The Truth About Fact Checking
Even in Polarized Times, Fact Checking Can Sway Opinion and Eliminate Misinformation

5 takeaways:

Even in times of sharp partisanship and media distrust, fact checking works. Politicians lie or misspeak, reporters point to the real facts – and 24 hours later the entire cycle is repeated. Many reporters wonder if the elaborate fact-checking apparatus that has been built in the past two decades works. Ethan Porter and Thomas Wood, co-authors of “False Alarm: The Truth About Political Mistruths in the Trump Era,” say it does. Their controlled experiments, which showed real-world fact checks to news consumers, convinced a significantly significant percentage to modify their views. “Fact checks worked – they reduced false beliefs,” Porter said.

Even though fact checks work, that doesn’t mean they eliminate false beliefs. Plenty of people still believe the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, even though that contention has been fact checked relentlessly  by journalists, Republican politicians and the courts. But Porter and Wood say the situation would be worse without the fact-checking process. With “no fact checking, far more people would believe that than do now,” Porter said. “We need to get more people reading fact checks.” And Wood said that conspiratorial beliefs do ease over time: “Fewer Americans believe Barack Obama was born in Kenya, way fewer Americans believe that 9/11 was an inside job, way fewer Americans believe that Israel tricked United States into entering the Iraq War.”

When presenting fact checks, simple is as good as elaborate. Porter and Wood found that the format of a fact check generally didn’t affect whether it worked. There are ongoing debates about whether a fact check should quote the offending material directly, or whether quotation amplifies erroneous beliefs. There are also debates about how long fact checks should be, and about whether the finding should be high or low in the piece. All methods generally worked, although Porter and Wood have found that longer explanations were better. People wanted to see all the evidence, not just a summary and conclusion.

The fact checking ethos has permeated everyday reporting. Fact-checking organizations as PolitiFact and The Washington Post Fact Checker have flourished in the past 15 years and had a heyday during the Trump administration. Today journalists are far more willing to say declare something false. Said Angie Drobnic Holan, editor-in-chief of PolitiFact: “I can’t tell you what a sea change that is since in my career. … I think it’s really journalistic malpractice to repeat things that we know to be false without correcting them in our stories.”

Fact checking is really just good reporting. Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post fact checker whose chronicling of Trump’s false statements was widely praised and followed, said that too often reporters will report something just because somebody said it or it was cited in a report. “Some reporters are just kind of lazy about checking facts,” he said. Journalists should do that “basic due diligence” before publishing, not after, Kessler said.

Glenn Kessler
Editor and Chief Writer, The Washington Post Fact Checker
Angie Drobnic Holan
Editor-in-Chief, PolitiFact
Ethan Porter
Assistant Professor, George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs
Thomas J. Wood
Assistant Professor of Political Science, Ohio State University
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RESOURCES FOR FACT CHECKING
The Truth About Fact Checking: Porter and Wood
The Truth About Fact Checking: Kessler and Holan
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