Jane Lytvynenko, a seasoned veteran in the trenches of the misinformation wars, is preparing to share her hard-won expertise at the GlobalFact conference in Vilnius, Lithuania. Her career trajectory, which began in the feverish climate of 2016, was defined by a recognition that digital propaganda had evolved from a fringe nuisance into a systemic threat to global discourse. Working alongside pioneers like Craig Silverman at BuzzFeed News, Lytvynenko helped illuminate the shadowy mechanisms of influence operations and hyper-partisan networks. For her, fact-checking was never merely about debunking isolated rumors; it was an urgent mission to establish a firewall against the calculated manipulation of breaking news, where the hunger for information often outpaces the time required to report it accurately.
Today, serving as a senior technology reporter for NBC News Digital, Lytvynenko continues to navigate the complex intersection of digital media and truth. Her work has transcended domestic U.S. politics to encompass the geopolitical volatility of the war in Ukraine, where she leveraged open-source intelligence (OSINT) to hold power to account. By synthesizing traditional investigative journalistic rigor with modern digital sleuthing, she has become a bridge between the old guard of reporting and the new, chaotic era of the internet. Her presence at GlobalFact represents a vital effort to professionalize the investigative toolkit, ensuring that journalists across the globe are equipped to handle the high-stakes environment of the information age.
Lytvynenko’s contribution to the conference centers on two vital workshops that demystify modern digital investigation. The first focuses on Telegram, a platform she describes as an “underutilized” but essential pillar of modern communication. Often dismissed by U.S.-centric media as a mere niche, Telegram serves as a primary source for conflict reporting, local community news, and illicit marketplaces worldwide. By teaching reporters how to mine this platform—which uniquely retains metadata on uploaded files—Lytvynenko aims to turn a chaotic digital space into a structured resource for sourcing breaking news and verifying evidence in real-time.
Beyond raw data collection, her second workshop, “Interviewing for OSINT,” challenges the traditional silos of investigative work. She argues that digital property—such as, satellite imagery, geolocated video, or social media forensics—should not remain separated from the human element of journalism. Instead, she advocates for a hybrid approach where digital evidence is used as a foundation for interviews, forcing sources to confront physical evidence in real-time. This method adds a layer of accountability that is often missing from interviews, transforming digital artifacts from passive evidence into dynamic tools that drive better reporting and more nuanced storytelling.
As the industry faces the dual challenge of declining institutional support and the rapidly evolving threat of AI, Lytvynenko remains cautiously optimistic but realistic. She views AI as a double-edged sword: while it empowers bad actors to create convincing fake evidence and disinformation, it also provides journalists with powerful capabilities to process massive amounts of audio and documentation more efficiently. To her, the answer to AI-driven misinformation is not to fear the machine, but to master it. She encourages her peers to adopt these tools to analyze complex data sets, thereby compensating for limited technical resources and narrowing the gap between malicious creators and the watchdogs trying to keep up.
Reflecting on the global state of the profession, Lytvynenko highlights a troubling divergence. In the United States, the fact-checking industry is currently experiencing a concerning contraction, characterized by dwindling academic research, diminished transparency from social media platforms, and a cooling of corporate support. Meanwhile, Europe is adopting more proactive, legislative approaches to combat the influx of misinformation. Ultimately, Lytvynenko emphasizes that the industry must cultivate a more sustainable, independent future. Her message is clear: financial support from tech giants is inherently fickle, and for fact-checking to survive as an essential pillar of democracy, it must move beyond dependence and integrate deeply into the core fabric of daily editorial practice.