On March 2, 2014 Kyiv Mohyla Journalism School lecturers, graduates and students along with the KMA Digital Future of Journalism project launched the Stopfake.org fact checking site.
Journalists, editors, IT specialists, translators, all those who cared about the future of Ukraine during this dangerous time of the annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine joined the project.
Initially the goal of the project was to verify and refute disinformation and propaganda about events in Ukraine being circulated in the media. Eventually the project grew into an information hub where they examine and analyze all aspects of Kremlin propaganda.
They not only look at how propaganda influences Ukraine, they also try to investigate how propaganda impacts on other countries and regions, from the European Union to countries which once made up the Soviet Union.
Their team of media professionals is constantly growing. Today they fact-check, de-bunk, edit, translate, research and disseminate information in 11 languages: Russian, English, Spanish, Romanian, Bulgarian, French, Italian, Dutch, Czech, German and Polish.
Their content is available on their site, their video digests are broadcast online and on local Ukrainian television stations; their radio podcasts are also available online and on social media sites. They also publish ‘Your Right to Know’ newspaper for Donbas.
Stopfake.org is not supported financially or otherwise by any official Ukrainian organization or government agency. They are a journalists’ organization whose primary goal is to verify information, raise media literacy in Ukraine and establish a clear red line between journalism and propaganda.
They strive to achieve their goal not only through refuting fakes but also through creating a propaganda archive and data base, analyzing and verifying information, training various media stakeholders to identify fakes and participating in conferences and seminars on journalistic integrity and fact-checking.
Launched as a volunteer project, StopFake.org has been able to continue its important work thanks to the generosity of crowdfunding and contributions from their readers. Stopfake was also supported by the international Renaissance Foundation, the Foreign Ministry of the Czech Republic, the Embassy of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Ukraine and the Sigrid Rausing Trust.
