NAPCO Editorial Comment: Escalating polarization and confused versions of reality in today’s world underscores the need for an independent, fair, impartial judiciary. Although courts are slow and methodical in their truth-finding work as ultimate arbiters of truth in a stable, secure, durable democracy, an independent, socially responsible, free press can often serve as a more immediate “fact checker”. The following news opinion article published in a recent National Public Radio enewsletter outlines the challenge of doing so in today’s highly political American environment.
Fact-checking has been around for more than a generation, giving newspapers and magazines a chance to offer something different and escape the “he said, she said” pattern. In the later decades of the 20th century, most newspapers and big broadcasters were steeped in the values of “middle of the road” reporting as media owners sought ever-larger and more diverse audiences.
Stories were considered balanced when different sides were presented with equal weight and respect. Deciding which side was right or more accurate or more worthy was left to the news consumer or voter.
That was never entirely satisfactory, either to the consumer-voter or to the journalists themselves. More and more news outlets turned to “fact-checks” or “fact-checking,” an efort to find and follow the facts on crime, unemployment, trade, health care, immigration and any other issues that drove the debate.
For some journalists this became a full-time assignment. The Washington Post has used veteran reporter Glenn Kessler as its oficial guru of fact for many years. The Poynter Institute in Florida, related to the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times) pioneered PolitiFact several election cycles ago.
NPR and PBS have been fact-checking debates and other key moments in national campaigns for decades, online and on air. This past week at the Trump-Harris Debate the fact-checking operation in both shops had its hands full.
So when ABC moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis made a few factual corrections during the debate about a particular claim or statement, they were carrying on a custom that has been increasingly common in broadcast journalism.
As they did not see a need to correct as much in what Harris said, their efforts struck many Trump supporters as unnecessary, unfair and evidence of Democratic bias. Trump himself said the debate had been “3 against 1.”
The anchors’ defense was that Harris said nothing to compare with Trump’s assertions about states allowing abortion after birth or Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets in Ohio.
That’s a judgment call, of course, and just the kind that mainstream journalists were once trained to avoid. That they now feel compelled to make those calls has a lot to do with how Trump himself has changed the rules. But it should not be surprising that changes the media have made prompt protest from those who feel abused — particularly Trump himself.
This entails also the sea change over the use of the three-letter word we were trained as journalists to avoid: lie. We might say a politician was misstating facts or making inaccurate claims. But we could never make the leap of imputing motive. Maybe the poll was just mistaken and sincerely believed his opponent was guilty of this or that accusation. We could say he was wrong, but calling someone a liar was a big deal.
Trump has led to a change in that policy in much of the industry. Even in 2016, some TV anchors were using the word, at least on late-night TV. It has since become quite common for mainstream news organizations to refer to lies and lying.
With his latest portrayal of what happened in the Harris debate in front of 67 million TV viewers last week, Trump once again has thrown down the gauntlet to challenge the fact-checkers and the commentators alike.
Now, even the practice of fact-checking has become controversial, with Trump supporters questioning what constitutes a fact. We have reached a point where the idea of fact-checking is regarded as polarizing.
And the more we talk about how polarized things have become, the more polarized they get.
Ron Elving
Senior Editor and Correspondent, Washington Desk
Ron Elving is Senior Editor and Correspondent on the Washington Desk for NPR News, where he is frequently heard as a news analyst and writes regularly for NPR.org.
He is also a professorial lecturer and Executive in Residence in the School of Public Afairs at American University, where he has also taught in the School of Communication. In 2016, he was honored with the University Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching in an Adjunct Appointment. He has also taught at George Mason and Georgetown.
He was previously the political editor for USA Today and for Congressional Quarterly. He has been published by the Brookings Institution and the American Political Science Association. He has contributed chapters on Obama and the media and on the media role in Congress to the academic studies Obama in Ofice 2011, and Rivals for Power, 2013. Ron’s earlier book, Conflict and Compromise: How Congress Makes the Law, was published by Simon & Schuster and is also a Touchstone paperback.
During his tenure as manager of NPR’s Washington desk from 1999 to 2014, the desk’s reporters were awarded every major recognition available in radio journalism, including the Dirksen Award for Congressional Reporting and the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In 2008, the American Political Science Association awarded NPR the Carey McWilliams Award “in recognition of a major contribution to the understanding of political science.”
Ron came to Washington in 1984 as a Congressional Fellow with the American Political Science Association and worked for two years as a staf member in the House and Senate. Previously, he had been state capital bureau chief for The Milwaukee Journal.
He received his bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and master’s degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of California – Berkeley.