Truth-testing in the post-truth era.

AuthorLueders, Bill
PositionDeciding What's True: The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in American Journalism - Book review

The poll results were alarming, but not unbelievable. They showed, among other things, that 50 percent of Donald Trump's supporters blamed Barack Obama for not stopping 9/11 and more than 70 percent believed black men were "inherently dangerous." The poll, reportedly conducted among 500 people in July by Occidental Public Polling, was cited in an opinion piece submitted to The Progressive.

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As the editor of the piece, it fell to me to check it out. I quickly found a bylined article that reported these findings, on a website called Business Standard News. But I couldn't find a site for Occidental Public Polling, which only Business Standard News seemed interested in citing. In fact, it was the only news outlet that had picked up on this poll.

A click on the site's "About" button delivered the punchline: "The Business Standard News is a satirical site designed to parody the 24-hour news cycle. The stories are outlandish, but reality is so strange nowadays they could be true."

The site got that right. A credible, verifiable poll taken in December and reported on by The Washington Post found that 52 percent of Republicans believed Trump won the popular vote (he lost by nearly three million votes). Another credible recent poll found that 67 percent of Trump backers said unemployment grew under Obama (it fell from 7.8 percent to 4.6 percent). During the campaign, there was even a legitimate poll that found a third of Trump backers believed Hillary Clinton "has ties to Lucifer."

We live in what has been called the "post-truth era," where even the most outrageous falsehoods find a receptive audience, thanks in no small part to the ascendency of a shameless and pathological liar to the office of President. But it's important, perhaps more than ever, to remember that truth is not an abstract and unknowable concept. There is such a thing as objective reality. Separating fact from fiction can be done. It's one of the core functions of journalism.

In recent years, this has given way to what some observers have called "a new kind of journalism," commonly known as fact-checking. Of course, there is nothing new about checking information to make sure it is correct. Journalists have done it for decades with their own work. Neither is it new for journalists to truth-test the pronouncements of politicians.

But never before has there been so much concerted effort brought to this endeavor. Today, we have established nonpartisan groups including FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, and the Washington Post's Fact Checker; ideologically affiliated groups including Media...

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