The New Republic publishes this column on the derth of fact-checking in Journalism — perhaps in light of the controversy over PolitiFact’s “lie of the year.” The author makes an appealing triangulation between decreasing budgets, shrinking staff, and avoidance of “bias,” while connecting it to the rise of organizations like PolitiFact.
The appeal [of PolitiFact] is clear: it seeks to protect the reporters from charges of bias while giving the work of political judgment and analysis a scientific aura. And, let’s be honest, it also makes the job easier for reporters who can’t be bothered to learn enough about the facts of the matter at hand to judge the issue themselves.
Cuts in newsrooms and a desire not to appear biased have led to an outsourcing of fact-checking to PolitiFact. We need more news orgs doing this work, not fewer (and not just blogs).