[miajag]

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From NYTimes Website:

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Fact Checking. Writers at The Times are their own principal fact checkers and often their only ones. (Magazine articles, especially those by nonmembers of our staff, are fact-checked, but even magazine writers are accountable in the first instance for their own accuracy.) Concrete facts – distances, addresses, phone numbers, people’s titles – must be verified by the writer with standard references like telephone books, city or legislative directories and official Web sites. More obscure checks may be referred to the research desk. If deadline pressure requires skipping a check, the editors should be alerted with a flag like "desk, please verify," but ideally the writer should double back for the check after filing; usually the desk can accommodate a last-minute repair. It is especially important that writers verify the spelling of names, by asking . A person who sees his or her own name misspelled in The Times is likely to mistrust whatever else we print. And too often, our correction column makes it clear that someone has guessed a spelling by the sound.

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Mia - I had an internship at NYTimes in college, and copy editors never had the time (or the onus on them) to fact check in a diligent manner (only stuff that seemed really absurd or questionable). Can't speak for other dailies, but considering deadline pressures, I can't imagine there's a ton of fact checking going on.

-Al

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Well, it's certainly possible that they do things differently at the Times, but at the various newspapers where I've worked (including the Washington Post), fact checking is one of the copy editors' main duties.