What happens next Where's my refund? Best CD rates this month Shop and save 🤑
MONEY
University of Pennsylvania

Rieder: Good news for fans of political fact-checking

Rem Rieder
USA TODAY
One of the more encouraging developments in journalism in recent years has been the upsurge in efforts to gauge the veracity of the pronouncements of public officials. Two organizations, FactCheck.org and PolitiFact, have led the charge, but individual news outlets -- such as The Washington Post and its Fact Checker feature -- also play important roles.

There's never a shortage of bad news on the news media beat. Recent months have brought us the collapse of the shoddy Rolling Stonerape story and the revelations of the embellishments of Brian Williams and Bill O'Reilly. Not to mention the ongoing story of the struggles of the newspaper business.

That's why it's particularly nice to see something upbeat such as the American Press Institute's recent findings on the state of the political fact-checking movement.

One of the more encouraging developments in journalism in recent years has been the upsurge in efforts to gauge the veracity of the pronouncements of public officials. Two organizations, FactCheck.org and PolitiFact, have led the charge, but individual news outlets — such as The Washington Post and its Fact Checker feature — also play important roles.

Given the predilection of political officials for playing fast and loose with the truth, it's great that all this truth-seeking is going on. But do people care? Does it have any impact? And just how much of it is there?

To find out, the American Press Institute commissioned some scholarly research. The findings are quite encouraging to fact-checking fans.

The research, carried out by three scholars as part of API's Fact-Checking Project, found that more than eight in 10 Americans have a favorable view of political fact-checking. What's more, it seems to have impact.

According to one study, "when people are randomly exposed to fact-checking, they not only come to view the practice even more favorably, but they learned real information about politics. Participants who were shown fact-checks were more likely to correctly answer factual questions about that content days or weeks later compared with those who were instead shown placebo information. In short, people like fact-checking, and it appears to help them become better informed."

That's great to hear. Perhaps it will inspire more news outlets to take on this vitally important work. For too long, too many stories settled for laying out what politician A says, having politician B dismiss it as nonsense and leaving it at that — also leaving the news consumer (and voter) hopelessly in the dark.

Brooks Jackson, the Director Emeritus of FactCheck.org

Fact-checkers go beneath the surface, picking apart the assertions of politicians, laying out the actual facts and making judgments about whether the statements are true or false. Their conclusions are based not on whether they like or agree with the politician but on where actual reporting leads.

The API research found fact-checking is dramatically on the rise. From 2008 to 2012, it found original fact-checks or stories based on those fact-checks jumped by 300% after increasing by 50% from 2004 to 2008. Though much of the growth in the most recent period occurred at 11 newspapers that have partnerships with PolitiFact, fact-checking more than doubled at other news outlets.

All of which is music to the ears of Brooks Jackson, the godfather of fact-checking. Jackson launched FactCheck.org, an initiative of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center, in 2003. He had been at it quite a while before that, pioneering ad watch and fact-checking stories at CNN in 1992.

Jackson is particularly pleased by the finding that fact-checking has a real impact on news consumers. He has long maintained that it's naive to think calling out politicians will change their behavior. The real target is the voter.

"Politicians have been bending the truth or making up stuff for 2500 years," he says. "They get power by hornswoggling a majority. They have an incentive to mislead."

The First Amendment, he goes on, wasn't adopted so record executives could purvey misogynistic song lyrics or pornographers could ply their trade. "It's in there so voters can get light shown on the issues of the days," says Jackson, director emeritus of FactCheck.org.

He says of the research, "I'm very pleased we're focused on the right direction. It's great to see this sort of thing being validated."

He's excited to see the practice spreading. Not long ago, he was in Buenos Aires for a conference on fact-checking in Latin America.

What does the future hold for fact-checking?

"I hope it's an even more regular feature of journalistic practice," he says. "All news outlets should do it. Audiences love it. And it makes journalists feel good, because they are carrying out the highest and best practices of journalism."

Featured Weekly Ad