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This chapter looks at how modern journalistic writing is fact checked for publication. Supported by what is perhaps the most famous department of fact checking in publishing history, New Yorker editorial philosophy is founded precisely in a sense that ‘the challenge, and the art, lies in confronting the facts and shaping them into something beautiful’. The New Yorker's reputation for fastidiousness over ‘points of fact’ continues to this day. Fact checkers are integral to the editorial process: their purpose is not only to prevent errors from appearing in the magazine, but also to mediate between writer, editor, copy editor, and lawyers. Since The New Yorker does not tend to have assistant or associate editors, checkers fill an essential gap in the editorial machinery.

Chapter 13 considers fact-checking as another possible corrective. After a brief history of the rise and diversity of the fact-check industry, the chapter critiques the epistemology of fact-checking and its limitations in the selection and assessment of facts. It summarizes a study comparing the findings of PolitiFact, factcheck.org, and The Fact Checker of the Washington Post, which reveals meaningful differences in the realities assessed as well as in the conclusions reached. This suggests that for the engaged citizen attempting to sort out the disputed realities of the current political environment, consulting fact checkers will not necessarily be of great service to them in determining which version of competing realities to endorse.

Chapter 14 describes a survey experiment conducted ahead of the 2016 California Democratic presidential primary, which examines the manner and extent to which perspective-threatening information from a reputable fact checker might influence mass perceptions of candidates, as well as perceptions of fact checkers themselves. The focus is on how such influence is (or is not) conditioned by (a) partisanship (intra- vs. interpartisan candidate comparisons), (b) intellectual elitism/populism, and (c) education. We find that a candidate’s detractors tend to remain steadfast in the face of evidence painting the candidate in a more positive light but that such evidence dramatically damages people’s evaluations of the fact-checking industry. This is especially, but not exclusively, the case among Republicans. Not only does education fail to temper such resistance to fact-checking; it actually enhances it to a significant degree.

This chapter reviews the conceptual underpinnings of the relationships between truth and politics, how truth is both conveyed and interpreted, and how it can fall subject to distortion and misinterpretation. These patterns are presented from a historical vantage point and considered in juxtaposition to the contemporary technological age. The chapter argues that we live in a real world where people living and acting together produce facts and events that even the powerful must reckon with. It is a hard lesson to learn—that three things are simultaneously true: (1) that reality is socially constructed; and (2) that facts are hard to hold steadily in view when we approach them, as we do, through paradigms and perspectives and prior knowledge and prior ignorance and prior interpretations and prior beliefs as we all, always, inevitably do; and (3) that there are facts.

The TRUST framework represents a radical challenge both to existing notions of untruthfulness and to the relevance of this topic to language research. This conclusion to the book All Bullshit and Lies? returns to the three central propositions of the TRUST framework concerning the scope, ethical import, and discursive analysis of untruthfulness, and teases out some of their implications, limitations, and possible future directions. It then takes up the challenge of the relevance of this topic to language research and considers the possibility of an interdisciplinary Ethical Discourse Analysis. Finally, the potential impact of the framework is discussed in terms of the fight-back against epistemic partisanship, the judgment of knowledge on purely partisan grounds. It focuses particularly on applications to education, fostering a greater awareness of the economy of truthfulness, the training of journalists, fact-checkers, and advocates, and the regulation of political advertising and social media.

Polarized perceptions of facts have become a defining feature of American politics. Scholars have described this phenomenon as contested facts, misinformation, cultural cognition, partisan facts, and dueling fact perceptions. But is there a connection between conspiratorial thinking and dueling facts? Are conspiratorial thinkers more likely to have different perceptions of climate change, the national debt, racism, or several other disputed facts like the safety of GMOs or the origins of sexual orientation? Recent survey evidence suggests that conspiratorial thinking is strongly related to some of the most prominent dueling fact perceptions on both right and left, grounded in rejection of scientific and scholarly consensus.

Some writers have argued that the dueling facts phenomenon is driven disproportionately by the ideological Right: conservatives and Republicans, so the argument goes, are more likely to engage in motivated reasoning and wind up misinformed. An expanse of scholarship documents the rigidity of the Right, which suggests that conservatives tend to be disproportionately (1) ideological, (2) suspicious of moderation, (3) uninterested in compromise, (4) prone toward authoritarianism, (5) cognitively inflexible, (6) lacking in empathy, (7) socially and informationally insular, and (8) hostile toward outgroups. Chapter 15 evaluates whether one side of “the duel” is more heavily armed than the other. It finds that liberal Democrats are no less likely than conservative Republicans to perceive reality through political lenses. What is more, the Left is actually more likely than the Right to express factual certainty when none is warranted and to reveal contempt for those who perceive the world differently from how they do.

Theories of democracy in communication studies have emphasized the importance of citizens encountering quality political information and incorporating that information into their views. These emphases on exposure tend to take the truth of the information being consumed for granted. Today, the problem of truth has become more visible, inviting reconsideration of how we expect truth to operate in democratic society. In this chapter, we suggest the need to consider not only the availability of information but also the conditions under which leaders and other communicators are held accountable for the veracity of their claims—a process we call factual accountability. We argue that members of the political elite, news media, and citizens each have roles to play in establishing factual accountability, but trends in each of these realms pose challenges to a truth-driven information order. We conclude with suggestions for reconstructing factual accountability as a basis for public conversation.

Since Donald Trump’s surprise victory in the 2016 US presidential election, media organizations, pundits, academics, and technology leaders are panicking not only over what they see as the sudden emergence of fake news but also over the difficulties of finding effective and sustainable solutions. But how new or even real is this idea of inaccurate or intentionally misleading news? This chapter shows that fake news is by no means a new phenomenon but has, in fact, been an integral part of the media ecosystem throughout the history of media effects research. The second section of the chapter provides a discussion of factors that do in fact create new problems for our democratic system and pose new challenges for media systems transitioning to on-demand and online-only modes of delivery. The chapter closes with an outlook on promising research areas that offer solutions for some of the challenges facing our democratic system.