Fact-checking is journalism — and facts are real
I’ve been astounded to see the backlash, mostly from Republicans, against the idea of journalists fact-checking politicians’ statements.
You can argue about what is true. But there is truth. There are facts. If you’ve given up on that, your political opinions are worthless (and please don’t vote).
Trump’s problems with fact-checking
From The Washington Post, “Trump wages campaign against real-time fact checks” (gift link).
Donald Trump and his campaign have waged an aggressive campaign against fact-checking in recent months, pushing TV networks, journalism organizations and others to abandon the practice if they hope to interact with Trump.
Trump nearly backed out of an August interview with a group of Black journalists after learning they planned to fact-check his claims. The following month, he and his allies repeatedly complained about the fact-checking that occurred during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, berating journalists and news executives in the middle of the televised debate.
And this month, Trump declined to sit down for an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” because he objected to the show’s practice of fact-checking, according to the show.
Campaign advisers also expressly asked CBS News to forgo fact-checking in its vice-presidential debate with Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance — who then complained on air when a moderator corrected him.
The moves are the latest example of Trump’s long-held resistance to being called to account for his falsehoods, which have formed the bedrock of his political message for years. Just in recent weeks, for example, Trump has seized on fabricated tales of migrants eating pets and Venezuelan gangs overtaking cities in pushing his anti-immigration message as he seeks a second term in office.
Lucas Graves, a journalism and mass communication professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said that publicly chafing at fact-checking has become a form of tribalism among some Republicans.
“Within the political establishment on the right, it is now considered quite legitimate — and quite legitimate to say publicly and openly — that you disapprove of fact-checking,” said Lucas, author of “Deciding What’s True: The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in American Journalism.” He added: “Precisely because of Trump’s unusual relationship with the truth — even for a politician — it’s hardly surprising that he would object to it so volubly and so forcefully.”
Truths
What is truth?
From a journalist’s perspective, truth is consists of facts that you can verify. The earth is round. The global average temperature has been increasing significantly. The Middle East war has killed tens of thousands of people.
Facts also include quoting things people said. In 2019, Kamala Harris said “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.” More recently, Trump said “It has just come out that Democrats in Washington and the Democrat Governor’s Office of North Carolina (Roy Cooper) were blocking [hurricane disaster recovery] people and money from coming into North Carolina.” (They weren’t.)
The job of journalists is to discover, verify, and present these facts. It’s a powerful and essential task, and we are in their debt.
What does it mean to object to “fact-checking” by the debate moderators or journalists at outlets like “60 Minutes”?
It means that a candidate wishes to lie — that is, to state supposed facts that are actually false — without being challenged.
More broadly, it means that a candidate wishes to define the truth as whatever they say, rather than the actual truth.
Draw the line
All candidates lie. Journalists point out those lies. That’s how our system works.
Or at least how it used to work.
If you want to be depressed, read this Charlie Warzel article (gift link) in The Atlantic. Here’s how it starts:
The truth is, it’s getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have dissociated from reality. As Hurricane Milton churned across the Gulf of Mexico last night, I saw an onslaught of outright conspiracy theorizing and utter nonsense racking up millions of views across the internet. The posts would be laughable if they weren’t taken by many people as gospel. Among them: Infowars’ Alex Jones, who claimed that Hurricanes Milton and Helene were “weather weapons” unleashed on the East Coast by the U.S. government, and “truth seeker” accounts on X that posted photos of condensation trails in the sky to baselessly allege that the government was “spraying Florida ahead of Hurricane Milton” in order to ensure maximum rainfall, “just like they did over Asheville!”
We are losing the idea of a single shared truth, and once that’s gone, there is no more America to believe in — just a fantasy stuffed full of disinformation.
Facts don’t just matter when it comes to whom you vote for. In North Carolina, emergency aid workers from FEMA were forced to pause their outreach operations because of an armed militia member who was “hunting FEMA.” The sheriff there said the militia member was armed with a handgun and a rifle when he was arrested. Disinformation actually prevented disaster recovery people from helping citizens.
You can argue with fact-checkers — that is your right. Journalists can and do check each other.
But there is such a thing as truth, and it’s not made out of poorly sourced and made-up conspiracy theories.
And if presidential candidates want free rein to make up things that fact-checkers can prove aren’t actually happening, I want nothing to do with them. That’s a principle more important than any political position.
Thank you, Josh. Well said. As usual, you nailed it.
A lot of journalists and publications have lost their way. I noticed this is not new and probably not news. I’ve seen this in the big players since the 1970s.
Almost all articles can be traced back to a press release, which has been printed as news without any critical thinking.
That’s how we get the coffee is good for you and the coffee is bad for you news. One peels back the news story to find a scientific study that fails kindergarten science class rules. The researcher in a publish-or-perish push never articulates a hypothesis or any attempt at a why.
Much of the fact checking contains opinions and other biases that destroy the facts and the checking.
Both sides and folks on the outside do damage with lies and fake fact checking.
The Donald has mastered something no one thought was possible. He tells outrageous lies and it does not seem to diminish his popularity, in fact, it appears to bolster it. Why would anyone expect him to change what works?
I saw Bill Maher this weekend and he reminded folks that the left makes outrageous lies too and that hurts the left (as it should) and the best argument against Trump is not stuff like the lie that he will destroy America (he won’t), but that he sucked as President.
Why do folks lie? Lots of reasons, but in politics the answer is usually because it usually works.
When a debate moderator says the town manager in the Ohio town has no reports of pet-abductions and Politifact says no one is blocking aid to North Carolina, those are actual facts. But your unsupported and vague opinions about “most of the fact checking” and “almost all articles” do not qualify as facts.
What is your opinion of K.H. plagiarism?
Not a good look at all. But the number and severity don’t say much about her as a candidate, although they may raise questions about her as a scholar.
Still, lying about facts in a political campaign is far more serious, since voters are deciding based on what they hear from you.
I see much conflict in the definition of fact-checking. Fact-checking should be fact-checking, not one person’s or another person’s idea or definition of it. Fact-checking is only as good as the fact-checker’s integrity.