It's 2024: We're all writers, but are we fact-checkers?
It's 2024: We're all writers, but are we fact-checkers?
Current or former newspaper reporters will be able to relate to what I am about to say:
In my early days of reporting, I was convinced that every word I wrote was worth more than gold. It was often painful to me to have my stories go through the editing process because, ignorantly, I believed my opinion was more valuable.
After all, I did the reporting. I researched the subject matter. I constructed the story arc. I knew what I wanted to say. The editor didn’t.
It hurt to watch my editor take 1,000 of my words and trim them to 550.
However, once I learned to dismount from my high horse, I understood the importance of the editing process and began to appreciate how much better my stories became.
Before we go deeper, let me share the point of this post:
It’s 2024. We’re all reporters of some sort, or writers of some sort, or amplifiers of their work. We may not be able to turn our work into an editor, but we all need to learn how to be an editor because the truth matters.
A Little Background
For the longest, many of the newspaper stories you consumed every day were published after a prescribed editing process.
This process varied from paper to paper, depending on staff size and other resources and how thorough the ownership’s loyalty to journalistic ethics was.
Generally, however, the process went this way: Reporters either pitched story ideas to their editor or were assigned stories by their editor. The reporter then began gathering information through research and interviews. Eventually, a rough idea of the story began to form in the reporter’s mind.
Reporters at larger newspapers often had the luxury of working on a single story for several days, or even weeks. When I was young in the business, I had the privilege of attending a journalism workshop in St. Petersburg. One of the reporters there, Thomas French, led a breakout session in which he told us how he crafted a series of nine stories about the goings on at Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo. It was amazing.
So, Tom, how did you do it?
“I just hung out at the zoo,” he said.
For how long?
“About six months,” he said.
Many of us came from newspapers with a limited staff. The demands on us often called for multiple stories per day. We all gathered things to throw at him.
Once a reporter believes he has gathered enough information to tell the story, he starts typing away. He will craft the story a certain way depending on whether the story is considered hard news or a lighter feature. Either way, he wants to make sure the story answers the most important questions one would expect a reader to ask. He wants to make sure the questions are answered thoroughly while being aware that readers have short attention spans.
“Readers won’t read a garden hose,” one of my editors said repeatedly.
Reporters are supposed to self edit once they are through writing. This would entail correcting spelling, grammar, etc. It is also supposed to entail snipping the unnecessary word, phrase, paragraph or (yikes!) even section.
The story is then sent to an editor. At some papers, a story goes through more than one editor, but not most papers of a normal size. The editor gives the story a first read. He or she also looks for spelling or grammar mistakes. Then the editor gives it a second read. Is it clear, concise? Are there holes? Does it bog down? Does it veer off course? (In the old days, an important question would be “does it fit the news hole in our print space?").
Then there is a third read that is the most important. How does the reporter validate the facts/quotes/statements in his story?
In a perfect world, a reporter goes through each statement to make sure it is supported by (1) data from authoritative places (2) quotes from multiple knowledgable sources (3) The reporter’s own eyes or (4) some other verifiable place.
All of those steps during the third read are designed to answer the most important question.
Is the story true?
Granted, this is an imperfect process. False stories still made it through. If stories were not completely false, highly slanted stories still made it through.
However, when done correctly with the truth as the guiding priority, this process worked to help publish the news as accurately as possible for many years before ideology pushed ahead of truth on the hierarchy of motives.
Our Response
As I said earlier, we’re all reporters or writers now. At the least, we’re amplifiers of their work. When we post something on Facebook or X or another platform, we’re casting that information to our followers, some of whom will do the same thing in turn.
We may not be officially stamping that information as reliable, but that is the message we are sending when we share it.
We can’t be 100 percent sure that what we are sharing is true, but we can take some steps on our end.
Here are a few questions to ask before sharing or reposting:
Is the author a real person? It is amazing that we have to start there but there is a lot of information floating out there from bots or made-up personas.
Does the author have a trackable record of posting accurate information?
Does the author have a built-in reason to slant?
Does the information pass the smell test?
Has the information or similar information been published in other places?
Does it appear to you that it is reasonable this information has been verified in some way?
It is also important to note that sometimes you will share accurate information and it will still be taken down by Facebook or YouTube because the statement is incompatible with the site owner’s ideology. We can’t allow that to dissuade us from sharing information, and that makes it even more important that we make sure we’ve done a reasonable amount of due diligence on our end.
Why This Is Important
For more than 20 years, my name appeared above everything I wrote. You could pick up the phone and call the newspaper and ask to speak to me and ask me questions about my story. I had to be prepared to defend my story. Maybe we agreed at the end of the conversation and maybe we didn’t, but my byline led to some accountability.
When I created social media accounts, I made sure I was identifiable across all the platforms. When I posted something or shared something, or retweeted something, my name was behind it and it was important to me that I didn’t amplify false information.
It doesn’t mean I was correct 100 percent of the time. It just meant that I made a good faith effort. If something seemed a little fishy, I passed on it.
We live in a post-truth society. But, just because truth is not a strongly held ideal anymore, it doesn’t have to be that way for those of us who profess Christ as Lord.
Jesus identified Himself as The Truth (John 8:32) and one who has come to bear witness to the truth (John 17:17).
Truth is to be protected and held in extremely high esteem if we are serious about following Christ. We should identify with it and people should identify it with us.
While we can never be 100 percent certain about a piece of information unless we see it with our own eyes, we can be a lot less flippant about sharing information simply because we agree with the sentiment behind it when the substance appears shaky at best.
I’m afraid that the Church in America and many Christians are softening on truth. They are using truth as a utility. They jump on it if it serves them and push it out of the way if it doesn’t. And we wonder why the Church isn’t having as much impact as it did.
Let us all be good stewards of our platforms and put truth in its correct spot on the hierarchy moving forward.