There is a particular kind of courage that does not wear a uniform or carry a flag, but shows up every day with a keyboard, a database and an unshakeable belief that facts still matter. That courage was on full display at FactFest 2026, a two-day gathering held on September 27 and 28 in Bangladesh, where around one hundred fact-checkers, journalists, researchers, academics and students came together for something far more urgent than a routine conference. Organised by Digitally Right in partnership with the Fojo Media Institute under the Media Safety in the Digital Age project, with support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the event had a name that sounded almost too clean, too hopeful. Yet the conversations inside those rooms were anything but simple. The conference featured more than thirteen sessions covering political disinformation, artificial intelligence, digital investigations and the steep, troubling decline of public trust in media. But beneath the PowerPoint slides and panel discussions, the real agenda was about survival: survival of independent fact-checking, survival of truthful reporting, and survival of the very idea that truth can be established, verified and believed. The atmosphere carried the weight of a profession at a crossroads, where the old rules no longer apply, the funding models are crumbling, and the stakes have never been higher. FactFest 2026 was not just a meeting of professionals; it was a mirror held up to the fragile ecosystem of truth in an age of manufactured lies.
The most urgent conversation at FactFest 2026 revolved around something that rarely makes headlines but threatens everything: money. The uncomfortable truth, spoken aloud in the closing roundtable, was that fact-checking organisations in Bangladesh are running out of funds just when they are needed most. Md Sakiuzzaman, co-founder of Rumor Scanner, put it plainly when he admitted that the organisation was being forced to let go of fact-checkers who had been with them for years, simply because the budget could no longer sustain them. This is not the kind of confession that comes easily. It is a quiet admission of pain, a public acknowledgment that even the most dedicated truth-seekers must eventually face the unforgiving arithmetic of payroll. Shuvashish Das Ray Dip, assistant editor of FactWatch, offered a broader and somewhat paradoxical picture: while the number of fact-checking organisations around the world has actually dropped since 2016, Bangladesh has seen the opposite, with more outlets emerging and more young journalists wanting to join the movement. But expansion without sustainable funding is not growth; it is an illusion. He argued that organisations must diversify their income streams, looking beyond donor grants and exploring research projects, media literacy training and other services that can generate revenue without compromising independence. Miraj Ahmed Chowdhury, managing director of Digitally Right, echoed this call, urging fact-checkers to build a mix of revenue streams, including support from the private sector. The challenge is deeply human. Fact-checking is not like selling a product or running a commercial media outlet. It cannot rely on advertising, because advertisers often do not want to be associated with stories that embarrass their friends or punish their allies. It cannot easily partner with mainstream media, because the perception of bias can poison credibility in an instant. So fact-checkers are left to build a house without a foundation, hoping that the roof will not collapse before the walls are built.
The relationship between fact-checkers and mainstream newsrooms emerged as another painful fault line, not because everyone was hostile, but because trust is hard to build and easy to break. Fact-checkers often see themselves as the accountability mechanism for the media, the ones who catch the errors, correct the record and push for higher standards. But not every newsroom welcomes that kind of scrutiny. Some outlets see fact-checking as an attack, a public shaming, an insult to their professionalism. Others, however, are beginning to understand that verification is not an enemy but an ally. Azad Baig, digital growth editor of The Daily Star, described how responsible media organisations are now embedding fact-checkers directly into their teams, asking them to review reports before publication, not to embarrass the reporters but to catch mistakes before millions of eyes can judge them. This is the quiet, unglamorous work of building a culture of accuracy. Adnan Aziz of the Media Resources Development Initiative (MRDI) went further, urging fact-checkers to be “friends of the media,” to highlight mistakes without creating hostility, to correct without condemning, to teach without preaching. It is a delicate balancing act. Sakiuzzaman noted that Rumor Scanner had tried to work with around twenty-five online outlets, but collaboration remained limited, often because outlets fear being exposed or fact-checkers fear being co-opted. Saleh Fuad of Dhaka Stream made an equally important point: scrutiny must run both ways. If fact-checkers are expected to be transparent, accountable and fair, then media outlets must also be willing to answer questions about their own funding, sources and editorial choices. Fact-checkers are not the enemy of journalism; they are the conscience of journalism. But that conscience is not always welcome.
