‘Lying Used to Have Greater Consequences’: A Fact Checker’s Dispatch From the War on Truth

The Biden administration stole $1 billion from FEMA. The flow of fentanyl into the United States has been cut by half. Vice President Kamala Harris’ 60 Minutes interview may be a “major Campaign Finance Violation.”

These are just three of the more prominent ways the two major presidential campaigns (Trump, Harris, Trump again) have bent the truth this year according to PolitiFact, the prominent nonpartisan fact-checking website begun by journalist Bill Adair in 2007. The site rates the degree of mendacity on a sliding scale, somewhere between “pants on fire” and “true” — both Trump statements fall in the “pants on fire” category, while Harris’ is simply “false.”But does anyone even care anymore?

In an interview with POLITICO Magazine, Adair made the case that yes, fact-checking does still matter and can make a difference, even in an age of disinformation and polarization.

And while he’s under no illusions that Trump will ever change his behavior based on being fact-checked, others are not so shameless.

“Do I think that there are many politicians in the United States of both parties who, if journalists are holding them accountable, it will make them less likely to lie? Yes.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What is the value of fact-checking as a project?

Even at a time when people are so polarized and when they’re often getting their political news from partisan sources, fact-checking is still really important, because it establishes a baseline of facts that enable us to have honest discourse about policy. Fact-checking provides the ground truth that we need so that we can have an adult conversation about politics.

There’s more fact-checking now, but there also seems to be more lying in our politics. Can you talk about how those two things have proliferated at the same time?

So, the first big wave of fact-checking came in the early 1990s and was in response to the campaign of 1988. Then the second wave was started by factcheck.org in 2003 and PolitiFact and The Washington Post fact-checker in 2007. Suddenly, fact-checking became a much more common term. You’d hear someone say, “I want a fact-check on that.” But the rise of partisan media around 2010 created these echo chambers that tended to work against fact-checking and neutralize the effect of fact-checking. That put us where we are today, which is, I think we need to reimagine how we distribute fact-checks. We need to get more conservative fact-checking outlets and we need to think about fact-checks more as data that can be used to combat misinformation.

We also really need to have political fact-checkers in every state who are focused on fact-checking congressional delegations and state legislators and governors. That has a really positive effect, because it’s like a state trooper on the highway with a radar gun. If politicians know that they’re going to be held accountable for what they say, they’re much less likely to lie.

Just extending the radar gun analogy for a second, it seems like a lot of politicians see what’s on the radar gun and just keep speeding. Take former President Donald Trump, for example.

So, Trump has been and continues to be a complete outlier for fact-checking. No one has more of a history of documented lies as Trump. And he just continues to make things up every day. So I don’t think we should look to Trump as someone whose behavior is going to change because of fact-checking. So the issue is not, could we change Trump’s behavior? Because I don’t think fact-checkers ever will. But do I think that there are many politicians in the United States of both parties who, if journalists are holding them accountable, it will make them less likely to lie? Yes.

So then why are conservatives convinced that disinformation reporters and fact-checking projects are so partisan?

Because it fits with the narrative that the media is too liberal that conservatives have been pushing for decades, and so it’s easy to say you shouldn’t trust the liberal fact-checkers either. If you look at what’s being said across conservative media, fact-checking is routinely criticized, smeared, made fun of. So, if you’re a conservative media consumer, you’re hearing this constant drum beat.

What are the limits of fact-checking?

Well, I think fact-checking is information for people to make decisions. It is a distinct form of journalism because a reporter does their reporting as thoroughly as they can, getting all sides of a claim, and then renders a conclusion on whether it’s accurate or not. The limits of it are, ultimately, it’s journalism. Now, it can be used in helpful ways, like Facebook has shown with its third-party fact-checking program that you can use fact-checks to provide information to Facebook users, saying, “Hey, this claim is false.” And Facebook can use that to denote how much that post gets circulated.

To that point, some people suggest that fact-checking can become a limit on free speech, or can be used by companies or governments to limit free speech. What’s your response to that?

Well, I am sensitive to the idea that we don’t want to limit people’s free speech, so it’s a delicate issue. But I’m also sensitive to the fact that disinformation can be spread with lightning speed on some of these tech platforms, and it’s useful to try to reduce the spread of that disinformation. So I think we can find ways to use journalism that helps inform people and reduces the spread of disinformation without inhibiting people’s free speech.

You mentioned that fact-checking is this distinct form of journalism, because a reporter renders direct conclusions on whether claims are accurate. Would the public be better served to see more of those conclusions in all of our journalism?

I think we’ve definitely seen that more. We call that an embedded fact-check, and that’s where you’ll see a reporter write something like, “Trump made the unfounded claim that immigrants are eating dogs in Springfield.” Yes, I think it should be part of political reporters’ and news reporters’ jobs to call out falsehoods when they see them. Part of the journalistic obligation is to tell people what’s true and what’s not. And I think we’ve operated for a while on the hope that people would go do their own research, and it doesn’t work.

Have news organizations gotten better or worse at that?

Generally better, because you’re seeing more of that embedded fact-checking than you used to. I’m just sitting here thinking, what’s the solution, if you’re a news reporter and you’re covering a political speech, are you expected to fact-check every line of the speech you quote? Well, I hope there’s a fact-checker who will fact-check that.

So, for a well-known news organization (like the one you’re speaking with now), what is their responsibility in an election year? Are news organizations broadly living up to it?

I’m mindful that on any given day, there are so many claims uttered that it's impossible for any organization to fact-check all of them. I think it should be the goal of a major news organization to address the major claims, claims that are the focus of a political debate, and tell people whether those are true or not. That’s challenging in a time of limited resources, in a turbulent media environment, but that’s the goal.

Has the opportunity cost of lying for politicians increased or decreased in the last 20 years or so? Is there a calculation about how lying could hurt you that’s different now?

Yes, I think lying used to have greater consequences than it does today. When there was a common news media that everyone read and watched and listened to, lying had greater consequences. When political campaigns targeted more of a mass audience, lying had greater consequences. Now that things are so targeted, whether it’s partisan news media or micro-targeting of campaign messages, I think lying is easier than ever, and it has fewer consequences. So politicians say, “You know what? I’m gonna lie, because it’s worth it,” and they really believe that they’re going to score more points than it will cost them.

This interview first appeared in POLITICO Nightly.