I’m writing this as a disappointed former fan … of fact checking.
In 2007, it was love at first sight: I was a managing editor at Congressional Quarterly, and the head of the newsroom asked me to meet with Bill Adair, then Washington bureau chief for the St. Petersburg (now Tampa Bay) Times, CQ’s parent company at the time. Bill and a bureau colleague had developed a new product, PolitiFact. He was hoping our newsroom of nearly 200 might help with the fact checking. I enthusiastically recommended to my boss we help out, which we did for a time.
Bill and the Times ultimately won the Pulitzer Prize for their creation.
Over time, though, my ardor cooled. I began to see the limits — and misuses — of fact checking as a journalism tool.
Good-faith political speech is an exercise in persuasion. In the many political and legislative statements I wrote for campaigns and in Congress, I was marshaling facts to make our case, to win an argument. The opposition was free to counter and explain.
Those kinds of statements often do not lend themselves to the true-false starting point of fact checking. A good fact checker can and should add context, but declaring a one-sided statement to be false is a disservice to political speech.
Even the “misleading” and “needs context” verdicts involve a lot more judgment than reporters often acknowledge. When, for example, candidates say what they will do if elected, how can we know if a statement about the future is true or false? Should fact checkers assess the plausibility of such statements, or the credibility of the candidate? Should all candidates be shown equal deference? Is that still “fact checking?”
Those questions were in play during the recent debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
The ABC News moderators’ light-touch fact checks obviously helped: They corrected several egregious misstatements by Trump. But the more detailed fact checks that news organizations posted online — 99 candidate statements I reviewed in all — felt like a murky stew of facts and inconsistent reasoning. (The news organizations I reviewed: ABC News, Associated Press, BBC News, CBS News, CNN, NBC News, The New York Times, NPR, PolitiFact, Reuters, Snopes, USA Today, and The Washington Post.)
Consider:
During the debate, Harris said: “If Donald Trump were to be re-elected, he will sign a national abortion ban.” Reuters concluded, “This can’t be predicted,” BBC News said it was misleading, and CBS News called it inconclusive.
But ABC News called Harris’ statement false, arguing that Trump “repeatedly has promised that if elected, he will not sign a federal abortion ban into law and will leave the issue up to the states.”
Yet, when Trump said Harris would end fracking in Pennsylvania “on Day One,” ABC News concluded the statement “needed context” — despite Harris’ clear denial: “I will not ban fracking.” CBS News and the New York Times called Trump’s statement misleading.
Neither statement is provable; but ABC News’ “fact check” deemed Harris’ false and Trump’s in need of context.
But if fact checking struggles with the details, it is at sea on the big picture.
News organizations concluded that every statement they checked on immigration by Donald Trump was false. Trump said:
• Democrats are encouraging illegal immigrants to vote. False, according to six fact checkers.
• Haitian migrants are stealing and eating the pets of citizens in Springfield, Ohio. False, according to 13 fact checkers.
• Immigrants are “taking over the towns. They’re taking over buildings.” False, according to four fact checkers.
• Countries are emptying their prisons and “insane asylums” and sending those inmates to the United States. False, according to six fact checkers.
• Crime in Venezuela and other countries is down because they are sending their criminals to the United States. False, according to two fact checkers.
• 21 million people are crossing the border monthly. False, according to seven fact checkers.
• Immigrants are dangerous and “at the highest level of criminality.” False, according to four fact checkers.
Fact checking can catalog these misstatements; given that Trump and running mate JD Vance continue to repeat them, I think we can call them lies. But fact checking does not provide a way to frame what, taken together, they represent: a presidential candidate whose core campaign issue is entirely fictional. That’s an inherent short-coming of fact checking — it’s the wrong tool for that job.
Trump and Vance’s egregious use of dangerous lies has received greater scrutiny in the mainstream media since the debate, but it is not how most campaign coverage has been framed. Horserace coverage and breathless reporting of polling remains the preferred approach.
Fact checking may have its weaknesses, but they pale in comparison to the other coverage decisions mainstream journalists are making.