If you’ve been paying attention to the election cycle this year, then you likely have come across a supposedly objective realm of political analysis called “fact checking.” Fact-checkers are everywhere, and they have largely self-appointed authority to stand above the fray and offer views about the truth or falsity of a candidate’s claims. And after Obama’s big DNC speech this week, the fact-checkers are out in force. Here, for instance, is one from Breitbart responding to Obama’s claim that:
unlike my opponent, I will not let oil companies write this country’s energy plan, or endanger our coastlines, or collect another $4 billion in corporate welfare from our taxpayers.
This fact-checker argues that it is a “bogus” claim because it is myth that oil companies get subsidies, especially given that actual subsidies are given to companies like Solyndra. But this is not a dispute about facts, it is rather a dispute about what counts as a “subsidy” and about the evidence for whatever we decide a subsidy is. In this context, should we understand a tax-break as the same kind of thing as government grants and loans? What kind of tax breaks would count? These complicated questions have complicated answers, and self-appointed “fact checkers” cannot give us a simple way to work through them.
Think that Brietbart is too partisan to be a good example? ABC News fact-checkers responded to this from the President’s speech:
I’ll use the money we’re no longer spending on war to pay down our debt and put more people back to work, rebuilding roads and bridges, schools and runways. After two wars that have cost us thousands of lives and over a trillion dollars, it’s time to do some nation-building right here at home.
Calling the President’s logic “terribly flawed”, the fact-checker explains that this gives us the impression that any money saved from ending these wars is just “sitting in our back pocket” and that we need to be clear that the money the President is talking about “doesn’t exist unless it’s added, again, to the overall debt load.” But, once again, this is a matter of interpretation rather than merely pointing out “facts.” The President could reasonably argue that not paying for these wars means that we will not borrow money that otherwise would have been borrowed and thus it lowers our debt. He could also argue that putting people to work aids economic growth and this will raise tax revenues which also lowers our debt. This is another complicated, contested matter of interpretation and argument which simply cannot be resolves by “fact-checking.”
Last week, however, “fact-checkers” were like sharks in a feeding frenzy in tearing apart Paul Ryan’s speech. An incredulous Ezra Klein, who fact-checks for the Washington Post and MSNBC, said that his claims about Ryan’s lies were nevertheless made with hesitation and care:
I wanted us to bend over backward to be fair, to see it from Ryan’s perspective, to highlight its best arguments as well as its worst….So at about 1 a.m. Thursday, having read Ryan’s speech in an advance text and having watched it on television, I sat down to read it again, this time with the explicit purpose of finding claims we could add to the “true” category. And I did find one. He was right to say that the Obama administration has been unable to correct the housing crisis, though the force of that criticism is somewhat blunted by the fact that neither Ryan nor Mitt Romney have proposed an alternative housing policy. But I also came up with two more “false” claims. So I read the speech again. And I simply couldn’t find any other major claims or criticisms that were true.
The idea that Paul Ryan cannot tell the truth is not new narrative from those who (like Klein) strongly disagree with his positions, but this “Ryan is a liar” narrative was coming from the fact-checkers so fast and so furiously that in many circles it is simply accepted as obvious. One of the most cited “lies” we are told Ryan choose to tell during the biggest moment of his life involved this part of his speech:
A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: “I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.” That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight.
Of this, Klein said:
The decision to close the plant was made in June 2008, when George W. Bush was president. Ryan says that Janesville was “about to” lose the factory at the time of the election, and Obama failed to prevent this. This is false, as Ryan knew in 2008 when he issued a statement bemoaning the plant’s impending closing.
But as we saw with the “fact-checkers” criticizing Obama’s speech, the matter under dispute is certainly open to interpretation–especially what is meant by “decision” and “close.” What decision was made, exactly? We know the the plant was in operation well into the Obama presidency, and was actually closed in 2009. But as the New York Times’ Ross Douthat pointed out in a series of tweets on August 29th, it isn’t even clear that a decision was made to “close” the plant (in the sense that Klein means) at all. He numbered his tweets in the order they appeared:
9) At most, it’s a convenient narrative frame around a more complicated story.
