News analysis

What’s a Fact, Anyway?

The New Yorker · Fergus McIntosh · last updated
Every tribe has its myths, and journalists are no exception. In America, one common story goes like this: once, in the prelapsarian era before social media—or before smartphones, or the Internet—there was a time when journalists were trusted.
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Related Knowledge Center: Fact-checking and its detractors

State of Play

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.

Information integrity

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Related Knowledge Center: Information integrity

State of Play

In an increasingly fractured media landscape, truth has been a casualty in the public discussion. Coverage has been warped by the business needs of struggling news organizations, and a significant segment of the public relies on bad-faith outlets that are little more than propagandists. While fact-checking has become routine, some organizations are exploring other ways to combat the trends. And misinformation spewed by AI-driven chatbots has become more of a feature than simply a bug. 

Fact-checking and its detractors

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