Susan Crawford: Now, Kathleen Hall Jamieson who’s one of our most respect­ed writ­ers about the American polit­i­cal con­ver­sa­tion and founder of flackcheck​.org is here to talk to us about what is truth.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson: Actually I’m here to say that’s an irrel­e­vant ques­tion for what factcheck​.org does or flackcheck​.org does. I think when we are deal­ing in the domain of fact-checking, we are try­ing to ensure fideli­ty to the know­able. And that is dif­fer­ent from the larg­er world that is full of all sorts of nor­ma­tive infer­ences about what is true and what is false.

And one of the dan­gers as we nar­row into the small world of what is knowable—fidelity to what is knowable—with stan­dards of evi­dence clear to every­one in the aca­d­e­m­ic com­mu­ni­ty; with accept­able def­i­n­i­tions; with method­olog­i­cal dis­clo­sure; the best avail­able meth­ods; with the con­text of com­pet­ing ideas when there is dis­agree­ment; with dis­clo­sure to pri­ma­ry sources that you can go and check on your own. All of that, the dan­ger is that we are tak­ing the agen­da that is being set by those who are the polit­i­cal play­ers, and by check­ing with­in it ignor­ing the things that are con­se­quen­tial that we ought to be debat­ing, that to some extent exist in anoth­er world which is a world about what is desir­able and good, and what the trade-offs actu­al­ly are and how we should arbi­trate those trade-offs. 

And so I think the ques­tion that we ought to be ask­ing is how do we ensure that we adhere to fac­tic­i­ty where it is pos­si­ble in pol­i­tics so that peo­ple are not deceived while not being dis­tract­ed by that process from the things that mat­ter that may not be as clear­ly arbi­trat­ed on those grounds because they are about nor­ma­tive state­ments. They are about what is desir­able and what is good.

I found­ed factcheck​.org with Brooks Jackson in 2003 because I thought jour­nal­ists had giv­en up their role as cus­to­di­ans of fact about pol­i­tics and had begun to accept he said/she said as if nei­ther side nec­es­sar­i­ly was say­ing some­thing that was more accu­rate than the oth­er side. Sometimes they were both accu­rate but not talk­ing to each other—ships pass­ing in the night. Sometimes nei­ther was accu­rate. Sometimes, one was and one was­n’t. I thought jour­nal­ists could know that a rea­son­able amount of the time and should tell peo­ple that, as a result min­i­miz­ing their con­fu­sion and min­i­miz­ing the cyn­i­cism that comes by reject­ing all of that because you assume that they’re all lying. Or alter­na­tive­ly my par­ti­san is always telling the truth and the oth­er side is always deceiv­ing, which I think is fun­da­men­tal­ly a dis­en­gag­ing move in pol­i­tics. And I think that’s destruc­tive of the demo­c­ra­t­ic structure.

But in that envi­ron­ment, if we let the irrel­e­vant dis­place all of the stuff that actu­al­ly mat­ters, we haven’t served the larg­er good well. flackcheck​.org is an attempt to com­ple­ment factcheck​.org. And we were asked ​“Is there some­thing that peo­ple could do?” I’m going to give you some­thing to do. Go to flackcheck​.org. If you need a QR stick­er I will give you one. On that site you will find a way to con­tact your local broad­cast­er in order to tell your local broad­cast­er, in an email which you can mod­i­fy the mes­sage of, copy to us if you’d like—you can also dis­claim that if you if you prefer—that you want the local broad­cast­er to insist on the accu­ra­cy of third-party ads before that per­son puts them on the station. 

Third-party ads polit­i­cal par­ty ads, spe­cial inter­est group ads, and super PAC ads. Broadcasters don’t have to take those ads. They have the right to reject them out­right. And, if they air them they have the right to insist on their accu­ra­cy. The bur­den of proof… (Law school.) Burden of proof should be on the adver­tiser to estab­lish accu­ra­cy, not the broad­cast sta­tion to estab­lish that it is not accurate. 

And, because they can reject ads for any rea­son, they could also say that ads that are fear­mon­ger­ing, as well as those that are fact-mangling, are not wor­thy of their com­mu­ni­ties and as a result ought not to be on their air­waves. They don’t have an oblig­a­tion to screen these ads this way, but they have the right to do it. 

Now, how do you get them to act on that right? Through nor­ma­tive pres­sure. We know from the psy­chol­o­gy lit­er­a­ture that we val­ue our rep­u­ta­tions, and in a com­mu­ni­ty we val­ue the views of oth­ers in our com­mu­ni­ty. If we looked across this room right now and said if every­one here emailed through this process right now the six tele­vi­sion sta­tions or so in your home media mar­ket (not the media mar­ket here, your home media mar­ket), with your address at the bot­tom, what do you think the psy­cho­log­i­cal impact would be on the sta­tion man­ag­er who sud­den­ly gets those emails? Or the cor­po­rate own­er, who would like the cor­po­rate own­er’s rep­u­ta­tion tied to respect in the community?

We know from our stud­ies of psy­chol­o­gy it could mat­ter. Do this for me. Go on flackcheck​.org. Email your sta­tions. Tell them ​“insist on the accu­ra­cy of ads,” and make that mes­sage per­son­al. We’ve giv­en you a form let­ter. Strip it. Write what upsets you about all of this, and in the process tell them that a whole lot of things that aren’t sub­ject to fac­tic­i­ty prob­lems nonethe­less are nor­ma­tive­ly unde­sir­able. Those ads that inspire fear of oth­ers. Those ads that play on the mar­gin in order to divide us as a com­mu­ni­ty. Those aren’t wor­thy of our com­mu­ni­ties—tell them that. They can make a dif­fer­ence and we can make them make a dif­fer­ence by doing this one sim­ple thing. Please do this for me.

