ABC News Verify stepped onto the media stage in the middle of July with a clutch of stories related to the shooting of Donald Trump. There was no fanfare for the opening of the service which was announced in February this year as a replacement to the long-standing association between the ABC and RMIT Fact Check.

Audience page views of ABC News Verify’s output exceeded 600,000 in the opening week with its stories featuring on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube as well as TV news.

ABC Director of News Justin Stevens described a vision for the new service as “our centre of excellence for scrutinising and verifying information in online communities, in addition to uncovering original stories.” Analysis of online information in circulation figured significantly in the reports relating to the shooting of Trump, and in a later story in July examining social media responses to Kamala Harris.

Other objectives for the Verify team include checking the authenticity of videos and images available during major news events, as well as training ABC News staff in open-source intelligence skills. These responsibilities point to the extent to which verification is recognised by many in news media as essential to maintaining the trust of audiences. BBC News Verify, which was unveiled in May 2023, now has a staff of sixty journalists.

In March, BBC Verify publicised a new “content credential” service, which will enable it to include visible verification of the authenticity of images it uses. It can be noted that BBC Verify also fact-checked the claims of politicians during the recent general election in the UK; this more traditional fact-checking task is not as yet explicitly included in the list of responsibilities for ABC News Verify.