Hard truths: What is the future of political factchecking?
As the presidential campaign wound down, it became clear that the media’s factchecking effort, which played a more prominent role in the coverage than it had in any previous election, is at something of a crossroads. Thanks to the truth-squadding—by teams at PolitiFact and FactCheck.org, as well as individual reporters around the country—we learned, among other things, that Mitt Romney lied about President Obama’s changes to the welfare law; that President Obama was misleading about what Romney’s Medicare plan would cost seniors; and that Paul Ryan was hypocritical when he criticized Obama for not adopting the recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction committee. (CJR got its licks in, too, with our Swing States Project, which after the election will become the United States Project.)
And yet, tangible results of all this good work—in the form of contrition from the campaigns, public outrage, etc.—were less evident than one might hope. By last summer, the debate among the media about the efficacy of factchecking had arrived at this question: Are we in a “post-truth” era? At times during the campaign it seemed that the candidates could lie with impunity, because their supporters either don’t care, don’t know (they consume only partisan media), or they believe the factcheckers are themselves untrustworthy.
This question gave rise to a number of suggested responses by the press, including that reporters have boilerplate rebuttals on hand to drop into their stories as needed to counter the repeated lie. But perhaps the most useful suggestion was this: Everyone needs to be more realistic about what factchecking alone can accomplish. It can’t, for instance, make politicians do what they’ve concluded isn’t in their best interest. It can’t reduce