Aiming to make sense of a relentless surge of political advertisements, journalistic fact-checking projects in Colorado reached large numbers of Front Range voters, who found those endeavors to be generally effective in this year鈥檚 midterm election season, a CU News Corps/Aspen Research survey found.
Despite a one-sided ad-to-fact check ratio, 79 percent of the 400 surveyed registered voters in nine counties along Colorado鈥檚 Front Range said they had watched or read at least one fact check, such as the 9News 鈥淭ruth Test.鈥 Two out of three (66 percent) said those fact checks were effective at helping them frame an issue.
The findings provide moral support to journalists in Colorado and the U.S., who in the next 23 months will again take on the powerful machine of political advertisers as the 2016 presidential race rolls around.
鈥淣ews organizations are seeing that these things are popular and that it鈥檚 impactful, effective and well done,鈥 said the American Press Institute鈥檚 Jane Elizabeth, who travels across the country encouraging newsrooms to step up their fact-checking efforts.
Elizabeth believes it is up to journalists to provide the missing context to non-stop political advertising.
To put Colorado鈥檚 political journalists鈥 fact-checking efforts into perspective, CU News Corps also analyzed ad buys during the 35-day period leading up to Election Day. It revealed that the four major TV stations in the Denver market 鈥 NBC 9, CBS 4, ABC 7 and Fox 31 鈥 aired almost 200 hours of political advertisements from Oct. 1 to Nov. 4, charging $40 million in fees.
This election cycle, Denver was among the top media markets by ad volume, according to Kantar Media/CMAG, underscoring Colorado鈥檚 national importance as a swing-state. With so much at stake, the campaigns frequently used negative ads. According to the Cook Political Report, Colorado led the nation in negative ad occurrences throughout all Senate and Governors鈥 races.
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Colorado newsrooms tried to match the ad pummeling with varying degrees of commitment to fact checking. 9News led the field with eight different 鈥淭ruth Tests鈥 in that same 35-day period. 7News, on the other hand, didn鈥檛 air a single fact check.
Journalists and media analysts continue to debate the merits of fact-checking projects and their limited resources in the face of seemingly endless streams of money flowing into hundreds of hours of political advertising.
The ad-to-fact-check ratio, critics argue, makes the journalistic efforts a quixotic tilt at windmills.
鈥淕etting called out for an ad that鈥檚 blatantly false isn鈥檛 all that humiliating,鈥 said Eli Stokols, a political reporter at Fox31 in Denver. 鈥淭he humiliation doesn鈥檛 get amplified to the same degree that the ads do.鈥
Brendan Nyhan is a political scientist and media critic at Dartmouth University, and a regular contributor to 鈥淭he Upshot,鈥 the New York Times鈥 data-driven politics and policy analysis website. He asks fact-checkers 鈥 and their funders 鈥 to temper their cynicism.
鈥淭he fact that we haven鈥檛 gotten rid of inaccuracy in politics doesn鈥檛 mean that fact-checking has failed,鈥 he said.
PolitiFact creator Bill Adair, a journalism and public policy professor at Duke University, explained in an email that, 鈥淭he goal of fact-checking is not to get politicians to stop lying. The goal is, like all journalism, to inform democracy. Fact-checkers do that extremely well and it has empowered voters throughout the world with important information.鈥
Survey: 9News鈥 commitment to fact checking pays off
The CU News Corps/Aspen Research data supports Nyhan鈥檚 suggestion. The poll surveyed 400 registered voters along the northern Front Range 鈥 those people who are generally more likely to seek out information and engage in political conversation.
One central finding of the poll: The efforts that 9News, the market leader in Denver metro area television news, and political reporter Brandon Rittiman put into fact checking paid off. Thirty-nine percent of respondents said they had watched at least one 鈥淭ruth Test.鈥
That number was by far the highest among all major fact-checkers. FactCheck.org, a non-partisan fact-checking project at the University of Pennsylvania鈥檚 Annenberg Public Policy Center, and CBS4鈥檚 鈥淩eality Check鈥 (both 18 percent) followed. An additional 12 percent mentioned PolitiFact, and 8 percent had read a Denver Post 鈥淔act Lab鈥 story.
More good news for avid fact checkers, especially in television news: Their medium still makes up the single-largest information source for Front Range voters. One in three, or 33 percent, said they used television news to inform themselves about politics and the election, followed by online media (20 percent) and newspapers (12 percent). Only 1 percent, on the other hand, referred to advertising as an information source, suggesting that voters don鈥檛 take the claims of political ads as gospel.
Although 79 percent of respondents had read or watched a fact check, and 66 percent found them to be effective, the real impact of fact checking on the behavior of campaigns is hard to assess.
