Are fact-checking sites a symptom of the media not doing its job?

It is a fact universally acknowledged that a journalist in possession of a good story must insist it be based in truth. Or is it? In Australia, where an election looms, we’re about to enter a newly reconfigured media landscape with the launch of three sites dedicated to fact-checking the political statements of those vying for our votes.

Does the popularity of these fact-checking sites suggest that journalism is failing to adequately perform its function? Media writer Tim Dunlop thinks it does, and put it rather succinctly in a recent column claiming that fact-checking sites are a symptom of failing media, but not a cure.

Facts are, after all, one of the essential building blocks of good journalism: you can’t have good journalism without them. So if there’s an important role for fact-checking sites to play alongside reporting, does that extend to having facts without good journalism? And if it does, what do facts on their own add to the national debate?

This is all complicated by the fact (yes, it is one) that there is neither an exact science, nor even an accepted model, for verifying “truthiness” (the word coined by US comedian Stephen Colbert to describe the degree to which opinion dresses as fact).

The first Australian site to enter the fact-checking business was PolitiFact Australia, the first licensee of the Pulitzer-prize winning US site PolitiFact.com (how deep those ties are remains unclear). The Australian version was set up and funded by Peter Fray, former editor-in-chief of the Sydney Morning Herald, and just announced a partnership with Fairfax, giving it a better chance of making an impact. Its methodology involves researching and rating political statements according to a truth-o-meter, the lowest score on which is “pants on fire".

Just how convoluted this seemingly simple judgment can be is best illustrated by controversy around a statement made by Greens senator Scott Ludlam that "currently, Australia is 71st per capita in the world in terms of refugees hosted." The original ruling read nothing short of “what the senator says is right, but we rate it as ‘mostly false'.” After enduring much protest, PolitiFact Australia revised the ruling to “half true”. The reasons given for the revision don’t do much to help establish, well, what is fact. It read:

Had Ludlam chosen to compare Australia's intake record with the world, Australia would have emerged with a much more generous reputation – the highest intake per capita. We say Ludlam intentionally chose a figure more disparaging of Australia's reputation because it suited his argument that more refugees should be resettled here. This makes his statement questionable on grounds of context more than a statistic which is literally correct but contextually irrelevant and misleading.

The Conversation was next, launching Election FactCheck – which relies on the subject expertise of academics to review and analyse the “facts” about a statement. Those findings are then anonymously reviewed by another academic. The interesting thing about this approach is that the methodology is not yet fully established. Gay Alcorn, former editor of the Sunday Age and now heading Election FactCheck, is open to discussing with readers the challenges the site will face in developing its methods. She writes:

We are now working on a fact check where the reviewer does disagree with the author. We've decided we're going to publish that. It's the kind of statement that lends itself to different interpretations of the 'facts' and we're not trying to pretend that fact checking is the 'last word' on a subject.

The most anticipated of all, and most controversial, is the yet-to-be-launched fact-checking unit that will be established at the ABC. The unit aims to "scrutinise the factual accuracy of claims made by politicians, business, unions and special interest groups". How it will do this exactly remains to be seen. The appointment of former Fairfax journalist and 7.30 Report Victoria producer Russell Skelton as unit head has already upset some, who claim that Skelton has retweeted articles that slammed Tony Abbott, showing a “clear left bias”.

Leaving that aside, the unit is probably most interesting for existing within a large established media organisation, so that its integration across the ABC news (which I understand is the plan) may go some way in re-establishing fact-checking as a cultural mantra. But it has left many, quite rightfully, questioning what the need for a fact-checking unit says about the rigour of basic journalism within our government-funded media.

When the ABC managing director, Mark Scott, was recently asked at a Senate estimates hearing about the independence of Skelton, he was quick to defend his choice. "Journalists have views; journalists vote," Scott said. "The test is not what their views are. The test is how they do their job."

Exactly.

Fact-checking sites offer an interesting insight into detailed political discourse, but it’s hard to understand where the public benefit lies when rulings are nothing short of polemic discussion about "truth" without proper journalistic framing. Journalism is about unearthing facts – not just accurate ones but the right ones, difficult ones, uncomfortable ones, and putting them in context. There is a critical distinction in news reporting between recording information (Senator She said X, Senator He said Y) and understanding and framing it.

Ask hard questions. Insist on the truth. Verify what your sources tell you. It need not be much harder than that.

Journalists need to gain back this lost ground in their everyday reporting, not outsource it, because on this front they have something no fact-checking site can compete with. As Nadine Gordimer so eloquently put it, “the facts are always less than what really happened,” and that is where journalism and good storytelling has the advantage, if not the duty.