FactGuard: Agentic Video Misinformation Detection via Reinforcement Learning

Multimodal large language models (MLLMs) have substantially advanced video misinformation detection through unified multimodal reasoning, but they often rely on fixed-depth inference and place excessive trust in internally generated assumptions, particularly in scenarios where critical evidence is sparse, fragmented, or requires external verification. To address these limitations, we propose FactGuard, an agentic framework for video misinformation detection that formulates verification as an iterative reasoning process built upon MLLMs. FactGuard explicitly assesses task ambiguity and selectively invokes external tools to acquire critical evidence, enabling progressive refinement of reasoning trajectories. To further strengthen this capability, we introduce a two-stage training strategy that combines domain-specific agentic supervised fine-tuning with decision-aware reinforcement learning to optimize tool usage and calibrate risk-sensitive decision making. Extensive experiments on three public benchmarks demonstrate that FactGuard consistently outperforms state-of-the-art methods in both verification accuracy and reliability.