PolitiFact Montana
Montana is in a fact-checking desert.
The Media Lab could grow an oasis of accuracy.
We’d fact check verifiable statements by the region’s politicians, lobbyists, and organizations. Students would research and write, staff would vet, and we’d publish regularly. We’d establish the first fact-checking site in the Mountain West, north of Denver. Our model would be the University of Missouri.
The PolitiFact class pushed me to demand more backup information from my sources because, really, there’s nothing wrong with asking your sources how they know what they say they know.
—Adam Aton, “How Mizzou Journalism Students Help Fact-Check for PolitiFact”
PolitiFact Missouri
Mizzou’s J-School is one of 18 state PolitiFact partners. Guided by faculty and PolitFact staff, student “reporters and researchers examine statements by Missouri elected officials and candidates and anyone else who speaks up on matters of public importance.” Their fact checks run nationally at PolitFact.org and locally in the Columbia Missourian.
My colleague (and friend) Professor Mike Jenner would help us recreate the program he made at Mizzou. His students are now PolitiFact Missouri.
Journalists are told to never print something we don’t understand — but how often do we print information that our sources aren’t quite clear on or don’t have backup for? Sometimes we don’t know how credible our sources are because we don’t ask where they got their facts.
—Adam Aton (Mizzou grad student)
Google searches for “fact check”
We have to be careful about being accurate, adopting a tone that’s reportorial rather than adversarial.
–Bob Woodward (the other night on CNN)