“As a student, as a news consumer, I’ve always really respected, admired, consumed work from the AP,” said Klein College of Media and Communication alumnus Angelo Fichera, KLN ’13 (he/him). “It’s always been a standard bearer in my mind for credibility, accuracy, straight-to-the-point journalism. I feel really grateful that I now have the opportunity to do work for the AP.”

Fichera started working on the news verification team at The Associated Press (The AP) in September 2021. There, he fact-checks misinformation on social media platforms. Though his process depends on the particular claim he is investigating, he does original reporting, interviews and research to find the facts, or lack thereof, behind the claim. “The idea is to not amplify false or misleading information, but respond to it,” he said.

However, The AP is not Fichera’s first fact-checking gig. From March 2018 until his move to The AP, Fichera worked for FactCheck.org, a Philadelphia-based non-profit fact-checking service. Fichera also focused on social media misinformation at FactCheck.org, which often involved diving into politics, science and COVID-19.

“It’s a really important act of public service, in my view. Providing fact-checking work for people to be able to navigate all of the content they’re [seeing],” Fichera said. He noted that 2018, when he started working at FactCheck.org, was around the time when society as a whole started to realize how dangerous misinformation on social media could be.

“I hired him, and I’m very glad I did,” said Director at FactCheck.org Eugene Kiely (he/him). As director, Kiely read every word of Fichera’s copy and noted the outstanding quality of his work. 

Fichera is responsible for writing the most-viewed story on the website in the 10 years that they have been keeping records. For the site’s “Ask FactCheck” feature where readers can write in questions they have, Fichera wrote a piece on whether hospitals were getting paid more for COVID-19 patients that currently has almost 5,000,000 page views.

“He belongs in journalism. He’s a really good journalist. The kind of journalist who is fair and honest,” Kiely said. Though Fichera’s degree from Klein was in journalism and he has been working in journalism for the last four years, he did take a break to work in the Strategic Marketing and Communications Department at Temple University.

“It was just an interesting and formative experience in a whole host of new ways in terms of understanding digital strategy and branding,” Fichera said of his time working at Temple. After about two years of working at Temple, Fichera went back to journalism when he started at FactCheck.org.

“I love what he’s doing now as a fact-checker cause you have to have that personality. You have to really want to be thorough and careful,” said Managing Director of Student Media John DiCarlo, KLN ’98 ’06 (he/him). Fichera worked with DiCarlo at The Temple News.

Fichera “climbed the ladder” at The Temple News throughout his four years as a Temple student. He started as a reporter his freshman year, became assistant news editor his sophomore year, news editor his junior year and finally editor-in-chief as a senior. “I was all Temple News all the time,” Fichera said. “It was such an incredible experience and so reflective of the real work.”

In addition to his work at The Temple News, Fichera pursued several internships during his college career. He thought it important to maximize the opportunities that Philadelphia has to offer, and did internships at City Paper, Philadelphia Weekly, The Daily News and The Philadelphia Inquirer. His internship at The Inquirer helped him get a job there shortly after graduating, where he worked for two years before coming back to Temple to work in strategic marketing and communications.

“I’m not surprised to see him doing the work that he’s doing now,” DiCarlo said. Fichera is grateful for the opportunity to be doing this work because he gets to help people discover the facts when they otherwise may not have had time to do the fact-checking themselves.

“I’m in love with this work, and I’m so grateful to be able to do it at the AP right now,” Fichera said.