8 Cutting Through the Glut

Knowledge Small Enough to Know

Fact-Checking the Fact-Checkers

Perhaps the most memorable line of the 2012 Presidential election in the United States was uttered by a pollster for Mitt Romney’s campaign, summing up the attitude of the consummate insider in a post-referential era: “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.”1 A telling argumentative abyss opened up around the comment as various commentators and pundits attempted to fact-check the role of fact-checking in journalism, political and otherwise. A columnist for the right-wing editorial page of Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal described the newfound affection for fact-checking as further evidence that “The political season brings ...

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