Armenia: Fact-checking at the TVAPATUM conference
At this year’s Media Initiatives Center conference, Editor-in-chief of VOA’s fact-checking website POLYGRAPH.info, Jim Fry, shared tips and tools for how to verify information online when producing news stories. The conference was held in Yerevan, Armenia on June 15 & 16. Fry’s presentation was attended by 200 participants, while nearly 2,400 people watched it on Facebook Live.
The two-day conference focused on journalism and digital story telling, offering two panel discussions in the morning, and one after a lunch hour. Most of the attendees were young journalists or university students, who heard from 18 journalists from Armenia, Russia, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Georgia and the U.S. The discussions were held in English and Armenian, with a live translation system.
The conference was held on the campus of Yerevan State University, in the ISTC – the Innovative Solutions and Technology Center. The ISTC is a partnership sponsored by IBM, USAID, the Armenian government and the Enterprise Incubator Foundation – a regional business incubator and consulting company.