Political figures once dreaded being hit with a fact-check. Whether it's receiving Pinocchios from The Washington Post or earning "Lie of the Year" by PolitiFact, the fact-checker industry used to carry a lot of weight with large swaths of Americans across all political stripes.
But times have changed, at least to now-former Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler, who suggested that he and his fact-checking colleagues were on their heels in his final piece for the paper last month titled "The Fact Checker rose in an era of false claims. Falsehoods are now winning."
Kessler lamented how social media platforms allow falsehoods to spread faster and the rise of Donald Trump, who he referred to as a "fact-checker’s dream … and nightmare" after his first campaign launch in 2015, had eroded the "expectation that politicians would stick close to the truth." Kessler famously launched a first-ever tracker of the president's false or misleading claims, which totaled more than 30,000 during Trump's first term. As Kessler conceded in his piece, "Trump didn't care."
He also alluded to the growing distrust Americans have of the legacy media, including the fact-checking industry. But the journalist seemed to put the blame on Trump's attacks on the press, such as calling them "the enemy of the people." Kessler said this has been "undermining faith in traditional reporting."
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Kessler doubled down, saying Trump's animosity toward journalists is a "big part of the trust deficit" among Americans, particularly his fans.
Though he did own up to one flaw that he and other fact-checkers have.
"A main criticism, which I think is a fair one, is selection bias," Kessler told Fox News Digital. "We can't fact-check every statement made by every politician. So how do you decide what you're gonna fact check? At The Washington Post, our goal was always to fact-check substantive things that would shed light on policy."
That said, Kessler defended the outsized coverage of Trump over the years, something he vows to continue doing via his Substack with essays he says will call out "Trump's bulls---."
"I know people have noted, ‘Oh, all he did was Trump.’ Well, you know, Trump's the man," Kessler chuckled. "He has the biggest megaphone. He's constantly saying stuff. He's not the most accurate. And I also have to respond to readers who are saying, ‘Well, is this true? Is this what he said correct?’ So, that is a challenge that fact-checkers face."
"I acknowledge that sometimes we don't, you know, because we're so caught up in the news or whatever, the latest thing the president said, that we haven't necessarily noticed that statement that Democrat that no one pays attention to said," he added.
Critics of the fact-checker industry would say its problems go beyond selection bias, that political bias is also a factor. Many point to how various corrections appear to all flow in one direction. Kessler flatly rejected the notion.
"I don't really accept that," Kessler said. "I mean, one thing that's irritated me - so I've written or edited like 3,000 fact checks and the critics always will bring up the same three or four that they felt were misguided. So, yes, occasionally people mess up or the passage of time proved us wrong… I would say our batting average is above 800. You're in the Hall of Fame if your batting average is above 400. So I just find that really unfair."
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One of the often-cited fact-checks Kessler's critics attack him for was the poorly aged coverage from May 2020 on the Wuhan lab-leak theory in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic.
Kessler's team produced a lengthy video and report titled "Was the new coronavirus accidentally released from a Wuhan lab? It’s doubtful."
At the time, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, slammed the fact-check on X, linking it to "CCP propaganda." Kessler fired back, writing "I fear @tedcruz missed the scientific animation in the video that shows how it is virtually impossible for this virus jump from the lab. Or the many interviews with actual scientists. We deal in facts, and viewers can judge for themselves."
"The old saying, ‘Never tweet,’" Kessler chuckled. "Maybe I could have worded it better, maybe not, but it was actually in defense of a video that we did, a 10-minute video about looking at quite seriously the question of whether there was a leak from the lab. And I challenge people to go back and look at that 10-minute video… it is still quite divided in the scientific community as to whether there was a lab leak or not. We don't have evidence of a lab leak, we don't have evidence of a natural leak, either. So it's really quite divided."
The "error" he did admit to, however, was the video's title, which was "Was the new coronavirus accidentally released from a Wuhan lab? It’s doubtful."
"I have a bias against just question mark headlines. I said, 'Let's give, you know, a little more certainty here,'" Kessler said. "So I added the words, 'It's doubtful.' And one of the reporters that worked on the story was very upset at me for adding the words, 'It's doubtful.'"
"I said, ‘Your reporting really brings this up. And there are things in there that are quite compelling, particularly like having to do with the genetic makeup of the different viruses. And she said, ’Yes, but we don't really know. I think you made a mistake here because it's more certain than I feel,'" he continued. "So if I wanted to do it all over again, I would remove that 'It's doubtful.' Now, nothing to take away from the reporting. You watch the video, and you read the article, it still holds up well despite everything that we've found since then. But like I said, it's not necessarily a conspiracy. It's incompetence. And that was incompetence on my part, adding that 'It's doubtful' there."
The Post attached a lengthy "update" to the video in May 2021 acknowledging "several new pieces of evidence" have emerged to support the lab-leak theory but stressed that the virus' origin "remains unknown."
It's errors like that lab leak fact-check that have prompted Kessler to call on The Post to reinstate an ombudsman, which he called for in his Substack piece explaining his exit from the paper.
"What I liked about the ombudsman, even though I was sometimes the subject of a scrutiny by the ombudsman, is that it provided a way to explain to readers how a story got produced," Kessler told Fox News Digital. "Under the current system, we might run a correction, but we never really explain to readers, like, how did we mess that up?… And I feel like newspapers do a very poor job of explaining how we make our choices."
He added, "Why did we decide to cover that story rather than the other story? Why did we take that slant on the story, rather than a different slant? Why didn't we call that person? How did we miss that email responding to our complaint? I mean, there are all sorts of things."
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Kessler wrote in his Substack piece that his "missive was ignored" by past leadership and concluded that after Post executive editor Matt Murray declared the paper would no longer be covering itself, his hopes of reinstating an ombudsman became "ludicrous." He recalled another fact-check that "blew up in [his] face" and how he "felt muzzled" when he wanted to respond to his critics but was not allowed.
"I really wanted to be able to provide an explanation to the thousands of readers that were emailing me and my bosses about it, and yet I had to stay silent," Kessler told Fox News Digital.
While his efforts to revive the Post's ombudsman were unsuccessful, Kessler remains hopeful that the paper will find a new fact checker.
"I know that there are a number of editors that told me that it's their mission to make sure that it continues and that they find someone to replace me," Kessler said. "But of course, it's always uncertain when you don't have someone in place. And that's what I was really trying hard was to literally pass the baton."
The Post did not take Kessler on his offer to extend his time at the paper to find and properly prepare his successor. Murray seemed convinced in Kessler's conversations with him that The Fact Checker was needed. However, Murray's office struck a line from Kessler's drafted exit announcement about "leaving shoes to fill" and that Kessler heard from other editors that Murray "had a vague, unarticulated concern" about The Fact Checker and that Murray never mentioned such concerns to him in their meetings.
"It's the best job in journalism, I always say. It's also one of the more difficult jobs at The Washington Post," Kessler said. "And I really, really hope they find someone. I gave them a name of someone that I had confidence in and [I hope] that they bring it back and keep it going. It's just the longer the lights are dimmed in the theater, the harder it is to turn them back on."
A spokesperson for The Washington Post told Fox News Digital, "The Washington Post is committed to being a trusted, independent news source for all Americans. We are focused on continuing to serve our users with fact-based journalism every day across all platforms."
Fox News' Annie McCuen contributed to this report.
Original article source: Ex-Washington Post fact checker owns up to poorly-aged report but remains defiant against his critics
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