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Journalists have always been fact-checkers. Now, thanks to the Internet and social media, everyone has a soapbox, and everyone can send truths and untruths to hundreds of people with the push of a button.

Spoofs and satires become gospel.

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Unpopular viewpoints and people are targeted.

To get at the truth, many news organizations now include fact-checking columns, like this one.

But the fact-checkers themselves are not free from criticism. More often than not, the criticism comes from the right because, with a Democrat in the White House, that's where most of the viral criticism comes from.

So most of the fact-checking is of those allegations. Fact-finding sources that appear in the Times-Union, however, pride themselves on being accurate - using original reporting, source-checking, corroborating research and well-documented reports from other fact-finding groups to get at the truth.

So how do we know if we're getting the stra