The Biden administration stole $1 billion from FEMA. The flow of fentanyl into the United States has been halved. Vice President Kamala Harris’ 60 minutes interview could be a “major campaign finance violation.”
These are just three of the most prominent ways the two major presidential campaigns (Trump, Harris, Trump again) have bent the truth this year, according to PolitiFact, the prominent nonpartisan fact-checking website founded in 2007 by journalist Bill Adair. the degree of mendacity on a sliding scale, somewhere between ‘pants on fire’ and ‘true’ – both Trump statements fall into the ‘pants on fire’ category, while Harris’s is simply ‘false’. But does anyone care anymore?
In an interview with POLITICO Magazine, Adair emphasized that fact-checking still matters and can make a difference, even in an age of disinformation and polarization.
And while he has no illusions that Trump will ever change his behavior based on fact-checking, others are not so brazen.
“Do I think there are many politicians in the United States from both parties who, if journalists hold them accountable, would be less likely to lie? Yes.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What is the value of fact checking as a project?
Even in a time when people are so polarized and when they often get their political news from partisan sources, fact-checking is still very important because it provides a foundation of facts that allows us to have an honest discourse about policy . Fact-checking provides the basic truth we need so we can have an adult conversation about politics.
There is now more fact checking, but there also seems to be more lying in our politics. Can you talk about how these two things spread at the same time?
So the first big wave of fact checking came in the early 1990s and was a response to the 1988 campaign. Then in 2003 the second wave was started by factcheck.org and PolitiFact and The WashingtonPost fact-checker in 2007. Suddenly fact-checking became a much more common term. You heard someone say, “I want a fact check on that.” But the rise of partisan media around 2010 created these echo chambers that tended to counteract fact-checking and neutralize the effect of fact-checking. That got us to where we are today: I think we need to rethink how we distribute fact checks. We need more conservative channels for fact-checking, and we need to think of fact-checks more as data that can be used to fight disinformation.
We also really need political fact-checkers in every state who focus on fact-checking congressional delegations and state legislators and governors. That has a very positive effect, because it’s like a state agent on the highway with a radar gun. When politicians know they will be held accountable for what they say, they are much less likely to lie.
Extending the analogy with the radar gun for a moment, it seems that many politicians see what’s on the radar gun and just keep driving. Take former President Donald Trump, for example.
Trump is and remains a complete outlier in the field of fact checking. No one has a history of documented lies like Trump. And he keeps making things up every day. So I don’t think we should look at Trump as someone whose behavior is going to change as a result of fact-checking. So the question is not: can we change Trump’s behavior? Because I don’t think fact checkers will ever do that. But do I think there are many politicians in the United States from both parties who, if journalists hold them accountable, would be less likely to lie? Yes.
So why are conservatives convinced that disinformation reporters and fact-checking projects are so partisan?
Because it fits into the narrative that the media is too liberal that conservatives have been pushing for decades, and so it’s easy to say that you shouldn’t trust the liberal fact-checkers either. If you look at what is being said in the conservative media, fact checking is routinely criticized, smeared and ridiculed. So if you’re a conservative media consumer, you hear this constant drumbeat.
What are the limits of fact checking?
Well, I think fact-checking is information that helps people make decisions. It is a special form of journalism because a reporter does his reporting as thoroughly as possible, examines all sides of a claim and then draws a conclusion about whether it is correct or not. Ultimately, its limits are journalism. Now it can be used in useful ways, as Facebook has shown with its third-party fact-checking tool that you can use fact-checks to provide information to Facebook users by saying, “Hey, this statement is false.” And Facebook can use that to indicate how much that message is being spread.
To that point, some people suggest that fact-checking could become a restriction on free speech, or be used by companies or governments to limit free speech. What is your reaction to that?
Well, I’m sensitive to the idea that we don’t want to limit people’s freedom of expression, so it’s a delicate issue. But I’m also sensitive to the fact that disinformation can spread very quickly on some of these technology platforms, and it’s useful to try to reduce the spread of that disinformation. So I think we can find ways to use journalism that helps inform people and reduce the spread of misinformation without hindering people’s freedom of expression.
You said that fact-checking is a special form of journalism because a reporter draws direct conclusions about whether statements are accurate. Would the public be better off seeing more of these conclusions in all our journalism?
I think we’ve definitely seen that before. We call that an embedded fact-check, and that’s where you see a reporter write something like, “Trump made the baseless claim that immigrants eat dogs in Springfield.” Yes, I think it is part of the job of political reporters and news reporters to call out untruths when they see them. Part of the journalistic duty is to tell people what is true and what is not. And I think for a while we operated hoping that people would do their own research, and that’s not working.
Have news organizations gotten better or worse at this?
Better overall, because you see more of that embedded fact checking than you used to. I’m just sitting here thinking, what’s the solution? If you’re a news reporter covering a political speech, are you expected to fact-check every line of the speech you quote? I hope there is a fact checker who will fact check that.
So, for a well-known news organization (like the one you’re speaking to now), what is their responsibility in an election year? Are news organizations broadly delivering on this?
I am aware that there are so many claims made on any given day that it is impossible for any organization to fact-check them all. I think the goal of a major news organization should be to tackle the major claims, claims that are at the center of a political debate, and tell people whether they are true or not. That’s a challenge in a time of limited resources, in a turbulent media environment, but that’s the goal.
Has the opportunity cost of lying for politicians increased or decreased over the past twenty years? Is there some calculation about how lying could hurt you that is different now?
Yes, I think lying used to have greater consequences than it does now. When there was a common news medium that everyone watched, read and listened to, lying had greater consequences. When political campaigns focused more on mass audiences, lying had greater consequences. Now that things are so targeted, whether it’s partisan news media or micro-targeting of campaign messages, I think lying is easier than ever, and has fewer consequences. So politicians say, “You know what? I’m going to lie because it’s worth it,” and they really believe they’re going to score more points than it’s going to cost them.
This interview first appeared in POLITICO Nightly.
