Also via Washington Monthly, this excellent news:
As you may know, we’re trying out some new things on THIS WEEK. Two weeks ago we started live-tweeting of the show (which will next happen at 10 am ET this Sunday).
This week we’ve invited Pulitzer Prize winning website PolitiFact to fact-check the newsmaker interviews featured on the program.
The idea was first proposed by NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen and I thought it worth a try. PolitiFact editor Bill Adair, the St Petersburg Times’ Washington bureau chief, and I know each other from fact-checking forums and such (I was at the Fact Check desk during the 2004 elections) so I asked him if he’d be willing to give it a try. He was.
Good for Tapper.
With that having been said, I think it is important to reflect on how screwed up things are that we now need to team independent fact checkers up with our news media. Our news media. The folks whose sole job is to inform us with… facts.
We live in a media environment in which a several decade assault on facts and the truth has taken us to the point that our news coverage is rarely if ever factual but is instead, fact-based. Colbert called it “truthiness.” Our media is so terrified of being called biased, that what we get now is not a clear presentation of facts, but of a he-said she-said mess, and where facts have a “liberal bias.”
So while I think this is great, we need to realize what is going to happen next, should this catch on- a full on assault on the independent fact checkers. Just like they went after the media, just like they went after the academy, just like they went after the sciences, and just like they have gone after anyone else who has dared to stand in the way of their lies, if the notion of independent fact-checking gains popularity, and the truth starts to seep back into our discourse, expect the Brent Bozell’s and the Newsbusters and the Hannity’s and the rest of the well oiled wurlitzer to try to tear down the independent fact-checkers and the folks like Jake Tapper who work with them. You can bet on it.
Bubblegum Tate
Wingnuts already refuse to accept anything from factcheck.org because of–you guessed it!–liberal bias.
jl
Will PolitiFact be staffing up for the Rudy gig? That will be truly massive, if his history is any guide.
A fact check festival of truly Biblical proportions. Old Testament Biblical, dude.
Mark S.
Why don’t they just borrow the guy on Pardon the Interruption?
Bret
And thus begins the end of conservative guests on This Week.
Madeline
What’s going on at ABC? First Amanpour, now fact checking? It’s almost like they’re trying to do actual news. Will be interesting to see if they still get any guests.
Bill E Pilgrim
Did this guy who said that Sarah Palin made a “mediocre rise” then say that she was “nothing short of a marble”?
I may have misheard the second one, busy laughing at the first.
I think my brain has started to assemble its own experimental Wingnut cutups from the things they say, the raw material is so surreal it’s the same whether you scramble it or not.
MikeJ
So last year.
http://spectator.org/archives/2009/05/28/polifacts-fixers
Kryptik
I still can’t wait until Christine Amanpour takes over.
Linda Featheringill
Well, it would be refreshing to have the facts available. From somewhere.
Do we know when this is supposed to start?
General Egali Tarian Stuck
The wingnuts have pre softened up that battlefield
And the case closer is the “Pulitzer Prize” winner for Politifact. Every one knows that award is run by Arthur Sulzberger in his America hate bunker beneath an undisclosed Starbucks location. And the only judge being George Soros and his commie ACORN Elves .
And on an unrelated note, Charlie is emitting forlorned moans and whines to take him for a walk. He has all my buttons figured out.
slag
Too…Many…Apostrophes.
But yes, you can bet on it. They’ve already been drip dripping on PolitiFact for quite some time now. It’s only going to get worse. I feel like we need an army to fight them. An army that won’t defect to the other side when we need them most.
Martin
It won’t have the necessary effect if it’s limited to their websites. Each weeks show should start off with a 60 second recap fact checking the previous weeks guests – do it while this weeks guests are in-studio.
Midnight Marauder
This is a nice step in the right direction and all, but it doesn’t really address the main problem with the Village/traditional media today, which is the fact that they continue to book an exorbitant amount of know-nothing demagogues on their shows in the first place. And while it certainly is helpful to have an increased presence fact-checking the hollow bloviations of know-nothing demagogues, the better solution would be to avoid giving them a platform on national television in the first place.
But small victories and all that jazz, right?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Is it just me, or does it seem like Jake Tapper been on good behavior ever since DougJ called him a sociopathic careerist and he came over here to mix it up in comments?
Bill E Pilgrim
@Bret: No kidding.