Then, take all those peo­ple who are your fol­low­ers and your friends and your relatives—just mul­ti­ply out by your rel­a­tives. Take your social con­nect­ed­ness now and just get me five more peo­ple to do the same thing and tell them to get me five more peo­ple. And here’s the oth­er thing that we know: very few peo­ple who are sta­tion man­agers ever get let­ters telling them anything except let­ters that are just from kooks. A thought­ful let­ter from some­one who actu­al­ly lives in the com­mu­ni­ty with a real address poten­tial­ly makes a dif­fer­ence, and that’s you. I would ask you to do this. 

What else is flackcheck​.org try­ing to do? The way in which one responds to visu­al­ly evoca­tive mul­ti­modal adver­tis­ing is not real­ly ter­ri­bly amenable to propo­si­tion­al jour­nal­is­tic rebut­tal. It would be more effective—and there is some evi­dence that in fact propo­si­tion­al jour­nal­is­tic rebut­tal may actu­al­ly lay down a trace of the decep­tion, there­by mag­ni­fy­ing it. It would be more effec­tive if we could get into the visu­al chan­nel to counter the visu­al, ver­bal, oral, musi­cal decep­tions. FlackCheck, the sis­ter site of FactCheck (FactCheck, tra­di­tion­al jour­nal­ism) is an attempt to move into the visual/oral domain in order to reframe their meta­com­mu­ni­ca­tion, wher­ev­er pos­si­ble using humor, in order to knock down all the rest of the trac­ing that that ad may have left. So that when you see it you’re more like­ly to defend against it.

And it has a sec­ond premise. The sec­ond premise is that you can learn to detect pat­terns of decep­tion, and that that will be more help­ful to you than learn­ing all those facts. Because for prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es, what you need to know is when you should be wary about some­thing and then check it. And as a result, flackcheck​.org has an attack cam­paign against Abraham Lincoln that is designed to ensure that he is not reelect­ed in 1864 and instead George McClellan is elect­ed. Now, those of you who know your his­to­ry know that would’ve been a cat­a­stro­phe for the nation. A failed gen­er­al would not have been the one to lead us through the end of the Civil War.

Now, as a result in this duplic­i­tous, sleazy, dis­gust­ing attack cam­paign… Put togeth­er by peo­ple who are so ashamed they will not put their names on it, on the flackcheck​.org site, we’re using every duplic­i­tous means we can to make it a ref­er­en­dum on Lincoln instead of a com­par­i­son between Lincoln and McClellan. Because McClellan can’t win the exchange if it’s a two-person vote. That is, this per­son bet­ter than this per­son? No ques­tion, it’s Lincoln. And as a result we are fea­tur­ing every sleazy move that you will rec­og­nize as stan­dard prac­tice in pol­i­tics today, in the hope that across the sleazy attack cam­paign you will come to rec­og­nize the pat­terns of decep­tion that are now rou­tine in polit­i­cal adver­tis­ing. And as a result when you see them, step back and move to a fact-checking func­tion in order to see whether they’re accu­rate or not—that claim is accu­rate or not—but also in the process to increase the like­li­hood that when you see it you will tag the peo­ple who offer it to you as peo­ple not to be trust­ed. If we can tie sleazy mes­sages back to sources, and sources back to can­di­dates, hence the impor­tance of jour­nal­ists con­tin­u­ing to say ​“the pro-Romney super PAC, the pro-Gingrich super PAC” we can increase the like­li­hood that we tie the can­di­date with the duplic­i­tous moves. Easier to do that I think with pat­terns of decep­tion than with indi­vid­ual ele­ments that’re fac­tu­al­ly inaccurate.

flackcheck​.org is try­ing to do one more thing, we’re try­ing to break the echo cham­ber. We’re try­ing to do that by increas­ing the like­li­hood that if you want to see insta­bil­i­ty by the oth­er side, you will have to in our WoW, Way out of Whack attack sec­tion of the web site, also look at com­pa­ra­ble insta­bil­i­ty by your own. Since your enclave into your own media uni­verse is increas­ing­ly through all of the tech­no­log­i­cal devices avail­able (that’s being mag­ni­fied as you know), the like­li­hood that you’re going to think that the oth­er side is con­sis­tent­ly non-factual and unciv­il is very high, but that your own nev­er is is also very high. Well in fact, both sides do it. Whether one is a lit­tle more, a lit­tle less…open to ques­tion but both sides do it. And so if you’ve only heard that Joe Wilson said, ​“You lie,” about Barack Obama, we’re going to make sure that you’ve heard Democrats say­ing it about George W. Bush. If you’ve only heard about Hitler ref­er­ences against gov­er­nor Walker, we’re going to make sure you’ve heard about Hitler ref­er­ences against Barack Obama. So what we’re going to try to do is estab­lish the nor­ma­tive under­pin­nings of what a civ­il cul­ture looks like by show­ing you breach­es and then ridi­cul­ing them, to try to get you to dis­tance back. Rush Limbaugh, thank you for a case study in the last few days.