The man behind the Pacific’s first independent fact-checking website says the unchecked spread of misinformation and disinformation in the region is why he started it.
Rashneel Madhur, who is the editor of the Cook Islands News, launched the CheckPacific.com at the Pacific Islands News Association media summit in Savusavu, Fiji, last month.
False and misleading information was named the world’s second-greatest challenge in the World Economic Forum’s 2026 Global Risks Report. A United Nations ranking by experts from 136 countries named disinformation one of the greatest global threats.
Disinformation is false or modified information knowingly and deliberately shared to cause harm or achieve a broader aim. Misinformation is information that is false or misleading, though not created or shared with the direct intention of causing harm.
According to the Griffith Asia-Pacific Strategic Outlook 2026, the spread of false information is a serious concern in the Pacific. Small island states not only face some of the world’s gravest threats from rising sea levels and related climate change impacts, but they also face increasingly pervasive misinformation about such threats.
Madhur said people are sharing false news on Social Media, without doing their own fact checking
“With the advent of social media and the way we see everywhere, it’s just not a Cook Islands problem where I am based, I guess it’s not a Fiji problem, Solomon Islands problem. We see it in the region, we have this wide spread of misinformation.”
According to Madhur, the sharing of mis- and disinformation leads to a lot of harm amongst communities.
“Covid was a perfect example of the kind of harm that unchecked spread of information could lead to. That was obviously an inspiration, and I have seen within my own family setting how family members kept posting things and putting things in our chat groups, and I was basically verifying every claim in that conversation.”
“So, I thought, if I am having in a small setting this issue and I’m able to at least verify it, who is doing it in the region. Who is doing it at the nation level, maybe media is doing at it to some level, but who is doing it in the region?
“Why is there no alliance or why is there no collaboration within media partners or civil society or universities to come together and battle this thing together as a region, he said.”
He said the rise in geopolitical tensions and other challenges affecting the interconnected Pacific region prompted him to create the platform.
“And over the years, with the help of a lot of partners who have given me some really sound advice and guided me with the guidelines with the help of other platforms that have been there. I sought some inspiration from them and then we came up with the CheckPacific.com “
Madhur said the response from the industry has been overwhelming.
“There has been great support from industry partners. People have come to me before I had a brief opportunity to announce it.
“I managed to print out some cards and give it out to people and the managed to browse it in their own spare time, and then they came back with feedback and that they liked it and wanted to get some more information.”
Madhur said the positive reaction from people shows there is a strong need for a Pacific focused platform like this.
