Perspective | Fact checking the primary elections

The campaign for the United States presidency is reaching a feverish pitch.

And as the group of Democratic and Republican candidates diminishes, the level of swift-boating and misleading statements will only continue to rise, according to Brooks Jackson, director of the Washington D.C.-based nonprofit whistle-blowing organization FactCheck.org, which is run through Penn's Annenberg Public Policy Center.

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"What you've seen so far is nothing" compared to what will likely happen as the nominees for the Democratic and Republican parties become certain, Jackson said.

And after Super Tuesday on Feb. 5 - when over 20 states will hold primary elections - it is likely that one or both parties will have their nominees "sewn up," he said.

That, Jackson said, is when "attack ads going after nominees on either side" will increase.

Attack ads are not always a bad thing, he said. However, when ads include false or misleading statements, "democracy is being short-circuited."

"If people get into office and whole swaths of the public hold false beliefs, it's going to be tough for even the wisest leaders to make good public policy," Jackson added.

"Candidates are not holding public policy seminars," he said. "They are trying to persuade the voters by arguing as a lawyer would argue before a jury. They're giving you at best one side of the story and at worst a made up story."

That's where FactCheck comes in.

"We give the voters facts that sometimes some of the candidates find inconvenient," Jackson said. "We probably get in the way of convincing everybody that they're absolutely right and their opponents are absolutely wrong."

During the Jan. 21 Democratic debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C., for example, candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama took turns attacking one another.

Obama said Clinton had spent time as "a corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart."

Clinton retaliated, claiming Obama had worked as an attorney for one of his campaign contributors, Antoin Rezko, "in his slum landlord business in inner-city Chicago."

The next day, FactCheck posted a response to both accusations.

It said Clinton did sit on the Wal-Mart board for six years, but that other board members said she often clashed with Sam Walton, advocating strongly for women in the workplace and environmental policy.

Clinton's attack on Obama, FactCheck said, was "untrue."

Obama was associated with the law firm working with Rezko, but "never represented [him] directly," they wrote.

Penn students are learning to fact check, too.

College junior Allie Berkson, who interned at FactCheck last summer, said her internship was particularly exciting because the primary season was just warming up.

"It's amazing how off people sometimes are," when it comes to politicians' misleading statements, Berkson said.

And these misconceptions may otherwise never go unchallenged.

"There hasn't been a lot of fact checking by journalists during this campaign," said Larry Eichel, a senior writer who covers politics at the Philadelphia Inquirer.

"We're down to seven or eight candidates . and only maybe four that have any reasonable chance" at the nomination, Eichel said. "People are starting to pay more attention to the facts."

False information about a candidate can spread quickly via television ads and viral e-mails with untraceable sources, Jackson said.

To thoroughly research and accurately report on misleading information "takes time to do right," Jackson said.

FactCheck usually publishes reports within a day of a debate or the release of an ad or e-mail.

"If you want to be relevant, you have to put up information quickly," Eichel said.

"Trying to be the truth-tellers in situations like this is an important role for the political media," he added.

Jackson agrees.

"The core job of a free press is to inform the elector," he said.

However, the watchdog is not without its critics.

Some say that, instead of debunking false statements, FactCheck may inadvertently reinforce that information by bringing it to the public's attention.

"That's always a worry," Jackson said. "It's true human beings have this tendency to remember a claim and not remember a person telling them it's all bunk."

During the Republican campaign in Iowa, the Mike Huckabee campaign ran an ad several times on television after claiming that they would not run it - accidentally, according to their office - that attacked fellow candidate Mitt Romney for being "dishonest."

The FactCheck staff initially decided not to critique the ad, although it contained "misleading" information.

"By criticizing its claims we would have to repeat them and expose them to a wider audience," FactCheck staff wrote.

However, since the attack ad did end up on the air several times, they changed their minds.

"You have to trust people to read what you write and understand it," Eichel said.

In today's wired world, fact checking is more important than ever.

The Internet has made it easier for campaigns to "dredge up what politicians have said in the past and exploit it," he added.

However, when it comes to FactCheck, the Internet has also made it easier to check up on factual accuracy and to combat false statements.

The advantage of a Web site with archived articles is that people can look for information "when they're interested," Jackson said.

He believes that fact checking in the media is not as common a practice as it should be.

The fact checking world needs "experienced editors and reporters who are covering public affairs every day," he said.

At FactCheck, "we're starting from scratch."

A news organization, he explained, has more background information to start with.

"They're drawing on a deep well of experience and knowledge," Jackson said.

To that end, he says he is happy that some publications have begun to take a greater interest in fact checking.

Newsweek.com reprints all of FactCheck's articles and occasionally will post links over to MSNBC.com, Jackson said, allowing the organization to "reach out beyond our own Web site."

Other news organizations have developed their own fact-checking Web sites.

The St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly, both of Florida, have partnered up to establish Politifact.com, a "less stuffy and academically oriented" version of FactCheck, Jackson said.

The Washington Post has its own fact-checking blog, The FactChecker, run by Michael Dobbs, known for his work as a diplomat, columnist and author.

In a similar vein, the Fels Institute of Government recently launched TheNextGovernment.com, a Web site that monitors and analyzes the presidential candidates' campaign promises to hold them accountable when they enter office.

"This Web site allows interested voters and analysts to carefully study how the presidential candidates plan on filling the job of chief executive," Donald Kettl, Fels director and founder of TheNextGovernment.com, said in a press release.

It "also provides a way to weigh the campaigns on issues that often don't get a lot of public attention but which will prove enormously important once one of these candidates is sworn in," he said in the release.

Even with these competing Web sites, "FactCheck will only continue to be a great resource" Berkson said.

FactCheck has been recognized twice by Time.com as one of the "25 Sites We Can't Live Without."

The site will continue posting updates throughout the primary season and the general election.

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