The Original Fact Checker: How To Know What's True with The Post's Glenn Kessler (Election Repost)

In Reality is taking a summer break, so this is an episode we’ve posted before, but I thought that in the middle of a US Presidential campaign, it might be a good idea to review my conversation with Glenn Kessler, editor of the Washington Post’s Fact Checker column and arguably the creator of the fact checking industry. 

In the Post, Glenn and his team have been holding both campaigns to account with equal intensity. Thanks to them, Post readers are now aware, for example, of Tim Walz’s exaggerations of his military record, as well as the barrage of conspiratorial falsehoods coming from the Trump campaign. 

In the conversation, Glenn makes the point that fact-checks can only take us so far. You the reader have to be willing to accept facts that don’t conform to your beliefs. That last mile, if you will, of factuality, is not easy to travel. But it’s our responsibility as voters in a consequential election, and ours alone. After all, one way to make your vote count—and the only way you control entirely—is to make sure it’s based on truth. 

Website - free episode transcripts
www.in-reality.fm

Produced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapien
soundsapien.com

Alliance for Trust in Media
alliancefortrust.com