{"id":1777,"date":"2016-10-04T06:53:48","date_gmt":"2016-10-04T12:53:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sebersole.wordpress.com\/?p=1777"},"modified":"2016-10-04T06:53:48","modified_gmt":"2016-10-04T12:53:48","slug":"fact-checking-the-fact-checkers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/fact-checking-the-fact-checkers\/","title":{"rendered":"Fact Checking the Fact Checkers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"truthmeter\"Mass media are essential to the process of democracy. “Government of the people, by the people, for the people” only works if the people know what’s going on…and the media provide\u00a0the primary channels\u00a0for that information. Of course the implication is that the mass media do their jobs in a responsible way, avoiding partisan bias and manipulation by outside interests. The brunt of this responsibility falls on journalists. Whether they work for newspapers, TV networks, or internet websites, reporters who cover the political beat are the eyes and ears of the American electorate. Ideally they report what they see and hear without speculation or conjecture.<\/p>\n

In a political season such as this, journalists must be\u00a0particularly careful when covering candidates who use\u00a0every trick in the book to manipulate\u00a0the media\u00a0and advance their message. When candidates stretch the truth (often to the breaking point) journalists in a live reporting situation must make an effort to call out the error.<\/p>\n

But fact checking candidates and their surrogates can be\u00a0tricky business. While partisans may think that every statement by their political opponents is a flat-out lie, it is seldom that clear-cut. Journalists must have enough command of the facts to catch the easy calls, and the aid of researchers, aka fact-checkers, to parse the more difficult cases. This is not easy. NBC’s Matt Lauer was heavily criticized for pushing back too hard when interviewing Hillary Clinton for the Commander-In-Chief Forum, and NBC’s Lester Holt was criticized for fact-checking Donald Trump but not Hillary Clinton in the first presidential debate last week.<\/p>\n

Fortunately journalists, and the public, have additional resources at their disposal. Independent fact-checking organizations have stepped up to provide non-partisan, independent fact-checking of politicians and other news-makers.\u00a0Politifact’s Truth-O-Meter<\/a> is one example. Here’s a short (light-hearted) video that explains how it works.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/youtu.be\/7r_8szmCVis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mass media are essential to the process of democracy. “Government of the people, by the people, for the people” only works if the people know what’s going on…and the media provide\u00a0the primary channels\u00a0for that information. Of course the implication is that the mass media do their jobs in a responsible way, avoiding partisan bias and … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Fact Checking the Fact Checkers”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,11,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics","category-journalism","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1777\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}