8) In other words, given that Janesville could have reopened w/faster growth, it’s not a “lie” for Ryan to cite that as an Obama failure.
7) Oh, right: That all his public-private partnerships haven’t delivered anything close to sustained economic growth.
6) “But the economy is recovering more slowly than people anticipated.” And what is the Romney-Ryan critique of Obama again?
5) “If we get back to any kind of a reasonable market, with 15- or 16 million sales, then … that’s going to require Janesville as well.”
4) … because overall economic growth wasn’t strong enough to drive the sales required to justify reopening it: http://bit.ly/rs0K4J
3) The auto bailout happened, but did not lead to Janesville plant reopening …
2) Plant then closed amid auto industry collapse in 2008, but w/possibility of reopening.
1) Obama said that with right public-private partnership, Janesville plant “will be here for another hundred years.”
Now, one could certainly challenge Ryan and Douthat on the narrative that Obama should be held responsible slow economic growth (especially given that Republicans have blocked his attempts to revive our economy), but how can “fact-checkers” claim so strongly and clearly that Ryan was not truthful when so much of what is being cited as evidence of his dishonesty is open to reasonably-different interpretations of a complex situation?
At least in the most important matters debated by serious players in our public discourse, their disputes cannot be understood as those who have the “facts” vs. those who have have the “lies.” Instead, these debates involve complex matters of definition and interpretation about which reasonable people can disagree and argue. Theologians know better than most that there is no “view from nowhere” and we are generally suspicious when anyone claims to stand above the fray, unbound by context, interpretation and narrative. All the more reason, then, that we should add our voices to the growing chorus of those questioning the absurdly central place of fact-checkers in our public discourse.
Whatever one thinks of Ryan and his views, the fact is that his presence in this race offers us the chance to have much-needed debate about our long term health care debt which, to this point at least, our culture has refused to take seriously. This debate involves contested matters of interpretation, first principles, and complex, long-term prognostications. But when “fact-checkers” try to take the easy way out by presenting us with the lazy binary narrative of those with “the truth” vs. “the liars”, we slouch toward a public discourse which–instead of engaging arguments about ideas–focuses on finding fault with the person offering them. To the extent we take the “fact-checker” approach of calling Ryan and Obama dishonest, rather than allowing ourselves to sit in the complex gray area of interpretation and argument, we allow a focus on personal attacks to endanger the very real chance we have to engage an enormously important national conversation.
Let me close this already-too-long post by citing this amazing piece by former Daily Show producer Michael Rubens. He was responsible for helping set up the interviews in the field, and this meant he “spent a lot of time with people whose causes or philosophies I found blecchy — the sort of folks who would fit nicely in the overlap of a Venn diagram whose circles included Bachmann supporters, fans of Rush Limbaugh, and people who wear tricorn hats and exercise their Second Amendment rights at Tea Party rallies. You know – assholes.” But the thing was–once he got to know them personally–he found to his surprise the experience of meeting them complicated his simple “asshole” narrative, and he actually ended up liking many of them:
So yes, I love to loathe people, but my “Daily Show” experience complicated all that and sort of spoiled my fun. When I’m exposed to views that I dislike, I try to remind myself of the human being behind those views and to cut that person some slack. I hope that they would do the same. I think we should all fight hard for what we believe in, but I’d like to put in a request for some general slack cutting – especially as we move deeper into what is sure to be a very heated campaign season.
Rubens (aside from putting most Christians to shame given that, as a secular Jew, he blows most of us away in the “loving your enemies” department) has the antidote for the fact-checking focus on personal attacks: take time to get the know your political opponent, refusing to reduce your disagreement with them to them being a bad person, and even be open to liking them personally. Be willing to see their views and statements in a charitable, slack-cutting light that–rather than dismissing them as ignorant liars–acknowledges the complexity of the difficult problems people of many different point of view are working hard to analyze and address.
