Tag Archives: USA Today

Factchecking the Fact checkers: USA Today’s Issues with Factchecking

Factchecking is a vital part of any meaningful discourse – any academic paper will be riddled with citations so you can check if the author is making true claims, my articles, such as this one, are riddled with links so that you can verify that I am not simply making up facts to fit my purpose, and when someone is speaking or tweeting you may need someone to go in and verify what is being said. Part of freedom of thought is that we can have varied opinions on different matters, but it should be bound by a set of facts or, at least, similar sets of facts differing in personal experiences. This consistency in what is real and what is not makes it so that we can have productive discourses on what actions to take because we can simply look at the logic of another person and see whether or not it follows – and sometimes breaking it apart involves bringing in other facts that were originally excluded. This common foundation upon a factual reality allows for logic to be unimpeded.

Read more