How the Belarusian media field talks about "fact-checking"

For International Fact-Checking Day: 183 mentions of the term “fact-check/fact-checker” (in Russian: фактчек/фактчекер) in the FORESIGHT Belarusian media corpus over 15 months. Who uses the word, in what context, and what this reveals about the state of the information space.

April 2, 2026 · 183 documents · 11 sources · Jan 2025 – Mar 2026

The FORESIGHT corpus contains over one million documents from Belarusian state, pro-regime, and independent media outlets, Telegram channels, YouTube, and TikTok. A search for Russian-language terms “фактчек,” “фактчекинг,” “фактчекер,” “факт-чек,” “факт-чекинг” (all variations of “fact-check”) for the period January 2025 to March 2026 returned 183 documents.

The main quantitative finding: state and pro-regime sources mention fact-checking 2.3 times more often than independent ones. But the context of usage is fundamentally different.

Dynamics of mentions: month by month

The January 2025 spike was driven by two parallel events: Zuckerberg’s decision to drop fact-checkers at Meta and the pre-election campaign in Belarus.

Number of mentions by month · Jan 2025 – Mar 2026

State & pro-regime   
Independent

January 2025 produced 50 out of 183 documents (27.3%), the absolute peak. Of these, 40 came from state and pro-regime sources. The reasons: on January 7, 2025, Mark Zuckerberg announced Meta’s decision to end its fact-checker partnership program, and the topic was immediately picked up by Belarusian state media. At the same time, the pre-election campaign for the presidential “elections” of January 26, 2025 was underway.

The second notable rise, July–August 2025, coincided with the launch of the Russian GFCN (Global Fact-Checking Network) website, founded by TASS and ANO Dialog, as well as increased publications about disinformation amid geopolitical crises.

Who talks about fact-checking

Distribution by source (top 10)

Telegram dominates: 113 out of 183 documents (61.7%). Of these, 90 come from state and pro-regime channels, and only 15 from independent ones. Among Telegram channels, the leaders are NEWS.BY (7 mentions), “NewSliv” (6), “Sputnik Minska” (4), “Zholtye Slivy” (4). On the independent side: TUT.BY Life (4), “Belarusskiye Syabry” (4), “Stop Propaganda” (2), DW Belarus (2).

Among web outlets, zerkalo.io leads with 22 articles, mostly translations and adaptations of BBC Verify investigations and other international verification services. The state newspaper “SB. Belarus Segodnya” contributed 12 articles, BelTA contributed 7.

Platforms: where the word is heard

Distribution of mentions by platform and media type

Notably, among web outlets the picture is reversed: independent sources (37) mention fact-checking twice as often as state ones (19). This is explained by the fact that zerkalo.io regularly publishes materials referencing BBC Verify and other international verification services. Telegram, on the contrary, has become the primary platform for the state and pro-regime interpretation of the term.

Two languages for one word

The same word, “fact-checking,” is used in opposite meanings depending on the media type.

Independent media: fact-checking as a verification tool

In independent sources, “fact-checking” appears predominantly in the context of international verification services: BBC Verify, Factnameh (Persian service), Reuters, OSINT researchers. Out of 52 independent media documents, 22 (42.3%) mention specific fact-checking services in the context of event verification: attacks on civilian infrastructure in Iran, checking political claims, exposing coordinated botnets.

Typical context: “The BBC fact-checking service (BBC Verify) established…”, “The Persian fact-checking service Factnameh compared videos…”, “The fact-checking organization Demagog conducted an analysis…”

State media: fact-checking as a rhetorical device

In state and pro-regime sources, the word “fact-checking” is used in three key modes.

Context of mentions by source type

The “disinformation/fakes” context in state media (67 mentions) is the largest category. However, in these materials “fact-checking” often functions as an inverted tool: accusing opponents of spreading fakes is presented as the author’s own fact-checking, while verification of their own claims is absent.

GFCN: the Kremlin’s fact-checking imitation

The topic of GFCN (Global Fact-Checking Network) deserves special attention. According to Wikipedia, RSF, EDMO, and StopFake, GFCN is a Russian state structure established in November 2024 that imitates an international fact-checking organization. Its founders, ANO Dialog, the New Media School, and TASS, are under EU sanctions for spreading disinformation in support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including involvement in the Doppelganger operation.

In the Belarusian corpus, GFCN is cited by the newspaper “SB. Belarus Segodnya” as an authoritative source, without any mention of its Kremlin affiliation. The article “EU launched digital censorship mechanisms ahead of elections in Hungary” (March 2026) references “material from the international fact-checking association (Global Fact-Checking Network, GFCN)” and quotes “GFCN expert on geopolitics and cybersecurity Anna Andersen.”

As IFCN director Angie Drobnic Holan noted: “This is part of a long line of tactics from Russia to imitate independent institutions, but in the service of Russia’s political interests.”

Context: global fact-checking in 2026

International Fact-Checking Day has been celebrated on April 2 since 2017. The date was chosen symbolically: the day after April Fools’ Day. The initiator, IFCN (International Fact-Checking Network) at the Poynter Institute, unites over 100 certified fact-checking organizations in dozens of countries worldwide.

In 2026, the fact-checking topic has taken on particular urgency. In January 2025, Meta ended its partnership program with IFCN-certified fact-checkers, replacing them with “community notes” modeled after X. Zuckerberg’s decision found a powerful echo in pro-regime Belarusian media, which interpreted it as confirmation of the thesis about “Western censorship.”

And the GlobalFact 2026 conference, the world’s largest fact-checking summit, will be held June 17–19, 2026 in Vilnius, the city where our organization FactCheck.LT is also based. Organizers: EFCSN, IFCN, Delfi, and LRT.

Conclusions

An analysis of 183 documents from the FORESIGHT Belarusian media corpus shows that the term “fact-checking” operates in two parallel semantic regimes. In independent media, it retains its professional meaning, denoting a methodological practice of information verification linked to specific organizations and standards. In state and pro-regime media, the term undergoes systematic semantic inversion: it is used to legitimize the authors’ own claims without verification, to discredit independent fact-checkers as “censors,” and to promote Kremlin-backed imitation structures (GFCN) under the guise of international standards.

The quantitative dominance of state sources (66.7% of mentions) and Telegram as the primary platform (61.7%) means that for the Belarusian audience inside the country, the word “fact-checking” is most likely associated primarily with the state narrative about “Western censorship” rather than with the practice of verifying facts.

This makes media literacy work, specifically the ability to distinguish genuine verification from imitation, no less important than fact-checking itself.