, which includes Hispanic media outlets. PolitiFact also has a partnership with Telemundo and NBCUniversal’s TV stations in Florida to bring its fact checks to the stations’ newscasts and digital, mobile, and streaming platforms. A recent survey by Poynter of Hispanics in North Carolina’s Raleigh/Durham area revealed that local Hispanic residents rely predominantly on social media for news, followed by television and websites: “Sparse translation, coupled with inadequate representation, creates barriers to news access and may drive distrust in English-language news organizations for Hispanics.”
Discussing translation, respondents lamented that there are few attempts at translation of local news into Spanish. When it is translated, the translations are often sensationalist and inaccurate. As one respondent summarized: “The American media does little to address the realities that affect Hispanic families. There is not enough translation and, sadly, many attempts lack quality because they translate very poorly and I end up uninformed.”
