The writer does not really understand the facts, and the researcher does not really understand the story

It has been a long time since I have read a brief article with so much information, so much insight and which answers a critical question I have had.  From The Rise and Fall of Facts by Colin Dickey.  It is a refreshing reminder of the older quality journalism which we took so for granted and which stands out in the contrast with the half considered vapid faddish opinions which are passed off today as news reporting.  An excellent opening:

In his 1964 Harper’s Magazine article on fact-checking, “There Are 00 Trees in Russia,” Otto Friedrich related the story of an unnamed magazine correspondent who had been assigned a profile of Egyptian president Mohamed Naguib. As was custom, he wrote his story leaving out the “zips”—facts to be filled in later—including noting that Naguib was “such a modest man that his name did not appear among the 000 people listed in Who’s Who in the Middle East” and that he elected not to live in the royal palace, surrounded “by an 00-foot-high wall.” The editor then sent the article to a fact checker in Cairo to fill in the zips. No answer came and, with the deadline looming, the editor, fuming, rewrote the story so the facts weren’t needed. A week later, the magazine received a telegram from the fact checker:

Am in jail and allowed to send only one cable since was arrested while measuring fifteen foot wall outside farouks palace and have just finished counting thirtyeight thousand five hundred twentytwo names who’s who in mideast.

 I do not know that this insight is an agreed fact, but it is a fascinating insight if true.

Early newspaper printers had more interest in opinion and polemic than objectivity. There was little premium on facts—readers wanted the news, but they wanted it slanted. This began to change with the advent of wire services, where space was precious. In 1854, Daniel H. Craig, the head of the Associated Press, sent out a circular to his agents detailing a request for only “material facts in regard to any matter or event”—in as few words as possible. “All expressions of opinion upon any matters; all political, religious, and social biases; and especially all personal feelings on any subject on the part of the Reporter, must be kept out of his dispatches.” Wire reports couldn’t afford to expend wasted verbiage on opinion or local idiom—they needed to distill newsworthy content to its bare minimum. Doing so was a good business: the Associated Press packaged its content as the raw material that local newspapers could fashion into their own opinion and spin. 

Another marvelous anecdote:

This method of chasing down even the most minute details was not without its critics. When a Time fact checker working on a profile of Peter F. Drucker, the management consultant, asked what kind of dog he had, Drucker described his senile, half-blind, and lame beagle simply as a “hunting dog,” which the checker entered into her notes. The writer of the profile then changed “hunting dog” into “ferocious German Shepherd,” leading Drucker to conclude that Time’s fact-checking system was one where “the writer does not really understand the facts, and the researcher does not really understand the story.”

My frequent lament is that we live in a time when journalists are both largely innumerate and also profoundly ignorant of the liberal arts knowledge which we used to take for granted - knowledge of history, knowledge of the sciences, knowledge of literature, knowledge of the economy, knowledge of the schools of philosophy and religion.  Or at least a facsimile of such knowledge.  

Since the dawn of the digital age, upstart and august publications alike have largely abandoned fact-checking when it comes to online stories. Unlike print, digital content is never completely set in stone, so websites have returned to an ethos closer to that of the New York World’s Bureau of Accuracy and Fair Play, issuing post facto corrections as needed in lieu of prepublication checking.

Because fact-checking these days is primarily the domain of legacy print publications, it retains that sheen of legitimacy and seriousness. To fact check is to assure readers, writers, and editors that great care is being taken—even if that care is, on some level, still superficial. A perfectly checked article, after all, can still be fundamentally wrong about its assumptions or conclusions. Ultimately, facts themselves lack the ability to deliver one to the truth. But unlike beliefs or opinions, facts are quantifiable. They can be agreed upon. They are communal property. That’s why we like them.

Read the whole thing for its amusing stories, interesting information and distinct insights.  And for a nostalgic recollection that this used to be daily fare.  

As an aside - Otto Friedrich, great writer.  I read his Before the Deluge: Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s decades ago and found it enormously informative.  If I am ever able to emerge from this current book diet (due to lack of space), I will be on the hunt for his other books. [Three of which I now discover I already have, once I get to those boxes.

Also, I came across this charming obituary for for Friedrich, Words of Celebration and Remembrance.