NEW YORK—I’ve had battles with fact-checkers my whole life.
I blame The New Yorker magazine—that’s where it all started.
Harold Ross, the founder of The New Yorker, was such a perfectionist he hired editors who worked on the phone book, because someone told him that was the most error-free publication in the world. He was obsessive about spelling, punctuation, grammar, but he was equally obsessive about the smallest factual details. If you wrote an article about a ferret, and your article stated that the ferret in question had black fur, you would receive a half-page memo from the Fact Check Department informing you that, after two phone calls to the American Ferret Association, there was a concern within the building that you might be confusing the color “black” with the color “black sable,” which is distinct from simple black. “Are you absolutely certain that it was a black ferret and not a black sable ferret?”
And, of course, in most situations like this, you’re not sure! The fact-checker has infused just enough doubt into the situation that you’re back on the phone, asking a ferret-raiser in Cahokia, Ill., whether the ferret you witnessed on Wednesday the 23rd was indeed a black ferret and not a black sable ferret.
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This is what fact-checkers do. This is what they’ve always done. Harold Ross’ decision to create a staff of professional fact-checkers was eventually adopted by most major magazines and book publishers, so that by the time I went to work for Texas Monthly magazine, every fact-checker in the world was attempting to prove his or her fact-checking worthiness by aspiring to the standards of the New Yorker team toiling away in the rabbit warrens of 44th Street.
We had one fact-checker at Texas Monthly—I won’t name her, but you know who you are—who was so assiduous that she once challenged me on the plural of the word lasso. (She was actually a combination fact-checker/copy editor, so she had the toxic DNA of both species.) I said that you formed the plural of lasso by merely adding an s, but she was holding out for lassoes. Even though she couldn’t produce an example of lassoes in print, she nevertheless summoned some usage theory based on the double s that, to tell you the truth, I’ve forgotten. She then proceeded to track down people who work professionally with lassos or lassoes, only to discover that, although they might be fond of their ropes, they don’t often write sonnets about them. As I recall, we ended up referring the whole matter to a higher power—the editor in chief—and I was bound by his decision. I’m sure I never read the article in print, partly because, when you deal with fact-checkers all your life, you can’t handle the angst.
My only point in telling this story is this:
(1) Fact-checking is a very serious, tedious, time-consuming, nerdy, cerebral process that can sometimes go on or days.
(2) It’s an entirely internal matter.
It’s for Us, not Them.
It’s for the reporter, not the reported-on.
It’s for the newspaper, not the politician.
It’s for the company lawyer, not Donald Trump.
You don’t go around like a hired gun in the Wild West saying, “I’m gonna fact-check your sorry ass!”
Reporters don’t carry around a deck of Trivial Pursuit Fact-Check Cards so they can say, “No, sorry, you missed that one! And that was an easy category, too!”