Charlie– Great piece, and I certainly appreciate the detailed treatment here. I’m wondering what you think about the concern some have expressed that this kind of both-sides-are-equally-complicated narrative means that everyone feels entitled to their own “facts” – and that people start being unable to distinguish between, say, blatant falsehoods and distortingly-framed truths. I’m thinking especially about things like climate change and so-called “trickle-down” theories of economic growth. These involve, admittedly both macro-level claims and complex relations of cause-and-effect – nevertheless, it seems to me utterly clear from carbon atosphere data and from inequality data over the last 30 years that (a) there is significant warming, and (b) that progressive income taxes increase equality, while flattening cuts at the top end benefit… the top end.
I must confess, David, that on issues where really smart, well-intentioned people disagree with each other about something important, I find it very difficult to boil down their disagreement in the way you described. Almost always there is so much distortion, self-interest, politics, complexity, and confusion involved that I’m not sure how much “data” exists out there that is not already corrupted and clouded by these forces. The groups who disagree with each other are making versions of the same kind of argument: “the data provided by our opponents are being manipulated by those with a political, economic, and ultimately self-interested agenda. It is obvious to anyone who fairly looks at the data that we are objectively correct, and those who think differently are either ignorant or part of the manipulation-machine which is doing nothing but trying to hold onto power. There aren’t ‘two sides’ to this debate–only those with the truth (us) and those with the manipulation and lies (them).”
Frankly, I’m just not sure what good it does–even if one believes it to be the case–to frame the issue this way. I think a much better strategy is to engage in good faith on the facts and arguments, though it certainly is much easier to simply dismiss one’s opponent as dishonest and evil and not take them seriously. Of course, that so many do this is an important reason for why we are so polarized.
Charlie, thanks for this piece. And I understand your point to David and a lot of debates are about spinning and distorting in ways that are manipulation and harmful….and In many cases and many debates – we have well-intentioned, rational disagreement that is reasonable debate. And corruption and ideological blindness is powerful, as is the influence of money/coercion….This is certainly a controversy ongoing right now in the field of medical research — who pays for it? how objective and scientific are the research results in journals?
But, still that doesn’t mean that everyone’s data or fact claims are equally true or legitimate. the examples that David mentioned – well-meaning and intelligent doesn’t mean that facts on both sides are equally grounded in reality. (Now in part this gets to the need to face the fact that much of the economic debate rests on economic theory that expressly doesn’t see itself as engaging/ dependent upon how this plays out in reality…that’s the neo-classical model of rational economic man.)
But I guess this begs the question – does every debate have 2 legitimate sides? that equally deserve attention and entertaining? This question has been raised recently by the TV show Newsroom…..which asks have facts lost their meaning in part b/c our media cycle currently treats everything as if there are 2 or more reasonable sides all deserving to be entertained?
Think about science – how many smart, intelligent and well-intentioned people still insist that earth is 4000 years old? it is 4.6 billion years old…science knows this from the measurable consistent decay of isotopes. Believing that it is true, being smart and well-meaning does not make it true.
No matter how much one might like deregulation – it is a clear and observable fact that the repeal of Glass-Steagall created the conditions and lead to the Financial Collapse of 2008. If you still want to hold up deregulation as the answer, you must actually admit and recognize that what happened was ONLY possible because of the deregulation accomplished by recalling Glass-Steagall it was the condition for the possibility of what happened. Therefore claims that we need greater deregulation and that markets/banking can self-regulate are not equally grounded in reality in the midst of a global financial crisis with widespread fraud and abuses within the industry. (this is a reality that BOTH democrats and republicans need to deal with and neither really is…..as we didn’t see Bill Clinton apologize for signing that bill into law….)
No matter how much someone does not like President Obama’s policies that does not make them socialism- nor how well-intentioned the persons may be – and these claims (unlike the Birther claims) are not only made by the fringe. You can reasonably argue that his policies are wrong (and in some cases I would argue strongly they are, as you know….but that doesn’t make claims that they are socialist equally valid and to be entertained. unless we have given up all claims that socialism as a word has meaning – as a political and philosophical system….)
