Arthur MacMillan is a foreign correspondent based in Washington DC, after time in New York, Paris, Tehran, Baghdad, and Hong Kong. From Scotland, he began his career at his hometown newspaper in 2001. Since January 2020, he has led digital verification and investigation at Agence France-Presse (AFP) in the US. The team's reporters compiled hundreds of fact-checks about coronavirus and Covid-19, the presidential election, and its aftermath on January 6, 2021, at the Capitol.

What is the most challenging part of your job?

Being abused online, by members of the public, after we've published a story can be tough. We receive a lot of threatening emails, and it is hard to offer assurance to staff because the insults are usually anonymous. This stuff can't always be laughed off. A thick skin is one thing, but when it's hundreds of emails that threaten your person or your family it can be a bit much. The political divide in America is so stark that many people appear to have given up on facts, preferring beliefs.

What are the main tools you use for fact-checking and verifying digital content?

We rely on reverse image search software to identify misleading or altered photos. Similarly, CrowdTangle allows us to track who originated a false meme or message online. But for all the tech we have access to, it's only a tool. Most of our stories begin with a reporter's hunch, to be pursued until it checks out or can be dismissed. There is no substitute for good instinct.

As a correspondent, you have worked in Hong Kong, Iraq, Iran, Paris, and now you are back in Washington, D.C. What is your most important experience as a journalist from your time abroad?

When it comes to sources ask yourself why they are talking to you. Do they have something to gain? In Scotland, I was once 'taken in' by someone who was pushing an agenda. That hurt for quite a while. I've since learned that only time will allow you to build trust and establish how reliable a source is. Sometimes it's not the source that is the problem. In Tehran I once had a story turned down because the news editor didn't believe what the source was predicting. My story didn't see the light of day. But two months later what the source said was going to happen did, in fact, happen. That was frustrating. I stay connected with the source and he's still accurate. Track record counts. And never forget that you are the person on the ground. Be confident in yourself. Your eyes and ears should be better placed to work out what's going on than those of someone thousands of miles away. But you need to build trust with your news editor also, or it'll be a grind every day.

Arthur MacMillan in Chinook Helicopter, above Fallujah (Iraq 2009)

In your career as a foreign correspondent, what are the three biggest lessons you've learned that you can share with foreign journalists in America?

If you're not interested in working the biggest stories, then you should be doing something else. Being in Iran in 2016 when the nuclear deal was agreed was a major moment. We had been working non-stop for three weeks while talks were happening in Vienna. I got off the streets at 3 a.m. when Tehranis finally drifted home but police had closed the roads, so I filed and then slept on an office sofa. By 6 a.m. I was filing again and waiting for everyone else to arrive. Working in foreign countries can be extremely hard but the work usually makes it special.

Secondly, be fair. Amid the talk of “balance” and non-partisanship, people confuse fairness with balance. If you are covering a presidential debate and one candidate lies 12 times and the other lies twice, then the balance is not 50-50. You need to find a way to get across the substance of the falsehood. There's often a significant difference between a flub and a flat-out lie. An oratory that stretches to hyperbole is different from open deception. So, explain it.

What is your biggest fear for journalism in the next decade?

Arthur MacMillan in Rawalpindi Airport (Pakistan, 2007)

A story is only worthwhile if it affects people. Too often I see stories covered because someone in a company or an organization had an interest in a subject being covered. Or it's easy to go along, listen and then file on it. Traditional skills are becoming less common. At AFP, we've been lucky to innovate, particularly with video journalists in the field, but sadly some organizations ask reporters to spend their lives in the same chair day after day. They rarely find anything out and fall into stenography that lacks news value. A lot of news editors and managers should ask themselves when did their staff last knock on someone's door to get an edge on a story? If you give up on the latter or don't really think it's important then you're not really a journalist.

What, or who, inspires you?

I was fortunate to work with brilliant journalists at Scotland on Sunday (2005-2007). My immediate boss, Peter Laing, remains the best news editor I've known. He wanted stories with real people in them – not bureaucrats or spokespeople paid to espouse a view. He also wanted at least one financial figure in every page lead filed, because almost every story involves money somehow. Peter's ideas were better than anyone else's at the start, and his intros were sharper than everyone else's on the copy desk at the end. He taught me how to write news. He drove me to exhaustion. But he also made me better to a degree no one has since matched. I miss working with him.

On a personal level, I stood in Nelson Mandela's cell on Robben Island in early 2011. Two years later I was the slot in AFP's Washington newsroom when Mandela's death was announced. It's one of the few occasions when every journalist was crowded around the television in silence. It said a lot about the international experience in our newsroom that several of us had reported or news edited from South Africa, including myself. A good newsroom is a sum of its parts, and good leaders recognize that and leverage people's different skills and experience. I have a portrait of Mandela in my office at home. It simply says: “It always seems impossible until it's done.”