It's only apropos that the day after April Fool's Day this year was International Fact-Checking Day, the first such celebration of a much-needed service in an era of "alternative facts."
The International Fact-Checking Network, headed by Poynter's Alexios Mantzarlis, promoted the event, along with other fact-checking groups around the world, stating, "International Fact-Checking Day is not a single event but a rallying cry for more facts--and fact-checking--in politics, journalism, and everyday life."
Lord, ain't that the truth. Especially considering how many people seem to think that all it requires for something reported by the media to be false is that they don't agree with it. Evidence, shmevidence!
The website for the event (factcheckingday.com) includes helpful guides on things such as determining if a news site is fake (for example, abcnews.com is real; abcnews.com.co is most decidedly not), how to spot fake Twitter account handles, and how to fact-check politicians.
PolitiFact held a "fact-check-a-thon" Sunday to mark the event, and found some real doozies. One story that has been around for years reared its head yet again, saying that the Colorado Rockies were selling pot brownies at the team's concession stands. PolitiFact said that though Colorado voted to decriminalize marijuana, you can't buy marijuana edibles at the Rockies' stadium. Sorry to be a buzz-kill.
Another story said Nancy Pelosi had been led away in handcuffs to be questioned about a possible coup attempt. The site noted that no credible media sources had repeated the claim, and that it apparently originated on The Last Line of Defense, which states on its "about" page that "all articles should be considered satirical and any and all quotes attributed to actual people complete and total baloney." And not even the good baloney (is there such a thing?).
Checking these things is par for the course for outfits like PolitiFact and FactCheck. PolitiFact, in a post Friday, debunked a report that Whitewater prosecutor Ken Starr had been killed in a plane crash on his way to testify against Hillary Clinton in a special investigative committee hearing. Not only was there no such committee, it seems the town where the crash supposedly happened doesn't exist. So, no, the "Clinton Body Count" didn't rise.
A week before, FactCheck disproved a supposed quote from Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price ("it's better for our budget if cancer patients die more quickly"), which showed up in a story tracked to Politicops, a site run by Newslo, which claims to be, FactCheck wrote, "the first hybrid News/Satire platform on the Web." A check of the transcript of the CNN town hall where Price spoke showed he said nothing of the kind.
Some of you right now are grumbling about my citing "danged liberal" fact-checking sites. Except, again, they're not "liberal" or "conservative," which by itself is more of a reason to have faith in them. The main reason I trust these sites is very simple: Sources are clearly cited and links to original source material are usually included.
I mean, aren't unnamed sources supposed to be bad? I think I read that on Twitter somewhere ...
Facts don't have a political leaning; it's how the facts are (mis)interpreted that causes the problem. And when the facts disprove an actual fake news story (meaning made-up), the hyperpartisan tend to get a little antsy and start yelling about media bias because they only trust checks from "their side." You must not dispute the party line, even when it hurls accusations without proof.
Jeremy D. Goodwin wrote in the Boston Globe that journalists who challenge the veracity of candidates or officials are simply doing their jobs, and that claiming such as bias is "like saying a lifeguard oversteps her bounds by diving into the water."
Yeah, crazy, I know. That lifeguard has no business saving people, just as a journalist has no business fact-checking allegations made by someone. They're supposed to be good little reporters and just repeat what they're told without question.
Said Goodwin: "When media reports debunk Trump's factually incorrect assertions, this essential work is glibly dismissed as evidence of bias. ... None of us is an expert on every issue of national consequence. We depend on professionals who are trained to help us sort through competing claims and make decisions based on the facts. If the implied hierarchy among competing sources--privileging evidence-based reports by credible news organizations over, say, an idle hot take found on a conspiracy-theory website--continues to erode, our democracy is in trouble. ... In this era of choose-your-own-news, an increasingly balkanized public has grown accustomed to choosing its own facts. But if facts are stubborn things, then so too must be the fact-checkers."
Sure, sometimes fact-checkers inadvertently cause those reading and spreading fake stories to just dig in, but when even one person reads a fact-check, looks at the actual evidence surrounding the stories and concludes that they're fake, that little bit of real estate in reality is worth all the taunts from hyperpartisans.
Well, not "doodyhead." What are you, 3?
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Assistant Editor Brenda Looper is editor of the Voices page. Read her blog at blooper0223.wordpress.com. Email her at [email protected].
Editorial on 04/05/2017