I was a fact-checker. What happened to truth-telling?
Fact-checking is much in the news now. It gets a bad rap from people who want the freedom to lie and prevaricate, wishing not to be held accountable for telling the truth.
Yet this basic insistence on accuracy has been a bedrock of journalism for more than a century, since sensationalist newspapers led to the need for more factual media. Today, with easy access to the internet, verifying accuracy is so much simpler than in earlier times.
Fact-checking was my first job in publishing. In the mid-1980s I was part of the research department at California Magazine, formerly New West, based in Beverly Hills.
The magazine’s bank of writers, some on staff and some freelance, was impressive then and is more so now, as most went on to stellar careers. We published Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Ruth Reichl, Delia Ephron, Tom Christie, Greil Marcus, Joe Morgenstern, Kenneth Turan, Rian Milan, Elizabeth Kaye, and Ehud Yonay, whose “Top Guns” story for California inspired the 1986 Tom Cruise movie. We were privileged to work with these talented storytellers and help them ensure they wrote the truth.
There were three of us fact checkers, and our only job was to make sure every single piece of information the magazine published, no matter how small and seemingly insignificant, was verified before it was printed. The workdays were long, often stretching into the night, but the work was challenging and rewarding, something you could sink your teeth into.
When I received the draft of a story, I underlined in blue every fact that could be checked and in red anything that could possibly be libelous or scandalous. I then set about trying to verify everything in blue and consulted the staff lawyer on the parts underlined in red. He advised on what had to be deleted or altered. In those days, one tiny change meant re-typesetting the entire story. It was a lot of trouble to be absolutely accurate.
For the blue words, our verification process involved consulting sources such as maps, dictionaries and other reference books, and newspaper clips, often requiring a trip to the local library or the morgue of the Los Angeles Times. We also called people who were mentioned or quoted in stories. It was the writers’ responsibility to give us the phone numbers for every person.
I remember calling photographer Ansel Adams because we were running a story about his meeting with Ronald Reagan in a Beverly Hills hotel suite. As governor of California, Reagan had made a comment about the environment that is variously remembered as “If you’ve seen one redwood, you’ve seen them all” or “How many trees do you need to see?” downplaying the importance of conservation and the environment.
The remark infuriated Adams, who had spent his career photographing the majesty of nature in the American West. He had requested the meeting. When I called him, he confirmed that it had indeed taken place and said, “The man’s an idiot.”
For one story, we asked an Oscar-nominated actor to keep a diary of his life from the time of nomination until the awards were given. He listed the names of the people who went with him to the Oscars ceremony, including his agent and his agent’s girlfriend. When I called the agent, he said yes, he was part of the group, but insisted there was no girlfriend and that we’d be in trouble if we said there was.
There was almost no limit to what we did to chase the truth of the tiniest fact. To verify the location of a 1930s Hollywood night club, I spent half a day, including the commute, consulting the Los Angeles Phone Book Library on Wilshire Blvd. near the Wiltern Theater. I found the directory from the year mentioned in the story, located the listing for the club, and confirmed the address. A morning away from the office just to ensure the truth of one fact.
The authors of the stories were generally grateful for our work and gracious in accepting the changes we found necessary. Delia Ephron came in person to go over with me any questions regarding what she had written. The writers were relieved to know we had their backs. They weren’t seeking to lie, mislead, or misrepresent, or to damage the magazine’s reputation for truth-telling.
When stories, such as a very early exposé on the AIDS epidemic, angered those mentioned in the story, we were able to respond to their complaints simply by presenting the facts we had verified. They stayed angry, but we felt confident in our reply.
When anyone else balks at being fact-checked, they are simply saying they want the unfettered opportunity to lie, to say whatever they please. Isn’t that still wrong? The motive is not just to mislead but to manipulate. It’s a sleazy tactic, and I’m amazed that it doesn’t cause more of an uproar. In most cases, fact-checking is fairly simple now. When you doubt the accuracy of the internet, you can return to the old-fashioned methods for verification.
We should be outraged when those speaking to us don’t want to be held accountable. Otherwise, what have we become? Could there be a redder flag?
