Politifact’s recent award for 2011’s “Lie of the Year” has resulted in a backlash that really should have been easy to see coming. When you put the spotlight on a specific assertion or claim, you are teeing up the response from those who might disagree. Cries of bias, agenda, tilts and leans are the guarantee when the focus is on the “fact”. Until the public shifts their attention to the vetting process, understanding it and directing their accolades/criticisms to those who execute reliably in the process, we will never get away from the race to discredit. We will never realize a net positive result that allows us to move forward on policy, debate and even scientific discovery.
Shining the light on a peer reviewed vetting process can help us understand that it’s not the origination of content that matters, but rather the ability for others to independently verify claims and assertions that make the content valuable. Creating an award like Politifact’s “Lie of the Year” creates an environment where the entire fact-checking process is undermined as we recently witnessed with Krugman’s declaration that Politifact is dead.
If we are willing to shift the focus to the fact-checking process, and reward the reliability and savvy of those who engage in the activity on everyone’s behalf, we move away from the very nature of agenda and bias and move towards the universal desire to understand fact from fiction, to engage in a dialogue where it’s not about being right or wrong, but working together to uncover the truth so that we can debate productively, not in circles.
