Abstract
This chapter outlines the tensions between fact-checking journalism and the dominant epistemological norms and practices of ‘objective’ journalism to explain why elements of fact-checking practice can be controversial. Whilst scientific objectivity is associated with facticity or truth, as a journalistic norm it is understood only as avoiding subjective bias, and operationalised through direct quotation, distancing the journalistic voice. Verification is therefore typically limited to names, dates, places and accurate transcription. Fact-checking, in contrast, involves verifying the substance of sources’ claims, and can therefore be criticised as too interpretive, subjective and biased, criticisms that aim to draw narrow bounds around the legitimate ground for fact-checking.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Somewhat contradictorily, Amazeen (2015, 2016) also found evidence that fact-checkers do broadly agree on distinctions between entirely true and, in some way, problematic claims (comparing fact-checks on identical claims in political television advertisements), but in a rejoinder, Uscinski (2015) pointed out that only a small proportion of fact-checks get a rating of entirely true or accurate and this research therefore aggregates the wider range of ratings between which there is likely to be much greater disagreement.
- 2.
For instance, Donald Trump’s scorecard: https://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/.
- 3.
Channel 4 has a PSB remit, although it is part-funded through advertising.
- 4.
Peers sit in the House of Lords, the second chamber of the Houses of Parliament.
- 5.
C4 FactCheck: https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck; BBC Reality Check: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cp7r8vgl2rgt/reality-check#main-content; Full Fact: https://fullfact.org/.
- 6.
Full Fact also tweeted prolifically, but received much lower engagement.
References
Allan, Stuart. 2002. Media, Risk and Science (Open University Press: Buckingham).
Amazeen, Michelle A. 2015. ‘Revisiting the Epistemology of Fact-checking’, Critical Review, 27: 1–22.
Amazeen, Michelle A. 2016. ‘Checking the Fact-checkers in 2008: Predicting Political Ad Scrutiny and Assessing Consistency’, Journal of Political Marketing, 15: 433–64.
Amazeen, Michelle A., Emily Thorson, Ashley Muddiman, and Lucas Graves. 2015. ‘A Comparison of Correction Formats: The Effectiveness and Effects of Rating Scale Versus Contextual Corrections on Misinformation’, American Press Institute, Accessed 21 December 2018. http://www.americanpressinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/The-Effectiveness-of-Rating-Scales.pdf.
Ball, James. 2017. Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World (Biteback Publishing: London).
BBC Election Debate (31/05/2017) - BBC, available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz4KAdrwSE0
Birks, Jen. 2019. ‘Fact-checking, False Balance, and “Fake News”: The Discourse and Practice of Verification in Political Communication.’ In Stuart Price (ed.), Journalism, Power and Investigation: Global and Activist Perspectives (Routledge: London).
Blumler, Jay, and Michael Gurevitch. 1995. The Crisis of Public Communication (Psychology Press: London).
Brecknell, Suzannah. 2016. ‘Interview: Full Fact’s Will Moy on Lobbyist “Nonsense”, Official Corrections and Why We Know More About Golf than Crime Stats’, Civil Service World, Accessed 21 December 2018. https://www.civilserviceworld.com/articles/interview/interview-full-fact%E2%80%99s-will-moy-lobbyist-%E2%80%9Cnonsense%E2%80%9D-official-corrections-and-why.
Chadwick, Andrew, Cristian Vaccari, and Ben O’Loughlin. 2018. ‘Do Tabloids Poison the Well of Social Media? Explaining Democratically Dysfunctional News Sharing’, New Media & Society, 20: 4255–74.
Cushion, Stephen, Justin Lewis, and Robert Callaghan. 2017. ‘Data Journalism, Impartiality and Statistical Claims’, Journalism Practice, 11: 1198–215.
Davis, Evan. 2017. Post-Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It (Little, Brown: London).
