Last month, Factchequeado launched as a way to address misinformation in Latino and Spanish-speaking communities in the United States.
Founded by Laura Zommer of Chequeado in Argentina and Clara Jiménez Cruz of Maldita.es in Spain (both are fact-checking organizations), The idea for the venture emerged when Jiménez started noticing that misinformation in Spanish targeting U.S. Latinos was also reaching Spanish speakers in Spain. She figured that the misinformation must have made its way to Argentina too, so she reached out to Zommer.
“We’ve been seeing in Spanish-speaking countries in the past five to 10 years that misinformation travels in a different way and very often has specific topics targeting specific communities,” Jiménez said. “So at Maldita, we thought maybe all these things that we’ve learned over the years can be applicable in the U.S. and we can launch [a] fact-checking project there for Spanish speaking communities that can also benefit our own communities in our own regions. Because we see that this information has no borders, this misinformation fabricated in the U.S. comes to Spain and to Latin America, and misinformation fabricated in Spain and Latin America is probably reaching the U.S. as well.”
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