civics: The decline of journalism may have hit rock bottom with the end of Meta’s censorship regime
The deceptive labeling—often self-deceptive, as Mr. Cillizza evidences—is what makes political fact-checking corrupt. Opinion journalism is a respectable craft, provided it is honestly presented as such, as this article is at the top of the page. Political fact-checkers could satisfy this objection by simply marking their work as “opinion.” But that would shatter the pretense of authoritativeness.
It would also invite readers to judge the work by the standards of opinion journalism, by which it is uniformly inferior. I’ve spent my career as a writer and editor of opinion, and I’ve cast a critical eye on political fact-checking since 2008. I have never read a fact-check article that impressed me with its enterprise, originality, passion, boldness, depth, flair or wit—the qualities that make for good opinion writing. “Pinocchios” and “pants on fire” were amusing at first, but the joke wore thin within a few years.