Dobbs, Michael. 2012. ‘The Rise of Political Fact-checking, How Reagan Inspired a Journalistic Movement’, New America Foundation, Accessed 21 December 2018. https://www.issuelab.org/resources/15318/15318.pdf.
Domke, David, Mark D. Watts, Dhavan V. Shah, and David P. Fan. 2006. ‘The Politics of Conservative Elites and the “Liberal Media” Argument’, Journal of Communication, 49: 35–58.
Edelman. 2019. ‘Edelman Trust Barometer Report’, Accessed 30 May 2019. https://www.edelman.com/trust-barometer.
Ettema, James S., and Theodore Glasser. 1998. Custodians of Conscience: Investigative Journalism and Public Virtue (Columbia University Press: New York, NY).
Fairclough, Isabela, and Norman Fairclough. 2012. Political Discourse Analysis (Routledge: Abingdon).
Flynn, D. J., Brendan Nyhan, and Jason Reifler. 2017. ‘The Nature and Origins of Misperceptions: Understanding False and Unsupported Beliefs About Politics’, Political Psychology, 38: 127–50.
Fridkin, Kim, Patrick J. Kenney, and Amanda Wintersieck. 2015. ‘Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire: How Fact-checking Influences Citizens’ Reactions to Negative Advertising’, Political Communication, 32: 127–51.
Gans, Herbert J. 2004. Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time (Northwestern University Press: Evanston, IL).
Garrett, R. Kelly, Erik C. Nisbet, and Emily K. Lynch. 2013. ‘Undermining the Corrective Effects of Media-Based Political Fact Checking? The Role of Contextual Cues and Naïve Theory’, Journal of Communication, 63: 617–37.
Golshan, Tara. 2016. ‘The Importance of Fact-checking the Debate in Real Time, According to an Expert’, Vox, Accessed 21 December 2018. https://www.vox.com/2016/9/26/13063004/real-time-fact-checking-debate-trump-clinton.
Gottfried, Jeffrey A., Bruce W. Hardy, Kenneth M. Winneg, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. 2013. ‘Did Fact Checking Matter in the 2012 Presidential Campaign?’, American Behavioral Scientist, 57: 1558–67.
Graves, Lucas. 2016. Deciding What’s True: The Rise of Political Fact-checking in American Journalism (Columbia University Press: New York, NY).
Graves, Lucas. 2017. ‘The Monitorial Citizen in the “Democratic Recession”’, Journalism Studies, 18: 1239–50.
Graves, Lucas. 2018. ‘Boundaries Not Drawn’, Journalism Studies, 19: 613–31.
Graves, Lucas, and Federica Cherubini. 2016. The Rise of Fact-checking Sites in Europe (Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism: Oxford).
Graves, Lucas, Brendan Nyhan, and Jason Reifler. 2016. ‘Understanding Innovations in Journalistic Practice: A Field Experiment Examining Motivations for Fact-checking’, Journal of Communication, 66: 102–38.
Hafez, Kai. 2002. ‘Journalism Ethics Revisited: A Comparison of Ethics Codes in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Muslim Asia’, Political Communication, 19: 225–50.
Hall, Stuart, Chas Critcher, Tony Jefferson, John Clarke, and Brian Roberts. 1978. Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order (Macmillan: London).
Hanitzsch, Thomas, Folker Hanusch, Claudia Mellado, Maria Anikina, Rosa Berganza, Incilay Cangoz, Mihai Coman, Basyouni Hamada, María Elena Hernández, Christopher D. Karadjov, Sonia Virginia Moreira, Peter G. Mwesige, Patrick Lee Plaisance, Zvi Reich, Josef Seethaler, Elizabeth A. Skewes, Dani Vardiansyah Noor, and Edgar Kee Wang Yuen. 2011. ‘Mapping Journalism Cultures Across Nations’, Journalism Studies, 12: 273–93.
Herman, Edward S., and Noam Chomsky. 2002. Manufacturing Consent (Pantheon Books: New York, NY).
