House of Eratosthenes

After I’m done reading a “Fact Check,” I am not left with an impression of “Oh good, now I have the whole story, then.” My impression, instead, is one of “I’d sure like to see a back-and-forth debate about this, as opposed to a simple ‘Fact Check’.”

I admit I have biases that could lead me toward that. But honestly, I don’t think they are. Seems to me this is a natural reaction. It is felt by, or ought to be felt by, all persons who think sincerely about things, all throughout the ideological spectrum. Right? I’m pretty sure about that. I’ve seen “my side” fact check some things and I’m left with the same question, of “Yeah but what do the other guys have to say about that?”

Fact checks are essentially ads. They are sponsored by interested organizations. They are about as credible as ads. They answer questions no one anywhere was asking, to give false impressions, like “This peanut butter has no cholesterol.”

I do think the public at large has fallen behind in their understanding of how misleading a fact check can be. Once I saw someone fact checking Ann Coulter in one of her books, where she points out notorious socialist candidate Norman Mattoon Thomas was the father of Newsweek editor Evan Thomas. He’s not!, said the fact check. Right…not father. Grandfather. The fact checker deliberately concealed that. Coulter had the necessary correction included in the next edition. Stuff like that.

In this case and others, you’d be better informed if you’d never seen the fact check.

And then there’s the out-and-out failed stuff. We were on the receiving end of a fact check that Hunter Biden’s laptop was actually just planted Russian disinformation. An opinion, not an established fact. But, the opinion of fifty-one highly qualified intelligence experts. So that drove a “fact check” — which turned out to be wrong. The laptop was Hunter’s and there was nothing Russian about it. Apologies all around? Eh…nope.

I’m left wondering: These fact checks are for…whom? Who has faith in them? I think we’ve outgrown them at this point. They’re ads. You litter the landscape with thousands of ’em, like fliers stapled to telephone poles, and one or two out of those thousands will have the desired effect. From that, you justify a budget to run off thousands more. That’s exactly the way they work, and that’s not what honest people have in mind when you use the words “fact check.”

But it makes it easier for some people to WinTheArgument — when they don’t really deserve to win it. So they like it. That’s the truth.

It’s really time for the whole thing to go. No one’s fooled by it anymore. Just barely enough of a false impression, falling on just barely enough people, to justify its continuing existence, as advertising. Just like scam artists calling your elderly parents on the phone to swindle them out of their life savings. Just enough for something like that. Not as anything else. And it’s been this way for quite awhile by now. Just like with many of the other things we do, future generations will be left wondering: Why’d we tolerate it so long? And there’s no good answer.

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Fact Check!Monday, April 1st, 2024

Fact Check!
Monday, April 1st, 2024