The newspaper does not have the financial means to maintain a department, or person, for automatic fact-checking but the existing production procedures ensure that articles are proofread several times by different people before they are published.

In 2013, a study was carried out by the University of Ghent to look for errors, mistakes or approximations in 500 of the newspaper’s articles over a period of two months. It was an occasionally painful exercise but it did increase editorial vigilance.

Mistakes made on air are corrected whenever possible.

Obviously, it is easier to correct a mistake in an interview before it is broadcast than it is to intervene afterwards.

There is no fact-checking department. Each subject is looked at and then validated by a section head before it is broadcast.

The Arabic section uses language checkers.

Each article is reread three or four times by the hierarchy and the editorial department before it is published.

Once the newspaper has been published, errors are reported via the Readers’ Letters page and are passed on by the mediator to the department concerned which then writes a correction or a clarification.

The chief editor of the day systematically reviews all articles for publication, sometimes after a department head has done so.

Each journalist is responsible for the relationship with their readers, so a journalist is notified directly if they have made a mistake. This is then corrected or clarified.

Each article is re-read at least three times before it is published.

Serious errors will be acknowledged and corrected in a corrections column on the Opinions page of the newspaper (page 4).

There is no specific system but the whole news production chain is monitored in order to avoid mistakes, from the editor to the Editor-in-chief and sometimes, in very sensitive cases, even the legal department.

The Irish Times does not have a fact-checking department as such but feels it covers itself as much as possible right from the first phase of information gathering, notably in scrupulously respecting the rule of two contradictory sources.

There is no department or person dedicated to fact-checking but different groups carry out regular reviews.

1) The media council contacts an editorial department if a serious error has been made; it uses professional criteria to carry out its investigations and, although it does not have real power, its opinions are symbolically important.

2) The internal council for programming is made up of five members nominated by the political parties. It is more concerned with the content of programmes and reports. In general, it spends one month with the department concerned.

The BBC does not have any internal service looking for pre- or post-broadcasting errors.

Fact-checking is not part of British culture. The mediator will write a correction if necessary.