CV NEWS FEED // Fact-checking, which was once an aspect of good journalism, has become more and more abused in recent years, according to a recent essay from the New Atlantis.
M. Anthony Mills argued in his essay that fact-checking used to be “for internal quality control, a tool for journalists to police themselves,” but now is “a tool for policing public discourse.”
“This shift from informing the public to policing it has not only invited the inevitable accusation of bias — that the ‘refs’ are making bad calls; it has also hampered journalism’s ability to fulfill its role as an indispensable resource for democratic debate,” Mills wrote.
Mills added that journalism changed significantly in the 20th century, especially in the 1960s and 1970s.
“While preserving the traditional emphases of objectivity, fairness, balance, and fact-gathering, leading journalistic institutions came to see themselves not so much as stenographic recorders of fact but as bulwarks against corruption,” he wrote, pointing to the Pentagon Papers and Watergate scandal as later examples of fact-checking journalism to hold politicians accountable.
Mills also pointed to the 2012 presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, in which moderator Candy Crowley “fact-checked” one of Obama’s previous statements. Crowley said that Obama had “in fact” called an attack in Libya that killed American diplomats an “act of terror,” when in reality he did not make that statement directly. He had stated that “no acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation.”
“Obama had strongly suggested that the Benghazi attack was an ‘act of terror’ while at the same time not saying so directly,” Mills wrote, later adding:
More importantly, Crowley’s interruption did go beyond the traditional norm of impartiality, regardless of whether she got the facts right. By taking sides in a dispute over Obama’s semantics, and by extension their foreign policy stakes, she was not simply reporting the facts as she saw them, but actively intervening in a political argument. She was acting less like a reporter and more like a referee.
Mills argued that fact-checking as it is known today is now concerned with public discourse and undermines public trust. As fact-checking today also deals with the statements or disinformation from anyone online, it distracts from more important fact-checking of influential politicians or figures whose statements have more impact.
“If journalists really want to regain the public’s trust, they should stop refereeing and get back to journalism,” Mills concluded.
Mills’ full essay is available here.