“Our consultants have reported that they failed in their attempts to fact check any of the Republican panelists we’ve ever had. After feeding their transcripts into their checking machine that thrives on facts, it promptly starved to death”
Sentient Puddle
I am fairly excited to see this take effect, but yes, might be useful to take it with a healthy dose of cynicism.
Gearing up for the state primary, my local paper, the Austin American-Statesman, did pretty much this, along with a weekly round-up of everything in the Sunday paper. All fine and handy, but it’s amazing how many letters to the editor I saw decrying this, saying that PolitiFact was all liberal biased and crap. Like it was their fault that Perry’s Sunday scores were always “False” and “Pants-on-Fire” ratings.
Pleh, I don’t know. I’ll just be happy for now that the media is finally starting to do their homework.
slag
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: I’m not prepared to give Tapper that much credit for honest and sincere introspection. But I’ve been wrong before.
A Mom Anon
Well,small steps,etc,etc.
But ya know,the hosts of these gabfests could maybe look at the crapspew their guests have engaged in during the week or two prior(or even further back)and call them on it to their faces on the teevee. I might even watch if it became a habit. I haven’t watched Sunday talk shows in well over a decade because it’s nothing but a freaking circle jerk. If I wanted to see or hear that crap I’d just watch Fox”news”or call my parents.
Redshirt
I wrote a sternly worded email to my morning “news” show this morning – in Boston, the usually good NECN morning show. At about 7:04 AM, in the 3rd or 4th story, they presented the clip of Newt at the Confederate conference talking about how Obama is the most radical President ever, yadda yadda. It was about a 45 second clip, and there was no analysis at all. No talk of the START treaty, but instead, what Newt thinks of Obama.
It’s a morning news show – why are they airing such clips? What exactly is news about Newt?
I have ZERO faith this fact checking effort is anything but spin. All the “news” orgs have made the switch to Entertainment; they’re not going back as long as theres ratings and profits to pursue.
kommrade reproductive vigor
This. I tried to imagine what my editor would say if I suggested we call in a bunch of fact checkers to review each issue after it was published.
It wasn’t pretty.
jl
@Madeline:
Maybe ABC is looking on the fate of CNN with horror, and maybe, just maybe, the corporate suits are slowly dimly figuring out there is room for only one FOX, and for no FOX wannabees?
flounder
They need to fact-check their panel as well. I bet if they did it George Will would stamp his feet then walk his way over to horn in on little Billy Kristol’s Sunday .gig
Paul L.
Maybe Politifact can explain their interesting standard for Truth/Half-Truth with Obama
It depends on what your definition of “truth” is
Even funnier using Politifact standards for other facts.
Violet
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
This.
The fact checking needs to be shown on the show itself. I know it can’t be done immediately and be shown on the same Sunday show. Not if it’s done effectively. But showing it the following week would be great. Do it right before the interviews start. Extra bonus points if the host uses phrases like, “That wasn’t true” or “that was a lie.” Call a spade a spade.
dSquib
Yay for outsourcing!
Yep, it’s rather pathetic, but at least ABC is trying. What with this, Tapper, Amanpour think I’m going to try to stick with ABC when it comes to TV news coverage.
Comrade Dread
@Violet: Even better, if the shows are live, do it on a delay, then add in a graphic Truth-o-Meter below each speaker, ranging from Completely Factual to Plausible to Complete Horses***
Play a loud buzzing sound with a giant red “Horses***” graphic over the speaker’s face anytime he blatantly lies.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Violet:
Martin at #12 made that observation you just quoted – credit where credit is due.
geg6
ThatLeftTurnInABQ @14: I have though that for a couple of weeks now and this kinda confirms it to me, even if he would deny it. I think he got a lot of food for thought that day and, to his credit, has decided to try to do better. He wouldn’t have come here if he didn’t respect Doug/John/the BJ commentariat and he found out that for us to reciprocate, he’d have to show evidence that he is the fair journalist he claimed to be. I have seen a few things he’s done since then and he had much less of that false equivalence shit in his reports. I specifically started watching a lot of ABC News stuff after that conversation here (I’d recently started monitoring network news after years of boycotting all of them except 60 Minutes) to see if we had been too harsh. And I though I could see a bit more thought put into his reports. I think these guys just never understand how they are pereceived by non-Villagers who aren’t teatard dimwits. I think ol’ Jake got a bit of a shock when we not only weren’t asking for his autograph, but tore him apart in mostly the nicest way–one which was more “we want you to be better” and not “you’re an asshole and we’ll never change our minds about that.”
