Democracy Dies From Bad Fact Checking

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The Washington Post is feeding into Trump’s agenda by turning fact checking into an ideological weapon.
By Jeet Heer

As with the earlier fact check on inequality, The Washington Post is trying to use fact checking as an ideological weapon. Sanders is under attack not for making false statements, but for calling attention to facts that are politically unpalatable for those who are happy with the economic status quo. It’s unclear why the Post so often goes after Sanders in such a myopic fashion: The paper denies that its coverage is influenced by billionaire owner Jeff Bezos, but institutional bias can be more subtly grounded in factors like the economic class of the editors or the newspaper being embedded in elite Washington culture.

With these polemics-disguised-as-rebuttals, the Post is discrediting the entire journalistic genre of fact checking. This is dangerous in a way that goes beyond any damage it does to Sanders as a presidential candidate. In truth, Sanders has little to worry about. The fact checks are so ludicrous they are unlikely to sway any voters. What they are more likely to do is feed into a pervasive distrust of the mainstream media, which is bad for democracy.