Deciding What's True

The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in American Journalism

Bibliographic Data

ID20299513
AuthorsDavid Greenberg (0000-0002-8746-1410, History and Journalism and Media Studies; Rutgers University, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume67
Issue6
PagesE1-E3
Publication date2017-12-01
Open AccessYes
TypeREVIEW
Review ofDeciding what's true: The rise of political fact-checking in American journalism, Lucas Graves, 2016
VenueJournal of Communication (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-9916 • E-ISSN: 1460-2466
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/jcom.12329
OpenAlexW2765794875
LanguageEN
Citations received1

In a journalistic moment like ours, that is, rife with conspiracy theories, one-sided political coverage, and outright fake news—that is, real fake news, not the honest reporting that Donald Trump clumsily tries to dismiss as “fake news”—it may surprise some people to realize that the best, most professional mainstream media outlets are more committed than ever to telling the truth. In recent decades, those outlets have suffered attack from all sides: from the right for allegedly harboring a liberal bias; from the left for “he said, she said” stories that let falsehood share the stage with truth; and from high-minded critics of all types for dwelling on political strategy and image more than policy substance. In response, these organizations have developed and strengthened practices to ensure correct and informative coverage. Thus as the perils of superficiality and errancy have grown, so too have the strictures designed to safeguard accuracy. One of the most visible of these new practices is fact-checking—not the kind famously performed by sharp-penciled New Yorker staffers (“internal” fact-checking) but the kind made famous by FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, and the Washington Post's Fact Checker. Born during the presidency of George W. Bush, these entities, along with sporadic features in other news outlets, scrutinize the claims of public officials to judge their veracity. For audiences lost in today's vast, disorienting Medialand, these features provide a needed compass—thoughtful, well-reported accounts of where dubious-sounding factoids came from, how much truth or falsehood they contain, and the context necessary to assess them beyond the Pinocchio noses or rating on the Truth-o-Meter. In Deciding What's True: The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in American Journalism, Lucas Graves, an assistant professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Wisconsin, provides a first-rate history and sociology of these new watchdogs, helping to make sense of their role in the contemporary media ecosystem. Well-researched, carefully argued, and lucidly written, Deciding What's True does an excellent job of sorting out the messy questions of truth and falsehood, fact and opinion, in contemporary politics and journalism

Journalism · Mainstream · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Presidency · Sociology · Surprise · Law · Misinformation and Its Impacts

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