Glenn Kessler Believes Fact-Checkers Are Getting Easier to Ignore
Last week Glenn Kessler, the longtime writer of the Washington Post’s Fact Checker column, announced that he had accepted a buyout, joining dozens of his former colleagues in walking away from the storied institution. Kessler was prolific during his twenty-seven years at the Post, writing more than three thousand fact-checks, by his own count, and helping spearhead an entirely new genre of journalism. He has, perhaps inevitably, launched a Substack, where he promises to deliver a mix of “fact-based analysis” of politics and samples of his fiction writing.
He departs at a time when the media’s ability to challenge falsehoods uttered by those in power has never been weaker. (A spokesman for the Post declined to share any information about what would happen with Kessler’s column.) This conversation has been edited for concision and clarity.
Related Knowledge Center: Fact-checking and its detractors
Fact-checking has become a familiar tool for political reporters to hold office-holders and candidates accountable. But critics ask if fact-checkers sometimes miss the forest for the trees, and if the practice often struggles with false equivalency the way conventional political coverage does.