When it comes to fact checking and BS detecting, I often tell students about a story I wrote involving the Mifflin Street Block Party about 30 years ago. The party got way out of hand late at night, with students setting bonfires in the middle of the street and even burning a car. When firefighters arrived to extinguish the blazes, the party participants repelled them with bottles, rocks, cans and anything else they could throw.
With the fire truck damaged and the firefighters outnumbered, the police eventually went in with riot gear and battled for control of the scene, as the party folks chanted, “F— THE PIGS!” at the top of their lungs.
The next day, I’m talking to the public information officer from Madison PD and I ask if, since it was the first time they donned riot gear since the Vietnam War, if they called out a 10-33, Riot In Progress.
“Don’t you dare call this a riot,” he told me.
I then explained I’d seen what had happened and the carnage that was left behind, so if it’s not a riot, what was it?
“It was a large, prolonged disturbance,” he told me before hanging up.
We are apparently entering another period of Jedi Mind Trick 101, in which people in power are telling the media, “Don’t call this a war. It’s not a war.” Therefore, I thought it might be a good time to pull this post the fact-checking exercise along with it out for another run.
Journalism 101: Facts matter, so don’t feel bad about forcing people to get them right
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THE LEAD: In a blinding flash of the obvious, the Washington Post reported that politicians don’t like being told they’re wrong about things via a journalistic fact check. In other “water is wet” news, Donald Trump and his campaign seem particularly outraged by the temerity of journalists who actually researched topics and can prove he’s full of beans from time to time:
THE BACKGROUND: The joke I always go back to is the familiar one of, “How can you tell when a politician is lying? Their lips are moving.” The idea that politicians fabricate situations is not a new one. Nixon’s “I am not a crook,” Clinton’s “I did not have sexual relations…” and Mark Sanford’s “hiking on the Appalachian trail” are some of the more infamous ones, as they intended to cover over embarrassing personal failings and limit political fall out.
Even more, politicians invent people they saw, they met and they heard, all in the service of some anecdote about salt-of-the-earth farmers getting the shaft, military leaders praising their brilliance or other similar moments of self-aggrandizing puffery. And of course there is the myth-making that surrounds some politicians, like George Washington’s cherry tree or Reagan’s trickle-down economics…
As far as this election is going, Tim Walz was fact-checked on his claims about his service, his presence in China during the Tiananmen Square protests and his family’s use of IVF services, each of which resulted in some disparities. Kamala Harris is also ringing up a few “false” ratings from Politifact on some of her claims regarding illegal drugs and her own previous political efforts.
Still, most of this is piddly stuff compared to what Trump does on a daily basis, both in terms of frequency and intensity. If Walz’s “carried weapons of war” statement is a leak in the truth boat, Trump is continually bashing the Titanic into the iceberg and flooding every compartment.
WHY DO WE CARE AS JOURNALISTS: Despite what the former president of the United States things, facts have a definition: things that are known or proved to be true. The job of a journalist is to get the facts and report them, so that people can make informed decisions on important things in their lives. If you strip away everything else from journalism, that’s the beating heart at its core.
Telling journalists you will only talk to them if they promise not to fact check you is like telling me, “You can come to our party, but only if you promise to not be a bald, middle-aged white guy.” It’s what I am, so that’s going to be a bit hard to square that circle.
People rely on facts to have a shared understanding of reality, so that society can function. It’s why when we bring a shirt to the check out kid and that shirt is priced $19.99 plus tax, we understand it’s probably going to cost about $21 or $22, give or take your part of the country. If the kid says, “That price is fake news. You owe me $150 and can’t leave until you do,” that breaks the whole “shared understanding of reality” thing.
For years, journalists have been telling people, “You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.” Somewhere along the way (I blame the internet), it actually became, “Pick your own facts and then be outraged when someone disagrees with you.”
EXERCISE TIME: Pick out a TikTok on any hot topic that’s going on today (politics, Diddy trial etc.) and write down whatever statements these people are declaring to be facts. Then, go fact check them against