Who Fact checks the fact checkers?
By Julian | Last Updated: 20 November 2024
Fact checking can be a fraught enterprise. Here are the pit falls of fact checking and how they can be avoided.
1. Fact Checkers can be wrong
Fact Checkers are in a difficult situation in times of uncertain information. Establishing the truth of events can be a long process. Additionally many subjects require years of research to understand in-depth, fact checkers cannot be experts in all disciplines.
How to solve this: Fact Checkers need to be transparent about how they acquire their information and what information has yet to be established around certain topics. If a situation is on-going, it is worth mentioning this.
2. Fact Checkers can be biased
The internet is filled with false claims and accusations. What you fact check is based on what false information you think is important. That selection process inherently involves a bias.
Besides that just as motivated reasoning can impact people as they consume information, it can also impact fact checkers.
How to solve this: Make fact checking a community exercise. In Taiwan they have a service called Cofacts, it is a crowdsourced fact checking website where people select what they want to have fact checked. This avoids the selection bias fact checkers may have when choosing what to fact check. This also builds a critical element: Trust. When people work together to find the truth they are more apt to trust each other than if one person acts as if they have access to irrefutable knowledge.
Motivated reasoning cannot be solved, but fact checkers can be transparent about their viewpoints and the perspective where they come from.
3. Fact checkers can miss when something is meant to be “belief speak” rather than “fact speak”
When speaking truths human have two modes of communicating truths. Facts are established empirically while belief speaking relates to a speakers beliefs thoughts and feelings. Belief speak is about things that feel true regardless of factual accuracy.
When fact checkers go after people who are belief speaking they risk missing the points of someone’s words. If someone says “there are millions crossing the borders”, if this is not factually true, it still may be true that many people are crossing the borders which is what the speaker was trying to convey.
Fact checkers risk looking biased if they nitpick mistakes made by people who believe they are conveying correct sentiments. Being overly pedantic does not clarify issues but rather demonstrates bias.
How to fix this: Fact checking needs to address facts when that is under contention. A fact checker cannot in good faith claim to fact check a belief and instead must use different terminology about how beliefs interact with reality and other viewpoints from what the person believes. Not “they are incorrect” but rather “we should consider other factors”.
Subscribe now &
Get the latest updates
Subscribe