In a debate about the debt ceiling – is it necessary to actually get right what the national debt it? what raising the debt ceiling means? Is it limiting to the reasonable debate that it is not a question about future spending but about defaulting on money already spent – paying our bills not borrowing to spend more money? Because lots of smart well meaning politicians engaged in a long set of arguments that simply treated the debt ceiling vote as if it was something else….are both sides equally to be engaged on their own “facts”?
Despite our limitations, despite how we are influenced by our presuppositions….I still maintain that we need to engage and confront and be challenged by reality and facts. And that means that I engage in debates about the “data” and i have to be open to being challenged…..this is what many like Ellacuria argued about the need of theology to engage reality, Vatican 2’s insistence on reading the signs of the times….obviously this is important to all of us on the blog. And I think you have made some very important points about “fact-checkers” as a new industry in the media, I just don’t want to let go of actual facts…..I’m terrified of an emerging political debate in which I just create my own “facts” and my believing them alone is sufficient to entitle me to equal truth-claims.
Thanks for the caution, Meghan. In some ways the discussion with David got a little diverted from my point about contemporary fact checkers…to a discussion about whether should treat certain claims–by smart people of good will about serious (and by this I meant those that are contested at a broad level in our culture) issues–as not worthy of being engaged…or at least worthy of respect as a legitimate “other side.” One thing I’ve always appreciated about your reactions to those with whom you disagree (especially about neoclassical economics) is that you simply don’t dismiss them as obviously wrong, obvious biased, obviously self-interested, obviously not worthy of being engaged as a legitimate debate opponent. You offer substantial arguments and responses–but also never in the sense of a “fact-checker”, somehow outside of your own politics and narrative. I think your reaction is a model for how to react to those we think are obviously wrong: take the time to give them the respect of showing one’s work in how one arrives at the conclusions one does about their positions.
Another example of this is Julie Rubio taking seriously the arguments of meat producers in the thread about meat-eating below. I know many environmentalists who will simply dismiss them as obviously self-interested and not “entitled to their own facts.” But Julie doesn’t fall prey to this reaction–she takes them seriously.
Excellent discourse. How can we appreciate the enormous impact of confirmation bias, our tendency to search for the truth while subconsciously finding evidence for what we already believe, without collapsing all truth claims?
I think we start by getting in touch with the literature of moral psychology. Jon Haidt’s “The Righteous Mind” is enlightening, but more accessible are his several videotaped presentations. Here’s a selection from EDGE:
“The puzzle is, why are humans so amazingly bad at reasoning in some contexts, and so amazingly good in others?….
…Why is the confirmation bias, in particular— this is the most damaging one of all—why is the confirmation bias so ineradicable? That is, why do people automatically search for evidence to support whatever they start off believing, and why is it impossible to train them to undo that? It’s almost impossible. Nobody’s found a way to teach critical thinking that gets people to automatically reflect on, well, what’s wrong with my position?”
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/morality10/morality.haidt.html
Well, not impossible…but very difficult. Here is one attempt to bridge the gap. http://www.conflictresolutiontraining.net/conflict_resolution_training/confirmation_bias.html
This social worker invites Cathol Moral Theology contributors to a dialogue between moral theology and moral psychology. What can each learn from the other?
Hi Charlie– Apparently Meghan made my point better than I did!! But I’m a little confused about exactly what you are seeking here – it seems to me that there are three levels here that might helpfully be separated:
1. A level of respect/charity for everyone who is involved in the debate on broad issues. Of course I agree with this. At the same time, you qualify this by referring “smart people, well-intentioned, broadly contested” – I take here you are trying to rule out some categories of folks, like “birthers” or people who claim Obama is a Muslim or a socialist. Or creationists? Or people who claim Iraq had WMD’s? So this first point is always difficult – confirmation bias cuts both ways, suggesting that it can be legitimate to point out the ways in which one’s self-interest and social interest lead one to an ideological bias.
2. A level of acceptance for more complex claims (e.g. about economics or the environment) that suggest a willingness to suspend the possibility of resorting to facts in order to claim another person is “wrong.” So, I think this is evidently right in the need to check one’s claims – often an extremely difficult enterprise in today’s world. But even at this level there are key issues where people hold fallacious beliefs. The unwillingness to engage in routine vaccinations because they are supposedly connected to autism. The resistance to smart electric meters in California because of the claim that they emit radiation that causes cancer. These claims both seem to me to be unable to stand up to any factual analysis. And they are both claims with public consequences.
