During my time at FactCheck.org, I have saved many emails and more than a few handwritten notes from grateful readers. I have taped some of those notes to the bookshelf above my desk.
“Thank you for investigating the facts,” says one. “The truth matters!”
Another says: “Thank you for all you do to report the facts! A free press is the front line of democracy.”
And this one from 2012: “Thanks for saving my sanity during the election cycle & always!”
These are my daily reminders of what an honor and privilege it is to work at FactCheck.org.
After more than 14 years here, including the last 12 years as director, I’ve taken down the handwritten notes and started cleaning out my office. I am retiring at the end of this year.
I have been in journalism for more than 40 years – mostly in newspapers, mainly writing or editing stories about politics and public policy.
And there is nothing I would rather spend a lifetime doing.
I never thought twice about what I wanted to be when I grew up. I got the bug early—wrote a mock family news magazine as a kid, worked on the high school newspaper as a teenager, took a part-time job at a local newspaper as a college student, and landed my first full-time job at a daily newspaper shortly after graduating with a double major in journalism and English.
It is such a rewarding profession. They pay you to read, write and talk to people. They pay you to tell the truth. How cool is that? You literally learn something new every day. It’s like a continuing education course for life.
It has not been an easy time to be in journalism. I have experienced the near collapse of print journalism and the rise of cable TV talking heads. Since joining FactCheck.org, I have seen the increasing influence of the internet and experienced the rising wrath of partisans.
The 24/7 news cycle is now filled with people with opinions, and social media is flooded with misinformation and disinformation.
But this challenging landscape for news organizations makes fact-checking all the more important.
Fact-checking provides a lifeline for people, like our appreciative readers, who are eager to seek the facts. They want the kind of straight reporting that the late Washington Post columnist David Broder envisioned in 1990 in his column, “Five ways to bring some sanity back into elections.”
Brother, once”dean” from the Washington press, called on news organizations to conduct an “investigation” of political ads and hold politicians accountable for their political messages.
“We must … demand supporting evidence from the candidate running the ad, get rebuttal information from his opponent, and then investigate the situation enough ourselves to tell the reader what is fact and what is destructive fiction,” Broder wrote. “And we shouldn’t be fussy about speaking out when we catch a candidate lying, exaggerating or distorting the facts.”
That’s exactly what we’ve been doing at FactCheck.org for more than two decades, dates to 2003. Starting with TV ads and political speech, we’ve expanded over the years to include exposing health and science bias in 2015 and social media misinformation in 2016.
I’m proud of what we’ve built here at FactCheck.org and how we operate.
I’m proud of my colleagues—who are honest, hard-working, and, as one reader put it, dedicated to “tearing truth out of fiction.”
It is a pleasure to work every day with such talented journalists who are so committed to getting the facts right and presenting them accurately, even to the point of agonizing over the right word or phrase to be as accurate as possible.
I am proud of the transparent process we have at FactCheck.org that treats both sides equally, avoids selection bias and false equivalence, and subjects each article to multiple edits. We scrutinize claims made by Republicans and Democrats in the same places—television interviews, major speeches, TV commercials—and then apply the same standards to both sides. Finally, we let the chips fall where they may.
All of our articles are fact-checked and we provide hyperlinks for readers to access the same data, reports and other documents we used to draw our conclusions. Some skeptical readers or critics will ask, “Who fact-checks the fact-checkers?” The answer is: You. Just click on the links we provide in each story.
We write in neutral language, too, because as I like to tell readers: We’re here to inform, not to incite.
I know there are critics of fact-checking. I have heard from many of them – often in language that cannot be repeated here. But we don’t write for politicians or partisans who want to use fact-checking as a political weapon in their never-ending war against the other side.
We are here for the open-minded, curious readers who want to be good citizens and know “what is fact and what is destructive fiction,” to quote Broder. We are here for you.
Any fair reading of our work over a period of time will show that we treat both sides equally.
And that will continue next year under Lori Robertson, who will become the third FactCheck.org director.
Lori, who has been with FactCheck.org since 2007, is currently our Editor-in-Chief. She is our moral compass. She has high standards of ethics, transparency and accuracy, having spent nine years covering the media as an editor and writer for the American Journalism Review.
Robert Farley, who is currently our Associate Editor, will become Associate Director. Rob joined us in 2011 from PolitiFact, where he was part of the team that won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. He enjoys playing devil’s advocate.
So I leave you in the very best of hands. And thanks again for all your support – the donations, the heartfelt messages of gratitude, and most of all, reading FactCheck.org.
Editor’s Note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We depend on contributions and individual donations from people like you. Consider a donation. Credit card donations can be made through our “Donate” page.. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104.