James, Sam Burne. 2014. ‘Full Fact Gains Charitable Status Five Years After First Application’, Third Sector, Accessed 21 December 2018. https://www.thirdsector.co.uk/full-fact-gains-charitable-status-five-years-first-application/governance/article/1314532.
Kessler, Glenn, Michelle Ye Hee Lee, and Meg Kelly. 2017. ‘President Trump’s First Six Months: The Fact-check Tally’, Washington Post Fact Checker, Accessed 29 August 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/07/20/president-trumps-first-six-months-the-fact-check-tally/?noredirect=on&utm-term=.74ce46a170ab&utm_term=.08303617e028.
Lebo, Matthew J., and Daniel Cassino. 2007. ‘The Aggregated Consequences of Motivated Reasoning and the Dynamics of Partisan Presidential Approval’, Political Psychology, 28: 719–46.
Lee, Dave. 2019. ‘Key Fact-checkers Stop Working with Facebook’, BBC News, Accessed 30 May 2019. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47098021.
Lowrey, Wilson. 2017. ‘The Emergence and Development of News Fact-checking Sites’, Journalism Studies, 18: 376–94.
Merritt, Davis. 1995. ‘Public Journalism and Public Life’, National Civic Review, 84: 262–6.
Muñoz-Torres, Juan Ramón. 2012. ‘Truth and Objectivity in Journalism’, Journalism Studies, 13: 566–82.
Newman, Nic, Richard Fletcher, Antonis Kalogeropoulos, David A. L. Levy, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen. 2018. ‘Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2018’, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Accessed 21 December 2018. http://www.digitalnewsreport.org/.
Nyhan, Brendan, and Jason Reifler. 2010. ‘When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions’, Political Behavior, 32: 303–30.
Nyhan, Brendan, Jason Reifler, and Peter A. Ubel. 2013. ‘The Hazards of Correcting Myths About Health Care Reform’, Medical Care, 51: 127–32.
PEN America. 2017. ‘Faking News: Fraudulent News and the Fight for Truth’, PEN, Accessed 21 December 2018. https://pen.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/2017-Faking-News-11.2.pdf.
Schlesinger, Philip, and Howard Tumber. 1994. Reporting Crime: The Media Politics of Criminal Justice (Clarendon Press: Oxford).
Schudson, Michael. 2008. Why Democracies Need an Unlovable Press (Polity: London).
Shapiro, Ivor, Colette Brin, Isabelle Bédard-Brûlé, and Kasia Mychajlowycz. 2013. ‘Verification as a Strategic Ritual’, Journalism Practice, 7: 657–73.
Singer, Jane B. 2018. ‘Fact-checkers as Entrepreneurs: Scalability and Sustainability for a New Form of Watchdog Journalism’, Journalism Practice, 12: 1070–80.
The Battle for Number 10 (29/05/2017) - Sky News / Channel 4 News, available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mN_zZqlQts
Tuchman, Gaye. 1978. Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality (Free Press: New York, NY).
Underwood, Doug. 1988. ‘When MBAs Rule the Newsroom’, Columbia Journalism Review, 26: 23.
Uscinski, Joseph E. 2015. ‘The Epistemology of Fact Checking (Is Still Naìve): Rejoinder to Amazeen’, Critical Review, 27: 243–52.
Uscinski, Joseph E., and Ryden W. Butler. 2013. ‘The Epistemology of Fact Checking’, Critical Review, 25: 162–80.
Van Eemeren, Frans H., and Peter Houtlosser. 2003. ‘The Development of the Pragma-dialectical Approach to Argumentation’, Argumentation, 17: 387–403.
Walton, Douglas. 2006. Fundamentals of Critical Argumentation (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Birks, J. (2019). Objectivity and Interpretation in Fact-Checking Journalism. In: Fact-Checking Journalism and Political Argumentation. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30573-4_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30573-4_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-30572-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-30573-4
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)