Accountability Journalism during the Emergence of Covid-19: Evaluation Of Transparency in Official Fact-checking Platforms

The emergence of COVID-19 has permeated the field of communicationproducing a silent crisis related to the production and dissemination of news. Inthis context, the platforms for the verification of facts and data, also called fact-checking, have been constituted as a solution to the misinformation generated by thepandemic, deriving a halo of transparency and veracity that is called into questionin this research. These platforms have been evaluated by the first specific objectivebased on six dimensions: acquisition, information, verification, presentation, inter-action and dissemination, and are subsequently examined according to their link tothe news about coronavirus. To achieve these objectives, 72 fact-checking platformssupported by the International Fact-Checking Network were analysed. In these plat-forms, 936 data were obtained, driven by the indicators of each dimension, whichshowed an increasing trend in acquisition (88%), information (91%), verification(85%), presentation (77%) and dissemination (92%), but with limitations regardingthe interaction (47%) of the verified information that moves them away from thetransversal notion of digital interfaces. Likewise, concerning the situation producedby COVID-19, the lack of a different civic co-responsibility agreement, beyond theone used for the coverage of other news, is noted at a general level. In short, thefollowing situation is presented for future research: fact checking, entertainment inexchange for donations or democratic commitment?.