If the money problem was bad and the newsroom tensions were difficult, the legal threat was genuinely terrifying. At the roundtable, participants raised serious concerns about proposed amendments to the Cyber Security Act 2026, a law that, on paper, is supposed to protect Bangladesh from cybercrime but, in practice, could become a weapon against the very people trying to protect the public from disinformation. The proposed amendments include prison terms and fines for defamation, “humiliation” and “bullying” online, and that language sent chills through the room. Why? Because in a world where a single fact-check can expose a powerful politician, embarrass a corporate giant or contradict a viral lie believed by millions, the line between “public-interest reporting” and “humiliation” can be drawn by whoever holds power. The participants warned that if the law fails to clearly distinguish between malicious disinformation and legitimate reporting, then independent fact-checkers could easily find themselves on the wrong side of a criminal case. Imagine spending your days carefully verifying claims, only to be told that your careful, evidence-based correction has hurt someone’s reputation. Imagine being summoned to court not for spreading lies, but for exposing them. The chilling effect would be immediate and devastating. Fact-checkers would begin to self-censor, not because they have stopped caring, but because they are afraid. The Cyber Security Act, as proposed, risks turning truth-tellers into criminals and criminals into victims. The conversation in the room was not abstract or theoretical. It was personal. It was about the possibility that next year, the people in that room might not be attending a conference; they might be visiting a colleague in prison.
Amid the doom and gloom, there were moments of clarity and hope. The conference opened with a powerful speech by Swedish Ambassador to Bangladesh, Nicolas Linus Ragnas Weeks, who spoke about the critical importance of information integrity during periods of political and social transition. He understood, perhaps better than many, that democracy does not die in a single dramatic moment; it dies quietly, in the spaces where lies go unchallenged and truth is treated as just another opinion. His presence at the conference was itself a statement: the international community is watching, and it cares. The keynote address, delivered by Paul Rapacioli, director of the Fojo Media Institute, was titled “Making Truth Travel,” and it cut to the heart of the problem facing fact-checkers everywhere. Rapacioli argued that debunking alone is not enough. You can have all the evidence in the world, you can trace every false claim back to its origin, you can publish correction after correction, but if people do not see your work, if they do not understand it, if they do not feel it, then the truth has failed. His exact words became something of a mantra for the conference: “Truth has to be established. Truth has to travel. And truth has to be trusted when it arrives.” Those three steps seem so simple, yet each one is a battlefield. Establishing truth requires rigorous, patient, often thankless work. Making truth travel requires storytelling skills that fact-checkers do not always possess; they are often better at databases than narratives, better at spreadsheets than social media. And earning trust requires something even harder: humility, transparency and a willingness to admit when you are wrong. A fact buried on page twelve is a fact that dies alone. A fact that travels, that is shared, that is believed, can change the world. But getting there means learning to speak the language of ordinary people, not just the language of verification.
By the end of FactFest 2026, one thing was clear: fact-checking in Bangladesh is not dying, but it is changing. The old model, where a small organisation could survive on a single grant, is gone. The future will demand diversity, adaptability and resilience. It will require fact-checkers to be not only investigators but also fundraisers, not only editors but also diplomats, not only writers but also technologists who can navigate the dark alleys of AI-generated content, coordinated disinformation campaigns, targeted harassment and information warfare. Across the thirteen sessions, speakers returned again and again to the need for advanced open-source intelligence tools, to the importance of early-childhood information literacy, and to the necessity of building broad alliances with educators, civil society, technology companies and, yes, even the media. But perhaps the deepest lesson of FactFest 2026 was not about tools or techniques at all. It was about love. Not the sentimental kind, but the fierce, stubborn, unglamorous love that makes someone choose to spend their days verifying facts in a world where lies spread faster than the truth. It is the love that keeps a fact-checker at their desk at midnight, cross-referencing sources, when they could simply log off and enjoy an easy life. It is the love that makes them issue a correction when they get something wrong, knowing that their enemies will use that mistake to discredit everything else they have ever done. It is the love that gives them the courage to stand up to powerful bullies and the wisdom to admit when they are not sure. FactFest 2026 ended with no grand resolution, no magical solution to the funding crisis, no perfect answer to the legal threats, no bridge strong enough to span the gap between fact-checkers and newsrooms. But it ended with something perhaps more important: a room full of people who refused to give up. They came from different organisations, different backgrounds, different political views, but they shared one conviction: that truth is worth fighting for. In a world that often feels like it is drowning in disinformation, that alone is a reason to hope. The facts may not always win, but the fact-checkers will not stop trying. And as long as they keep showing up, the future is not lost. It is being written, one verified claim at a time.