Documentary about Poynter’s PolitiFact brings story of fact-checking to Japanese television
ST. PETERSBURG, Florida (January 30, 2026) – PolitiFact, the Pulitzer-Prize winning fact-checking newsroom based at the Poynter Institute, is the focus of a television documentary premiering this week on Japanese broadcaster Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, known as NHK.
“The Battle for Truth: The Front Lines of American Fact-Checking,” premieres Friday, Jan. 30 in Japan on NHK, which translates to the Japan Broadcasting Corporation.
“With the widespread use of social media, the global spread of ‘fake news’ has become a serious social issue,” Masahiro Yamamoto, the documentary’s director, said in an email. “In Japan as well, information of mixed accuracy is circulating widely, and the situation continues to worsen. Against this backdrop, we felt there was much to learn from PolitiFact, which has been conducting fact-checking for nearly two decades.”
Related Knowledge Center: Fact-checking and its detractors
Fact-checking has become a familiar tool for political reporters to hold office-holders and candidates accountable. But critics ask if fact-checkers sometimes miss the forest for the trees, and if the practice often struggles with false equivalency the way conventional political coverage does.