Webinar on fact checking, and not just for journalists, will be held at 2 p.m. EST Thursday

The Poynter Institute's News University will hold a timely webinar at 2 p.m. EST Thursday: "How to Fact-Check Politics and the Media: A Primer."

The webinar is designed not only for reporters and editors, but for non-journalists "who would like to introduce or promote fact-checking within your local or national media context" and news junkies "concerned with the accuracy of the content you are consuming" from "publications prioritizing traffic and clickbait over accuracy and ethics," NewsU says in its description.

The hour-long webinar will explain what can and can't be fact-checked after publication, what precautions to use to make your fact-checking as rigorous as possible and what approaches you can take to increase the impact of your fact checks. Points of instruction will include:

• Why bother? An overview of what we know about the effect of fact-checking
• First, do no harm (how to be a responsible media consumer)
• Finding and choosing claims that can be fact-checked
• Adopting a methodology that will minimize your own errors
• How to scrutinize the sources you are going to use (science, data sets)
• Effective ways to present your fact checks

The cost of the webinar is $29.95. In our experience, NewsU webinars are worth the money, and fact checking is needed more than ever, so we encourage you to enroll by clicking here. If you are unable to participate from 2 to 3 EST tomorrow, your registration will give you access to the archived webinar. NewsU is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.