A critical year for fact checking

There’s been a lot of crap flying in the Presidential campaign this year. Fact checking was important in the ’04 election, and the lack of it led to the term “Swift-boating”. I started browsing fact-checking websites [1] to see what I could find from people with more resources than I have to dig into issues. I was interested in the rumor flying around about Palin and “book banning” when she was mayor; I was also interested in more details about her views on science and creationism.

I quickly learned from the Annenberg site that the book banning thing was pretty much baseless, stemming from only a conversation that could be interpreted as implying that Palin was interested in banning library books. I also learned about a follow-up quote about her statement at the debate on creationism [2]. That quote was not something I could dig up in my search for news articles about this issue, largely because of all the crap that floated to the top of search engines after Palin’s appearance on the McCain ticket.

The quote, according to Annenberg, is:

I don’t think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn’t have to be part of the curriculum.[Anchorage Daily News, Oct. 6, 2006]

That’s a more nuanced view of the issue, that the discussion has a place in the classroom but not the curriculum. Certainly, a view like that would have been more appropriate in front of the large viewership of the debate, and not tucked into a paper article days later. If she had this view, it’s unfortunate that she didn’t say so. If she came up with this afterward, that gives me a comfort but not a whole lot. It is the measure of a person to see what they say in front of one crowd and not another.

Unfortunately, my goal of sticking to issues and avoiding rumors has a flaw: when a rumor pertains to an issue what can you do? You do the best you can – you hunt and dig and try to find corroborating evidence. The internet is good for this, but it also promotes pop crap to the top. I still don’t feel great about Palin’s views, but the picture gets muddier with more information. It always does.

[1] http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/sliming_palin.html
[] Palin, Pawlenty, Science, Creationism