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It's that time of year, when presidential candidates' thoughts turn to misstatements of fact. But with more and more news outlets taking the pols to task for their public speeches and ads, might accuracy be gaining the upper hand? Brooks Jackson, director of factcheck.org, explains his quest to make the political landscape a more truthful place.
It will take an enormous effort at fact checking before the American public will have much faith in the news media as an arbiter of truth. The record of the last ten years seems little better than that of the quarter century before it.
How the conventional wisdom of the press diverges so dramatically from the public's perception of reality while allowing blatant lies stand and substitute for public record is a wonder.
Perhaps the media believes our memories only last about as long as their institutional memories; twenty minutes from what I can tell.
As a character in a program said Sunday night, "Do you have any children? Never lie to them!" They know and they act upon that knowledge.
The interviewee stated that fact-checking publishing was a popular feature of newspapers and other outlets, and indeed, I personally agree. However, I have not seen any television ads for politicians in years, and I'm not likely too in the coming year, based on my viewing habits, and I don't think I'm atypical of those who read sites like factcheck and the NYT. What is the correlation between people exposed to TV ads, and those who will read about how fictional they are? Just as the rich get richer, the educated get more so, and the rest make the majority of voters.
This is a ridiculously snobby comment on my part, but so be it.
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