T. BECKET ADAMS: Death to the ‘fact check’ — Kill it with fire.
If we’re eliminating whole categories of journalism — which certainly seems to be the case for sports reporting — can we also do away with the “fact check” genre?
It has always been a silly gimmick, the idea that there should be a separate vertical dedicated solely to fact-checking (checking the facts is already the main goal of journalism). But even as ill-conceived as the concept is, nothing could have prepared us for how farcical the genre would eventually become.
Take, for instance, the fact-checks following President Trump’s State of the Union address last week. Naturally, the speech was full of inconsistencies and outright falsehoods. Every such address is. What’s funny, from a media perspective, is the suffocating pettiness of the media fact-checkers and their weird fetish for playing the pedant.
“The revolution that began in 1776 has not ended,” Trump said. “It still continues because the flame of liberty and independence still burns in the heart of every American patriot, and our future will be bigger, better, brighter, bolder, and more glorious than ever before.”
Associated Press fact-checkers were on it.
“To be clear,” the AP fact-check reads, “the American Revolution started the previous year, on April 19, 1775. The colonies declared independence in 1776. It ended Sept. 3, 1783.”
It’s as if we in the press are trying to make the public hate us.
Fact check: Hate the media even more than they do now