Brien Jackson
Not to push contrarianism or anything, but I’m not sure this isn’t worse than the status quo. I imagine the vast majority of people who watch the show aren’t going to see the fact checking, but the fact-checkers will probably convince the journalists that they’re super-awesome, and the fact that they have fact-checkers running corrections makes the fact that the reporters don’t know anything about the subject less of a problem. Which is to say it will function exactly like newspaper corrections. That’s not nearly sufficient, and I’m really not sure it’s a net improvement.
dSquib
Oh, right. They’ll be putting it on their website. Meh. Pretty much pointless.
Violet
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Oh, oops! The new Reply button is tripping me up a bit. Sorry for the confusion. Looks like either I don’t have Editing or it’s too late. Apologies to Martin.
Toast
You’re probably right, John. On the other hand, maybe this is the sort of thing that lets us break through to the half-attentive masses. That’s always been the problem: People – the bulk of them at least – watch or listen to stuff passively and just take it all in, not bothering to follow up. If they do hear later on that a claim was disputed, they chalk it up to “political bickering” or whatnot. But what if we had a talking head show where, real time, when a winger douche said “this bill provides funding for 16,000 new IRS agents!” a note pops up in the crawl saying “NOT TRUE” and following up with the actual provision in the bill? That might not change the mind of your typical teabagger, but I think it would give a normal person pause.
Margarita
To be fair, they would need two fact-checkers, one from the right and one from the left. In fact, they could have a separate show in which the two fact-checkers debated both of the two sides. They could call it “FactCheck Flipside Face-2-Face: 2 Sides 2 Every Story” or something. But they’d definitely need two.
dSquib
@Brien Jackson: That’s a good point, I must say. Rather like the problem of toothless or bought out regulatory agencies, people act extra irrationally if they believe that somewhere, some wisened figure is overseeing it all and curbing the excesses, arguably creating a situation worse than no regulation at all.
dSquib
@Paul L.: What’s to explain? Rove implied Obama worked “for” ACORN as if on retainer or something, whereas he had simply represented them as counsel in a lawsuit.
jl
@Brien Jackson:
That is a good point. How will the GOP program of working the refs go with PolitiFact? Or corrupt them into being wishy washy balancers?
Will it just make the journalists even lazier and less informed?
I have some sympathy for TV newsy hosts having to push back against BS in real time, on four or five topics which the shows usually chew through.
But not much sympathy. They have staffs of producers, interns and researchers, who can research the hot topics of the week and monitor the partisan BS machine up to the day of the show. And of course, the corporate ads assure us that these ‘news actors’ are The Awesome.
So, why don’t they catch things that I do, who does not nearly have the time to keep up (since I am lucky ducky peon with a day job), and come to think of it, is not my stinking job.
demo woman
Unless other networks follow suit, ABC will no longer have key Republicans represented. They count on their lies to win elections.
slag
@Redshirt:
Similarly, this headline made me laugh out loud: Republicans predict November gains, blast Obama. That’s some seriously newsy news there. Maybe next week we’ll read: Pope doesn’t enjoy being accused of protecting child molesters, wears funny hats.
Montesquieu Python
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Could somebody please point me in the direction of the thread where Tapper showed up? I must have missed that one.
4jkb4ia
Actual serious OT: Dawn Johnsen withdraws.
Mike Furlan
The “fact checking” will continue until the Republicans have taken back the White House and Congress, and then will be discontinued.
Violet
@Montesquieu Python:
Here’s the original thread:
https://balloon-juice.com/2010/03/25/careerist-sociopaths/
And here’s the follow up:
https://balloon-juice.com/2010/03/26/jake-tapper-audio/
EriktheRed
Without these fact-checks going out over the airwaves – preferably on the same shows – I don’t have much faith in this venture having much of an impact. If George S., David G., et. al. aren’t going to challenge liars right there when they tell their lies, a lot of people won’t get the corrections.
Brien Jackson
@jl:
Oh I’ve definitely got sympathy for them. No one is an expert on everything (although maybe that’s a case for having multiple hosts or something) and some of the bullshit is so fine, deep-down-the-wingnut-rabbit-hole stuff that I can’t blame them for missing it. But some of it is very top level stuff that’s been repeated and debunked numerous times, or which people like Chait and Ezra have dutifully explained in painstaking detail, and yet the Gregory’s and Schieffer’s of the world never seem to be up to speed on it.
