Not because it’s a bad idea, but precisely the opposite: the ultimate goal of fact-checking should be for the practice to appear as part of regular news reporting, instead of as a separate, specialized feature that garners significantly less attention. The Columbia Journalism Review‘s Brendan Nyhan sums it up best:
Dedicated factcheckers like PolitiFact and Factcheck.org play a critical role, but we will know that factchecking has succeeded in changing American political journalism when it disappears as a specialized function. The process of factchecking needs to be integrated into political coverage, not ghettoized in sidebars and online features. If more reporters adopt best practices for covering misinformation (including exercising discretion in not fact-checking some statements), politicians and other public figures could face even more effective scrutiny in 2013 and beyond.
Related articles
- The Newest Factchecker: Reddit (theatlantic.com)
- How Fact-Checking Works (themillions.com)
- After Crowley corrects Romney, conservatives demand: No more fact-checking! (tv.msnbc.com)
- I Have Been False* (cato-at-liberty.org)
- Will Fact Checks Always Be Ignored By Politicians? (wnyc.org)