3. A recognition that many factual claims are wrapped up in larger questions of interpretation and (broadly) philosophy/theology. This is certainly true about claims in economics – virtually nothing there is not dependent on larger assumptions about various things – although “arithmatic” is still arithmatic. Here I think the difference between claims in the “human sciences” – psychology, sociology, economics – should in fact be distinguished from claims in the natural sciences. The “laws” of society and the laws of physics are simply different. Most social issues – though not all – cannot be resolved by referring to natural science data. Nevertheless, they do make reference to events in the world – Obama’s birth! – and while history and historical analysis is surely more complex than physics, it is nevertheless able to come to some kinds of reasonable conclusions, no?
All of this, of course, is quite far from the simple “fact-checker” discourse!
Thanks for the helpful separation, David! You are helping me think more clearly about what I’m trying to say here. Your (1) is sounds basically right, though I’m not really ruling out these people because they are crazy or something (that would indeed be at serious risk of confirmation bias) but more focusing on topics where a significant number of major players in our public discourse are having the debate. This is just more a prudential judgement than anything, but liberals who think Bush ordered the 9/11 attacks or conservatives who think that Obama is a Muslim are advancing arguments which just aren’t taken seriously by a broad range of people and for that reason I think we should just make a prudential judgment to ignore them. We can’t engage every argument…so shouldn’t we focus on the ones that are most seriously engaged in our culture? Your (2) focuses on the issue of complexity, but many people in (1) have very complex arguments for their positions, so I’m not sure this is a separate category. The examples you give here seem to fail the test I want to apply that a view needs to broadly held by seriously people in our public discourse. When it comes to (3) I agree that arithmetic is still arithmetic…but my take is that most of the issues that are debated broadly by serious, smart people of good will in our public discourse do not come down to mistakes of math/logic or similarly demonstrable findings of “fact.”
Yes, yes, “everyone” believes the repeal of Glass-Steagall caused the financial crisis: http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2008-09-23/bill-clinton-on-the-banking-crisis-mccain-and-hillary
And ironically, FactCheck.org itself concludes that “The truth is, however, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act had little if anything to do with the current crisis.” http://factcheck.org/2008/10/who-caused-the-economic-crisis/
Matt – with all due respect – you did not actually read carefully what I actually wrote.
First, I did not write that Glass-Steagall’s repeal alone CAUSED the financial crisis, I said that it created the conditions of possibility for the crisis to happen as it did. The financial crisis we are still in could not have happened as it did in the United States without the repeal of Glass-Steagall. It specifically separated financial structures of banking and investment to prevent such things as an attempt to prevent a repeat of the great depression. they couldn’t have engaged in the risk-taking they did and on the scale they did if Glass-Steagall had been left intact.
Second, you responded with links from 2008? fact checking from 2008? as the crisis is emerging? While I do not put high stock in Bill Clinton’s ability to admit his own political mistakes, I would also be seriously surprised if he repeated the same answers in an interview today. And even if his arrogance did lead to that, it still would not make BIll Clinton correct.
Sorry that my post was a bit confrontational, and the point was not to dispute the role of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in the financial crisis. I think it would be a good idea to break up the big banks even if it had nothing to do with the financial crisis.
Charlie seemed to be suggesting that it is almost impossible to get down to “facts” because they are so deeply embedded in ideological presuppositions, whereas you were sticking up for there being certain undeniable facts. I just thought it was ironic that one of your examples of an undeniable fact was disputed by FactCheck.org, since Charlie’s original point was to question their claim to “facticity.” In a way, your point that the link is inconclusive because it was written in 2008, in the midst of the crisis, illustrates his point! (Although personally I don’t know if the date matters all that much; people generally understood what was going on. People were already making the argument that the absence of Glass-Steagall played a role.)
Also, you were right about Clinton: http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2011/11/08/clinton_and_gingrich_agree_we_miss_glass_steagall.html