Columbia Journalism Review:When factcheckers get trigger-happy
A checklist to help journalists decide when to take aim

Is there such a thing as too much factchecking? factcheck.org described former President Bill Clinton’s speech to the Democratic convention Wednesday evening as a “fact-checker’s nightmare” in part because, “with few exceptions… his stats checked out.” Rather than concede that it had little material to work with, however, The Associated Press manufactured a “fact check” of Clinton that focused far too heavily on omitted context and possible counter-arguments to his opinions rather than untruths or errors—and even managed to work in a gratuitous Monica Lewinsky reference that invoked Clinton’s reputation for factual slipperiness.
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The debate over Ryan’s recreational habits became even more inane yesterday when The Atlantic’s James Fallows published reader speculation that Ryan was lying back in April 2009 about his record of climbing mountains with 14,000-foot elevations in Colorado—a claim that was both trivial and apparently wrong.
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As factchecking moves closer to the journalistic mainstream, it’s important that journalists are careful in what they label as “factchecks” and what statements they choose to scrutinize. Otherwise, the media could dilute and devalue a practice that should be an important part of campaign coverage.