Midnight Marauder
@4jkb4ia:
DAWN JOHNSEN IS WORSE THAN BUSH SHE SOLD US OUT!!
Martin
Bottom line, if this is done properly, it’ll be as effective as Colbert’s “Better Know a District”. His Lynn Westmoreland interview practically killed the segment, particularly with Republicans. (Westmoreland was the one who couldn’t name the 10 commandments.)
D-Chance.
Is it time for Reason to join Politico in the “monitor and mock” column of links?
How can you do anything else with a column that proudly proclaims “Let’s consider, say, the year 1880.”, followed by “As a libertarian, as far as I’m concerned, that’s a society that is pretty darned golden.”
Yes, 1880.
Most Republicans seem to yearn for the good old days of the 1850s; the Libertarians are scarcely one generation removed. It’s 2010, and the so-called “alternative” to conservatism is only 130 years behind the times instead of 160 years. Hardly an improvement…
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Damn, I missed both of those threads.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Midnight Marauder:
She was a handsome pony, now off to the glue factory. Dabs eyes.
Martin
@Brien Jackson:
No, I don’t really have that much sympathy. Look – there are a handful of these shows. Hosts are rarer than Senators. Prior to the show, they know who they are bringing on and it’s the host that drives the topics, not the guest. If the host can’t do their homework on the topics that they introduce, particularly boning up on the positions taken by the guests they are inviting on, then what the fuck are they doing hosting a national show? When you bring McCain on to talk about foreign policy, that’s a script any of us here can write and therefore it’s a script any of us could factcheck before the show even airs.
Now, Krugman on economics, yeah, that’s hard – but pretty much any politician on the left or right isn’t that deep on anything other than their pet issue. They just don’t have time to be, so they stick close to well worn party positions, facts, anecdotes, studies, and so on. For anyone who isn’t brandishing a PhD in that particular area, I don’t see why the hosts can’t be every bit as prepared as the guests.
gVOR08
The guys at the Discovery Institute got criticized for never submitting their Creationist papers to peer reviewed journals, so they started their own “peer reviewed” journal.
If independent fact checking catches on, Heritage and AEI will go into the “fact checking” business.
Garrigus Carraig
“Unfortunately, my nomination has met with lengthy delays and political opposition that threaten that objective and prevent OLC from functioning at full strength. I hope that the withdrawal of my nomination will allow this important office to be filled promptly.” — Dawn Johnsen.
This sucks. There’s gotta be more to the story, right? Like she’s ill or something? ‘Cause this fuçkin’ sucks. GC+0
Tazistan Jen
There is no reason this can’t happen on the air in near-real time. THose of us who watch baseball know that if a rookie right-fielder hits for the cycle, within five minutes we will have the stats on right- and left-fielder rookies who have hit for the cycle in the American and National leagues.
This isn’t because the announcers have photographic memories. It because they have a staff who look things up on the computer when they become relevant. If pro baseball can check things and fill us in in real time, there is no reason the Sunday shows can’t do it.
Marc
Its because the word “news” doesn’t mean news anymore, it means opinion-tainment. And the hosts aren’t journalists anymore, they’re just moderators for the arguments between spin doctors.
Montesquieu Python
@Violet: Hat-tip to Violet! I was wondering why Tapper seemed so abnormally professional lately.
Joe Buck
I hope the Politifact people will be fact-checking George Will and the other regulars as well as the guests; Will spouts so many provably false statements that it’s difficult to count.
cokane
i wonder if, when they come after tapper, he will realize that people like fox news are not “sister” organizations in the news media, but instead are the very opposite of news–disinformation dispensers.
Michael D.
Tapper:
Best comment in response to this:
Paul L.
@dSquib:
Rove said
So you apply the half-truth to this statement that I saw on the nutroots blogs?
“Dick Cheney shot his friend in the face.”
kay
@Paul L.:
John Roberts defended many, many large corporations when he was in private practice.
Was he a lawyer for all those companies? He seems to show a real preference for “the corporate form”, over the, um, individual human form. Is that because he defended those corporations?
It’s the sleaziest tactic in the world, equating the lawyer with the client, but it plays with the dupes, who don’t know any better. Figures Karl Rove and Liz Cheney have seized on it.