Tales of our Times
By JOHN BARTLIT
New Mexico Citizens
for Clean Air & Water
The Los Alamos Daily Post has taken a very useful step forward this summer. The Post began posting an editor’s note after letters to the editor on issues that spark national interest and intrigue.
The advisory reads: Editor’s note: Letters and columns published in the Los Alamos Daily Post reflect the views of the writer. The Post encourages readers to do their own fact checking.
I needed only a moment to concur with the editor’s note. In the next moment, my thoughts turned to the stubborn question: How can readers do their own fact checking? In a very real sense, learning answers to this question fills the timeline of civilization itself. My column explores this ongoing history.
Several points are clear. Civilization is a long series of struggles to find ways to do fact checking, find ways to thwart fact checking, and then find ways to re-strengthen ways to do fact checking. Society has spent ages dealing with these troubles, from which have emerged a few recurring insights. A periodic review of these insights combats troubles like a vaccine.
The first real way to check facts is to do research yourself. Real research is good. One form of research has evolved into sciences, as in natural science, physical sciences, and medical science. Their basis is careful measuring and close observing. Research into history differs from these; it has to rely more on original documents—speeches, letters, diaries, laws, treaties, formalized details. Few readers have the time or skills to take this route on their own.
So readers doing their own fact checking inevitably turn to asking others. A common asset in checking facts is a capable advocate for one point of view. Society has learned to use these assets in two different ways: a frequent use is in ad-lib, ad hoc politics and quite a different use is in formal court trials. Each big party works at news coverage of its own story of how all the honest advocates are on one side, theirs.
Communication starts with a common understanding of terms. An “honest” advocate is one who works hard to get all the facts right. In politics, a “capable” advocate is an honest advocate who brings out the strong points for one side and leaves out its weak points. He also brings out the weak points of the other side and leaves out its strong points. The upshot of these truths is in politics you hardly ever hear the pros and cons—the pluses and minuses—of any issue from any capable advocate.
Using the tangle of advocates to help check facts has yet another quirk. Most often, checking the facts in question soon slides into comparing merits (and flaws} of two big parties. All these natural quirks have long persisted, which led society to create a better way.
An American court trial is a wholly different process that uses advocates for opposing points of view to verify facts with hard evidence (which formally excludes news stories). The trial process uses both sets of capable advocates together to reveal the strong points and the weak points of each side by cross-questioning one another. Then the mix of jurors weighs the pros and cons that the mix of advocates has pried loose. The process is not perfect, but it has the most built-in safeguards for the rights of both sides. Scholastic debate teams also have trial-like contests, with a rigorous topic, strict rules, and formal judging, none of which pertain in political “debates.”
Through the ages, people in all situations have dodged pivotal questions about facts by changing the subject. The court system knows that nothing is ever verified if the subject at hand gets spun like a whirligig. Courts exhibit the kinds of clout it takes to force people to answer key questions on-topic.
History shows the surprising rigor necessary to get facts close to right. For these reasons, verdicts from the court system are three or four times more precise and fair than results of party politics. For sure, not every major point can be settled in court. Still, watching the job done by exacting methods, or their lack, speaks volumes about fact checking.
