A recent surge in fact-checking in the MSM turns out to be
pretty popular. Who knew? The trend started with NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen's "
simple fix," and was picked up first by ABC's Jake Tapper on
This Week, then by the always inept CNN and
Howard Kurtz that managed to
take a good idea and
apply journalistic "balance" to it. Here's Jay Rosen's
timeline of the whole thing, including the ridiculous refusal by David Gregory, host of MSNBC's
Meet The Press to adopt it, saying that viewers can fact-check "on their own terms," whatever that means. This prompted the creation of
Meet The Facts, a website attempting to crowdsource the fact-checking that Gregory refuses to do, for whatever reason. (I apologize for for the link barrage on a new topic - I had a draft post about this a month ago and just realized I never posted it. This topic is important, however, and the links are well worth reading, particularly the timeline.)
Right around the time David Gregory said no, Colbert even
jumped in on the action. (I linked it because embedding the video isn't working for some reason.)
Anyway, so the fact checking is
catching on, and the AP is noticing its popularity. Amazingly, they've even noticed that Kurtz's version of "both sides lie equally," "balanced" fact-checking is
not what people want.
