Bill Adair

Bill Adair is the founder of the fact-checking website PolitiFact and Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy at Duke University. He specializes in journalism and new media, with an emphasis on structured journalism and fact-checking. He is a former adjunct faculty member at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida and a contributing editor at PolitiFact.

Early life Adair was born in and is from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in political science from Arizona State University in 1985, where he worked at a TV station, and the Phoenix Gazette and Tempe Daily News. Adair's first job was in public relations. In writing the book, Adair was granted access to the five-year inquiry by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

In 2007, Adair launched PolitiFact, a national fact-checking site that has expanded to include 11 state-level sites and has served as a model for the proliferation of fact-checking sites across the globe. He had originally launched it as a pilot project of the Tampa Bay Times.

Adair has conducted research on fact checking as a professor. As of 2025, he is working on a book about Wikipedia.

Personal life Adair has been married to Katherine Swoboda Adair, since at least 1989.

Awards Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting (shared) Manship Prize for New Media in Democratic Discourse Everett Dirksen Award for Distinguished Coverage of Congress