Washington Post ‘Fact Checker’ Checks Out

As the Washington Post continues to evolve under Trump 2.0 and deal with an ever worsening financial situation, another long time columnist has decided to take a buyout offer and move to Substack which has become the home to unemployed journalists as well as aspiring writers hoping to make a living from subscription revenues.

Glenn Kessler, who wrote most of the Washington Post’s ‘Fact Checker’ columns for nearly three decades, left behind a legacy of inconsistent ‘fact checking’  and despite his claims that he was independent, or at least trying to be, the record shows that he was far from that goal.

In his Substack debut, Kessler says that he lobbied for the return of an Ombudsman at the Post. The Ombudsman position was held by an employee of the paper to field reader complaints and investigate them to see if they were valid. Most notably, they were to investigate instances of bias in the paper and act accordingly, though their recommendations had no authority to correct the record if that’s what they determined. The Post had an Ombudsman from 1970-2013 and then switched to a Reader Representative which was even more of a toothless tiger than the Ombudsman. The idea of an Ombudsman is great, but when they are paid by the newspaper, their independence is automatically compromised.

The same could be said for Kessler’s ‘Fact Checker’ column, which preached independence but was funded by the liberal paper in which it appeared. Yes, the Fact Checker did give the occasional four Pinocchio rating to some biased liberal reporting but more often than not, he fed the Post’s liberal audience what they wanted.

In his own monolithic farewell in the Post, he seemingly unintentionally admitted as much.

“Many on the left and right argue that fact-checking is merely another form of opinion journalism, disguised behind a veneer of objectivity. But research found that the three main American fact-checkers—The Fact Checker, PolitiFact and FactCheck.org—reached the same conclusion on similar statements at least 95 percent of the time. Of course, some might say this only shows we are all biased in the same way.”

This is especially true when the other fact-checking sites are liberal.

When I was working for Accuracy in Media, we put fact-checking at a premium and yes there was probably some bias that inevitably resulted, but we were also very transparent and were willing to admit our mistakes, something the liberal media never does.

Only time will tell if Kessler can make a living on Substack where he will be free to espouse his liberal viewpoints more freely, but in an era of dubious fact-checking and without the megaphone of The Washington Post it will be a long slog.