The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Your Checks Are No Good Here
From the Washington Examiner:
In your meta moment of the day, Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post’s Fact Checker, announced today that he will not grade comments made by political candidates about stories reported in the Washington Post, largely because he refuses to fact check stories published in his newspaper.
Kessler has announced he is not going to issue any Pinocchios based on claims that President Obama’s campaign has made based on a disputed Washington Post story–although he says the Obama campaign misquotes the WaPo story.
Why? Because “The Fact Checker does not check the facts in the reporting of Washington Post writers or columnists.” He does this in a column that defends the Post’s reporting.
We can understand the collegial impulse to shy away from conflict with reporters who work for one’s own newspaper. But Kessler’s announcement does make one scratch one’s head at the Post’s whole idea of a “fact checker.”
The “fact check” as a journalistic genre is a fad of the past few years, but journalism has long employed fact checkers. The New Yorker and Reader’s Digest are especially known for their rigorous processes, in which the checkers go through every article, essentially re-reporting it to make sure every factual assertion is accurate.
In other words, the purpose of a traditional fact checker is to safeguard his own institution’s integrity. The purpose of a newfangled “fact checker” is to impugn the integrity of others.
NOTE: This post is from the 7/3/12 BOTW archives.
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”
