I had the distinct pleasure today of hosting Brooks Jackson, Director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s Factcheck.org at Maryville College today. He gave a 10 minute interview with our local NPR affiliate in Knoxville, WUOT, and then gave a great talk in front of a lively group of students, faculty and members of the community. I also had the chance to chat with Brooks throughout the day about his work and his views of the political process.
I have to say that I think I met the man after Joe Gandelman’s heart. Brooks Jackson is a throwback of sorts in that he earnestly believes the media can re-establish its formerly-respected role of objective provider of news. He admits he’s an optimist and the trend toward O’Reilly-style shout-fest gets stronger all the time. But he walks the walk and provides an essential service to those who yearn for the truth underneath all the spin.
Actually, he offers not the “truth” in a philosophical sense, but the “facts” that can help voters develop greater truths.
As many people know, Factcheck.org, along with similar sites like Fact Checker and Politifact analyzes advertisements and debates and looks for falsehoods. As both of these other sites show, the biggest “Pinocchio” or “flop” of the day is Sarah Palin’s repeated insistence that she opposed the Bridge to Nowhere. Her persistence with this lie – and it qualifies as a lie – has even raised the specter of a dare: does Palin not care that she’s lying?
Brooks Jackson cites a similar moment in the GOP primary when Rudy Giuliani claimed, over and over, that prostate cancer survival rates were much lower in the “socialized medicine of the UK” than in the US. The claim was blatantly false, but Giuliani brazenly asserted that this was “his statistic.” Facts be damned.
As Jackson pointed out in his presentation, sometimes politicians cross into a gray area and mislead by inference or by partial citation. He cited an Obama ad running in Michigan claiming that McCain opposed an auto industry bailout. The ad cited a Detroit News report saying that McCain HAD opposed such a bailout, but had changed his mind. The ad was misleading because it attacked McCain for holding a position he no longer held (and it didn’t accuse him of flip-flopping on it either).
Jackson showed six different ads – three Democratic ads and three Republican ads – and explained the lies of omission and commission in each. Sometimes the ad lies through imagery and other times through text. It’s really quite depressing to think of how much money is spent on this junk…and how influential it is.
But the larger point was to challenge the media to start doing its job. He believes the print press, at the end of the day, is still the most objective news source out there. Reporters, after all, have reputations to defend. They might screw up, or show bias, but there are no more reliable sources of news out there.
I even asked him about the notion that blogs were more accurate because they provide instant fact-checking. He disagreed, stating – accurately – that most bloggers only look at sources that appeal to them. Even when a rumor is shot down there are many who refuse to accept it. Not until the print media dismantles a false claim does a rumor get shot down for good; when a politician persists in a lie even after the print media uncovers it, the story then becomes dishonesty and not “every blogger has his own facts.” Alas, we still need the print media to do our original reporting.
In fact, he sees the print media nowadays not as the filter that provides news but as the cleansing agent to separate the wheat from the chaff in the newer media. Print journalists are now the fact-checkers – if they do their job.
But unfortunately, as he and I both agreed, even print journalism has devolved into he said-she said gossip replete with false equivalences, anonymous sources and dubious headlines. Print media may be the savior in the end, but it’s just not doing its job right now.
It was a refreshing experience just to know that there are still people out there like Brooks Jackson. Like any American, Jackson has his opinions. But watching his presentation in front of a mostly left-leaning audience (yes, even in East Tennessee we have left-leaning audiences) he maintained his objectivity with diligence and respect. He NEVER tipped his hand regarding his real opinions.
I even asked him afterward how he does that. I know that I don’t possess that ability. I can’t pretend to be objective, though I strive to be respectful. He says that a career in journalism will force you to view the world dispassionately, and will promote objectivity. Of course, the modern blogosphere, talk radio and cable news is less journalism than opinionated entertainment.
A deeper question that came up is: how much does this matter if we just make political decisions with our “gut” and not with our head? Do the facts really matter in the end? My guess is that, for a sizable enough segment of the population, the answer is yes. But that segment is not very large.
I hope that more organizations appear to do the work that Factcheck.org does. No, he doesn’t always get it right. Sometimes he and the other fact-checkers disagree. But the insistence on going to the original source – government statistics, original reporting, etc. – to separate facts from lies is an essential part of our democracy.
Oh, and one guy in the audience mentioned that some of the worst lies come out in local zoning disputes. He said that Jackson just looks at the “Cream of the crop of the crap.” Yes, that got wide laughter.