The death of fact checking

On truth.

In the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s stunning 2016 win, people would (occasionally) come up to me on the street outside the Washington Post. And, to a person, they had the same basic question: Why didn’t you guys fact check him?

To which I would faithfully (and nicely!) respond: We did! And I would offer to email the person a slew of fact checks done on Trump by not only the Post’s resident fact checker — Glenn Kessler (he of the Pinocchios) — but also by other fact checkers for mainstream media outlets.

What I realized over time — and after having 3 or 4 of these encounters with people — is that they were asking the wrong question without meaning to do so. They didn’t want to know why we hadn’t done fact checks on Trump (we had!). What they really wanted to know was why those fact checks didn’t change things. As in, why didn’t Donald Trump’s record of exaggerations, misstatements and outright falsehoods change the outcome of the election?