Writing, Media & Blogs: December 2011 Archives
"Fact checks" are the journalistic equivalent of the cheating spouse who promises that this time they're really telling you the truth.
Mark Hemingway illustrates how the "Fact Check"-style column is generally just thinly veiled opinion that completely distorts the meaning of the word "fact".
But it seems the most outspoken fans of media fact-checking operations come from within the media themselves. "Has anyone else noticed that the Associated Press has been doing some strong fact-checking work lately, aggressively debunking all kinds of nonsense, in an authoritative way, without any of the usual he-said-she-said crap that often mars political reporting?" Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent wrote last year.Sargent was conducting a fawning interview with the AP's Washington bureau chief Ron Fournier about the outlet's fact-checking operation. "The AP, for instance, definitively knocked down claims that [Supreme Court Justice] Elena Kagan is an 'ivory tower peacenik,' " Sargent wrote.
Not surprisingly, Fournier agreed with Sargent. "What we tend to forget in journalism is that we got in the business to check facts," Fournier says. "Not just to tell people what Obama said and what Gingrich said. It is groundless to say that Kagan is antimilitary. So why not call it groundless? This is badly needed when people are being flooded with information."
Sargent and Fournier's ouroboros of self-congratulation inadvertently revealed a problem: When it comes to fact checking, the media seem oblivious to the distinction between verifying facts and passing judgment on opinions they personally find disagreeable.
The blogosphere hasn't taken "fact check" columns serious for a long time... or ever. Personally, I find the whole practice to be absurdly desperate on the part of the mainstream media. People used to listen to them and just assume they were hearing facts all the time. Now the media has to create specially-labeled "fact check" zones to let us know where the facts are (supposedly) kept amidst all the leftist clap-trap.
The reason "he-said-she-said crap" is part of most news stories is that most people give their opinions, and the reporter isn't supposed to inject himself into matters of opinion. The readers are supposed to decide which opinion-giver they find most reliable. When the readers don't line up behind the "right" opinions, the journalists get upset.
Yes, Time Magazine (they still exist?) has finally gotten around to recognizing the impact of the Tea Party!
In each place, discontent that had been simmering for years got turned up to a boil. There were foreshadowings. In the U.S., the Obama campaign was in part a feel-good protest movement that galvanized young people, and then its shocking success and the Wall Street bailout produced an angry and shockingly successful populist protest movement in the Tea Party, which has far outlasted its expected shelf life. In 2009, after the regime in Tehran denied the antiregime election results, millions of Iranians, especially young ones, protested for weeks. The Web and social media were key tactical tools in all three instances. But they seemed at the time to be one-offs, not prefaces to an epochal turn of history's wheel.
Wait a minute. Obama's campaign was a "feel-good protest" and the Tea Partiers were just "angry"? Well, at least they were "populist" I guess. However, despite having "far outlasted its expected shelf life" the Tea Party is a "one-off". Oh well.
It'll be very interesting to see which of these various movements have the longest-lasting beneficial effects. I'm guessing that the "Arab Spring" protests will leave us with a bunch of radical Islamist governments, and the Obama "protest" will leave us with a zillion dollars of debt.
