WHO WILL FACT-CHECK THE FACT-CHECKERS?

The currency of politics is what we might call “dubious statements” — things that have some basis in truth, but which, through sins of omission or commission, are spun into better support for one’s cause than the original material really offers. They are not as clearly false as, say, me claiming to be the Queen of Slovenia. But they are biased. Correcting for that bias is a tricky business, because of course, the fact-checkers themselves have biases.

Numerous people have argued, correctly in my view, that fact-checking sites share the center-left slant of the mainstream media itself. Dubious statements need to be clarified by context, and fact-checkers often seem to be more generous in providing the context for liberal speakers than for conservative ones. Nor, as Juvenal wryly suggested millennia ago, is there any permanent solution for that problem. If you appoint guardians for the guardian class, then you have to worry about your superguardians.

You can, of course, limit the problem. The more narrow the powers of the guardians, the less you have to worry about abuse. Facebook seems to understand this, since they apparently intend to confine their fact-checks to “very clear-cut falsehoods.” But just how clearly can we cut?

I don’t know how they’ll cut, but I know how they’ll lean.