Memo to David Gregory
[Via Balloon Juice]
Fact-checking can be a good business strategy (Greg Sargent):
Has anyone else noticed that the Associated Press has been doing some strong fact-checking work lately, aggressively debunking all kinds of nonsense, in an authoritative way, without any of the usual he-said-she-said crap that often mars political reporting?
I asked AP Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier about this, and he told me something fascinating, if not all together unexpected: Their fact-checking efforts are almost uniformly the most clicked and most linked pieces they produce.
Journalistic fact-checking with authority, it turns out, is popular. Who woulda thunk it?
I’ve heard various theories about David Gregory’s refusal to allow fact-checking on “Meet the Press”, but none of them make sense to me.
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The most clicked and the most linked. Real facts are actually newsworthy. Who woulda thunk it, exactly!
It has taken them this long to figure out that a lot of folks just want the facts. Well, at least some journalists seem to have the right idea.Perhaps there is hope for some of the news media after all.
A Man With A Ph.D. 