New at CJR: When factcheckers get trigger-happy

My new column at CJR looks at how factcheckers sometimes fail to select their targets and define their standards appropriately. Here's how it begins:

Is there such a thing as too much factchecking? Factcheck.org described former President Bill Clinton’s speech to the Democratic convention Wednesday evening as a “fact-checker’s nightmare” in part because, “with few exceptions… his stats checked out.” Rather than concede that it had little material to work with, however, The Associated Press manufactured a “fact check” of Clinton that focused far too heavily on omitted context and possible counter-arguments to his opinions rather than untruths or errors—and even managed to work in a gratuitous Monica Lewinsky reference that invoked Clinton’s reputation for factual slipperiness.

Journalists have also struggled to define an appropriate standard for factchecking in the case of Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP vice presidential nominee.

Read the whole thing for more.

Comments

[David in Cal]

Excellent point, Brendan. As you point out, the amount of fact-checking varies. It depends on how eager the media are to find errors by a particular. The media treatments of Sarah Palin and Barack Obama were dramatically different -- like black and white, one might say.

When Sarah Palin wrote her autobiography, she was neither an office-holder nor a candidate for office. The AP found a copy before its release date and assigned 11 people to fact check all 432 pages.

OTOH in 2008 Barack Obama was running for President with a background that was not well-known. Yet, nobody fact-checked his autobiography. As we now know, some characters were "composites" and some incidents were fictionalized.

One can argue that Obama did nothing wrong, because somewhere in the book he disclosed that he had used composites. However, that doesn't affect my point that nobody fact-checked the book.

[Janus Daniels]

"One can argue that Obama did nothing wrong, because somewhere in the book he disclosed that he had used composites." You mean, specifically stated in his preface. :-)

More to the point, I care little for fact checking autobiographies. I care about fact checking statements of national policy. Apparently, catty biographical gossip gets less blowback than correcting party platforms.