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The New Yorker’s chief fact-checker on how to get things right in the era of ‘post-truth’ - Columbia Journalism Review

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This past year, the Oxford Dictionaries chose “post-truth” as its word of the year in a nod to the idea that objective facts “have become less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Indeed, the ideas of truth, fact, “alternative facts,” and “fake news” have become major preoccupations of the political moment. It’s led to a rise in fact-checking as a profession, but not all fact-checks are equal. Just ask Peter Canby, a stalwart of the legendary fact-checking department of The New Yorker since 1978. In a wide-ranging conversation that took place in a packed classroom of the Columbia Journalism School Monday night, Canby recounted how fact-checking has changed over the years under three different New Yorker editors: William Shawn, Tina Brown, and David Remnick. In that time, the team has doubled, and now at least half of New Yorker fact-checkers speak a second language, including two who speak Russian and another fluent in Arabic. The pace of

The New Yorker’s chief fact-checker on how to get things right in the era of ‘post-truth’ - Columbia Journalism Review --> b The Delacorte Lectures b Sign up for the daily CJR newsletter . This past year, the Oxford Dictionaries chose “post-truth” as its word of the year in a nod to the idea that objective facts “have become less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Indeed, the ideas of truth, fact, “alternative facts,” and “fake news” have become major preoccupations of the political moment. It’s led to a rise in fact-checking as a profession, bu

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