The integrity playbook in the age of doubt: lessons from fact-checking organizations under pressure
Fri 17 April 2026
16:00
Free
Calculating distance...
2025 has been a turning point in the information crisis. Platforms have rolled back oversight, embraced political narratives against moderation, and openly questioned the legitimacy of fact-checking. Meta’s sudden termination of its US fact-checking program, accusations of bias, and the shift toward Community Notes have signaled not only a policy change, but a cultural one: institutional actors now normalize manipulation, monetize deception, and discredit those working to defend truth.
Fact-checkers across the world now face simultaneous financial, political, and technological pressures. Yet instead of retreating, three organizations—Maldita (Europe), Factchequeado (US), and Chequeado (Latin America)—have built a counter-playbook rooted in collaboration, transparency, public interest, and integrity.
This panel brings together three leaders who have spent the last decade building collaborative infrastructures at continental scale: Maldita through the European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN), Chequeado through LatamChequea in 20+ countries, and Factchequeado through a +140 media-alliance mobilizing US-based Latino audiences and community partners.
Against a growing “playbook of doubt” coming from political actors, platform rollbacks, and extremist ecosystems, the panel will present a set of practical and strategic principles: radical collaboration, collective action and advocacy, transparency and public interest innovation.
Radical collaboration
> cross-border verification
> shared editorial standards
> investigative journalism
Collective action and advocacy
> legal defense of the right to information
> institutional advocacy
> shared protocols in elections and crises
Transparency
> open methodologies
> responsible AI principles
> public accountability
Public-interest innovation
> AI for good, not just for engagement
> tools to empower journalists and local media
> media literacy and community-based resilience
> new formats and experimentation
At a moment when deception is rewarded and integrity is deprioritized, these three organizations propose a playbook for the public good, grounded in democratic rights, responsible innovation, and collective defense.
Moderated by Angie Drobnic Holan.
Organised in association with Chequeado.
Modified more than a month ago
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Angie Drobnic Holan
Angie Drobnic Holan is a journalist, editor and writer with a background in library science. She currently serves as director of the International Fact-Checking Network, an organization that empowers fact-checkers around the world. Before that, she was editor-in-chief of PolitiFact, the U.S. politics fact-checking website, and was a reporter on the PolitiFact team that won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for its fact-checking of the 2008 presidential election. Angie holds dual master’s degrees in journalism and library & information science, and she has taught as an adjunct instructor at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. She has appeared on national television and radio shows (CNN, PBS Newshour, NPR, etc.) to discuss fact-checking and information integrity. Her public speaking includes presentations at universities, libraries and conferences. She was a 2023 Nieman fellow at Harvard University where she studied the intersection of journalism and democracy.
Clara Jimenez Cruz
Clara Jiménez Cruz is the co-founder and CEO of Maldita.es, a Spanish foundation and nonprofit news organization created to fight disinformation and lies in public discourse through fact-checking and data journalism, which won the innovation European Press Prize in 2021 for its WhatsApp chatbot. She’s also the co-founder of Factchequeado, a project fighting disinformation among Latino communities in the US. After a decade-long career as a TV journalist, Clara, who works regularly with national media organizations in Spain, was appointed to the High Level Group against Disinformation by the European Commission and is the chair of the European Fact-checking Standards Network. She is also a current member of the International Fact-Checking Network Advisory Board. Among other recognitions, she has been awarded a 2019 Ashoka Fellowship and was named Spanish Young Journalist of the Year in 2020.
Franco Piccato
Franco Piccato is the Executive Director of Chequeado, Argentina’s leading fact-checking organization. A distinguished journalist and editor specializing in digital media, Piccato has held pivotal roles, including Managing Editor at La Voz del Interior (Córdoba), Strategic Media Partnerships Manager for Facebook (Southern Cone), and Executive Editor of Digital Strategy at Clarín. He is also the co-author of Periodismo disruptivo (2015), a seminal work on innovation in digital journalism.
Laura Zommer
Laura Zommer is the co-founder and CEO of Factchequeado, an organization closing the information gap in Spanish for more than 68 million Latinos in the US. She received the Recognition of Excellence at the 2025 Gabo Award and the María Moors Cabot Prize Special Citation 2024. She is an Ashoka Fellow and was a Knight Fellow at the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) from 2022 until mid-2025. For over a decade, she served as the Executive Director of Chequeado, the first fact-checking organization in the Global South. She is the creator of LatamChequea, the first regional fact-checking network, which brings together more than 40 media organizations across 19 countries to fight disinformation in Latin America. She holds degrees in Communication and Law and teaches at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) and the Universidad de San Andrés (UdeSA), as well as serving as a visiting professor at several international universities. She is a member of the advisory board of La Silla Vacía (Colombia), the Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (Argentina), and the Center for Democracy and Technology (United States). She was a member of the Advisory Board of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) from its creation in 2017 until 2024, and served as chair of the Board of Directors of SembraMedia from 2022 until July 2025. For her work as a journalist, she has received dozens of awards, including the Gabriel García Márquez Award in the “Innovación” category from the Fundación Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericana (FNPI) in 2015, and the “Periodismo en Profundidad” Award from the Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa (SIP) when she was 25 years old and beginning her career at the argentine newspaper La Nación.
Festival Internazionale del Giornalismo
Il Festival Internazionale del Giornalismo di Perugia è un evento annuale che riunisce professionisti dei media, esperti di comunicazione e appassionati di informazione da tutto il mondo. Si svolge nel centro storico di Perugia e offre conferenze, dibattiti, workshop e opportunità di networking sui temi più rilevanti del giornalismo contemporaneo.