By Thomas Lang
The first installment of Campaign Desk’s six-part report card on Campaign 2004 took a look back at the evolution of fact-check pieces done by the media. In the early days of the Democratic primary such pieces were sparse but, as we noted, when the presidential campaign grew more heated and attack-oriented in the final months, both the print and television press outlets lurched awake, and started fact-check features, regularly measuring candidates’ claims and charges against the yardstick of known truths.
Now that the election is a thing of the past, the semi-regular fact checks have faded from the spotlight as fast as the vanquished Democrats. The last New York Times “Fact Check” ran in the closing days of the election. The Washington Post‘s “For the Record” has popped up only once or twice since the election. And the supposed “truth squad” segments have, with very few exceptions, disappeared from the network and cable newscasts.
And that’s disturbing. Why dump a form of journalism that tries to ascertain veracity and hold public officials accountable for their rhetoric?
Part of all that is due to a decrease in the volume of outrageous political rhetoric. And part of it is that reporters and editors evidently don’t see a pressing need to fact check a party of one, as opposed to two political opponents flinging generalizations and simplifications around like mud pies. In that vein, the New York Times‘ David Rosenbaum who authored the paper’s fact checks during the campaign told CJR Daily that his editors simply haven’t asked him to keep up the fact check feature because an “occasion hasn’t arisen.”
To be fair, since November 2 almost no one has bellowed about the number of jobs lost under the Bush administration or decried Sen. Kerry for his support of a 50-cent gas tax. Nor has the heated level of debate that crested in the final weeks of the presidential campaign infected Congress. But there certainly has been debate. And within every debate there lies the potential for distortion.
Rosenbaum’s experience is not unusual. Mike Abramowitz, the national editor of the Washington Post said, “In general, we have been anxious to do these for-the-record pieces,” but he added bluntly, “To be honest it’s sort of embarrassing, but we haven’t had a lot of discussions about what we are going to do in the future.” Abramowitz’s colleague and the Post‘s national political editor, Maralee Schwartz, characterized discussions about plans for the future as “very informal,” but she too said the paper has no intention of abandoning fact-checking. And at ABC News, a source speaking on background said that there has been no open discussion on fact-checking since the election.
CNN is one of the few places where the fact check genre has endured. Twice since Election Day, “Anderson Cooper 360” has hyped specific segments on its programs as fact checks. On December 3, Cooper investigated reports of voter irregularities and earlier this week on December 6, he discussed competing claims concerning the vulnerability of America’s food supply.
Both reports, however, demonstrated the challenge news organizations face in adapting the fact check genre to a campaign-less political environment.
On December 6 Cooper began the segment with this introduction:
Outgoing Health Secretary Tommy Thompson said today he is, quote, “still not comfortable,” unquote, with the safety of America’s food supply. And when Secretary Thompson resigned last week, he threw a big scare into plenty of people, saying he laid awake nights worrying that terrorists would attack America’s food supply.
Today’s comments didn’t really reassure anyone. Question is, how vulnerable is our food?
To answer that question Cooper turned to CNN correspondent Gary Tuchman out in the field at a grocery store. Tuchman then read Thompson’s comments about his fears to a grocery store patron who responded that the comments were “pretty scary.” Tuchman followed up, “Should she be scared? It depends on who you talk to.”
And the report continued, packed full of “he-said, she-said” comments from various experts and reporters, including Thompson himself, all of whom agreed the threat exists but disagreed on the severity of that threat.
In the end, the fact check wasn’t a fact check at all, offering an ambiguous answer to an ambiguous question. And while at times ambiguity is the truth, viewers have come to expect a definitive truth at the end of fact checks. The authoritative answer in the voice of the news organization is, without doubt, the most attractive and valuable aspect of a fact-check piece. And, if CNN had not promoted the segment as a fact check, it’s unlikely that anyone would have described it that way. This, then, was more a beginning of an investigative report that will, as Cooper stated at the start, take the “next couple of days and weeks” to complete — one that may or may not bear fruit.
Still, it’s encouraging that CNN is aware of its responsibilities to monitor the assertions of our nation’s politicians.
If the media is indeed “anxious” to continue fact checking as a regular feature, what types of stories should be subject to such scrutiny?
Jake Tapper, who reported ABC’s fact-check segments during the campaign, thinks nothing should be off limits. He told CJR Daily, “There was a study that I did a story on and anybody could have done a through fact checking of the study and come up with examples of ways in which the study fell short….There is almost no document published in this city — in Washington D.C. — that is not worthy of a through fact check. So there is always room for more.”
More specifically the Times’ Rosenbaum said he “wouldn’t be at all surprised if [his editors] asked me to [write a fact check] off the State of the Union or the budget.”
Schwartz said she’d consider debates in the Congress, specifically mentioning Social Security. Tapper feels those debates are fought on a different plane than the campaign debates. “I think there are probably more blatant distortions during a political campaign than there is during day-to- day political debate in Washington D.C.” Ultimately, Tapper is not sure that debates in Congress “lend themselves to [fact checking] as easily as a campaign,” simply because much of the opposing rhetoric can be boiled down to genuine policy disagreements.
Meantime, since the election, fact checking within the body of news stories has occurred, with fluctuating frequency. Take Eric Schmitt’s December 7 report for the New York Times in which he takes Donald Rumsfeld to task for comments he made while traveling in the Middle East.
He contended that the decision on troop levels was largely “out of my control,” since he was following the advice and requests of his regional commanders, first Gen. Tommy R. Franks and now Gen. John P. Abizaid and Gen. George W. Casey Jr.
While that may be technically true, Mr. Rumsfeld approves all decisions on troop levels in Iraq, and his commanders and top civilian aides have indicated that he routinely demands detailed explanations for troop increases and movements.
Schmitt’s work deserves applause, but couldn’t there be daily Iraq fact checks?
How many Iraqi security force members are actually fighting alongside American troops?
How many Iraqi civilians have been killed?
Is the casualty count for both Americans and opposition forces even close to accurate? (In the end, public disillusionment with the Vietnam War grew and hardened thanks to day-after-day, week-after-week, month-after-month and year-after-year of ludicrously inflated body-count reports from the battlefields.)
That’s just a small sample, thought up on the spur of the moment. An experienced reporter on the scene could, no doubt, scribble down half a dozen others in a moment.
Why they don’t is a question that the profession, or the trade, if you will, has not answered, or, in most cases, even asked.
Meanwhile, reporters we talked to concede that as the campaign wore on they themselves developed an affinity for the fact-check format. “It seems to work pretty well,” said Rosenbaum. “It’s nice to be able to write these things and not to have to quote people on each little point…These were all questions of fact and I would go out and find what the facts were and write it [up]. And not have to attribute it, because it was facts.”
More important, reporters and editors at every outlet that we checked with affirm that, during the election campaign, the readers ate up the fact checks, sending in email after email thanking reporters for their candor and commitment to the truth.
If reporters like it, and readers like it, what then is standing in the way?
Beyond institutional inertia?
Thomas Lang was a writer at CJR Daily.