鈥淭hink of it like a state trooper parked on the side of the highway,鈥 Bill Adair, the PolitiFact creator, wrote in an email. 鈥淗ow many drivers slow down and don鈥檛 break the speed limit because they know the state trooper is there? Probably lots. But there is no way to put a number on it.鈥
Peter Hanson, a political scientist at the University of Denver, said the problem with fact checks is that they don鈥檛 reach all of the audience they are targeting.
鈥淭he people who are reading those are likely to be highly partisan and have their minds already made up anyway,鈥 he said. 鈥淧eople who are genuinely persuadable are generally a little less engaged in politics. It is possible that they would read that and that it would factor into their decision, but really people鈥檚 decisions are less likely to be motivated by that kind of thing and more motivated by a general sense of how the economy is doing and their overall impression of how the president is doing.鈥
Breakdown of ad buys by station shows: Political advertising drowns fact checks
A closer look at each of Denver鈥檚 four TV stations鈥 ad buys illustrates just how daunting a task fact checking was for Colorado鈥檚 political journalists.
CU News Corps analyzed each station鈥檚 filings with the Federal Communications Commission from Oct. 1 to Election Day on Nov. 4 and found that in those 35 days alone, NBC 9 aired almost 60 hours of political ads, raking in $15.25 million (minus agency commission fees). In the same time period, 9News ran eight 鈥淭ruth Tests.鈥
The ratios don鈥檛 look much better for the other stations either.
CBS 4 flooded its airwaves with 36 hours, or $11.29 million worth of political ads. The news section responded with what one website operations staffer believed to be four 鈥淩eality Checks,鈥 although he said the station no longer had access to a comprehensive archive of all of the 鈥淩eality Check鈥 clips and airtimes.
Fox 31 collected $6.2 million for airing 41 hours of ads from the likes of Cory Gardner, John Hickenlooper and company. Its political reporters churned out half a dozen editions of its 鈥淔act or Fiction鈥 segment during that time.
And ABC 7鈥檚 advertising department sold the most political ads of all four stations, with 61.5 hours for $7.54 million, while its newsroom didn鈥檛 do a single fact check.
Kelty Logan, an advertising professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, said with so much money in the system and political advertising protected as political speech, there is a lot of pressure for candidates to come up with the most negative campaign to motivate the base.
鈥淪lanting the truth has become the flavor of the day,鈥 she said.
But for some, even fact checking each and every political ad wouldn鈥檛 solve what they believe to be the crux of the format.
鈥淭he problem I have with allowing so much of someone鈥檚 coverage to be dominated by fact checking ads is that when you add them all up, at the end of the day there is so much oversaturation,鈥 said Eli Stokols, Fox 31鈥檚 political reporter who did several fact checks in early October because his editors had asked him to do at least a few for them to have a presence on the air. 鈥溾滶ven if you fact check every single one diligently, it all just gets too cluttered, messy and difficult for your audience to really keep all these different strings of research straight.鈥
Newsrooms struggle to balance economic constraints with labor-intensive fact-checking efforts
Economic considerations led 7News investigative reporter Marshall Zelinger to abandon his 鈥淭ruth Tracker鈥 segment this year, with only one exception in July, after it had made regular appearances on the air during the 2012 presidential campaign.
For CU-Boulder political communication specialist Elizabeth Skewes, such a decision is no surprise.
鈥淚t takes a lot of time, effort and funding to do good fact checking 鈥 and to stay on top of all the claims,鈥 she said. 鈥淚f you don鈥檛 have enough resources and you鈥檙e only spot checking, it can almost do a disservice.鈥
Zelinger said scheduling conflicts didn鈥檛 allow him to commit the time to the 鈥淭ruth Tracker.鈥 He said he kept bringing up the idea but was always beaten by the news of the day. He said he was not aware of any management decisions to bring in staff or hand the segment to another reporter.
But fact checking isn鈥檛 exclusively a TV news endeavor.
As Chuck Plunkett was preparing for the presidential debate on the University of Denver campus in 2012, the Denver Post politics editor started talking to university representatives about a potential collaboration to start fact checking the increasing number of political ads. Two years later, Plunkett taught a pilot program at the University of Denver, and a group of five students started contributing to the 鈥淔act Lab.鈥 Between Oct. 1 and Nov. 4, they published eight fact checks on the Post鈥檚 politics blog, 鈥淭he Spot.鈥
Plunkett believes the media should do more. He said campaigns can hire 鈥渧ery slick, sophisticated people鈥 to produce the ads. 鈥淭hey can create emotions and emotional reactions in the viewer that are hard to parse.鈥
The public, specifically the undecided voters who want to use their vote as well as possible, rely on journalists and fact checks, Plunkett added.
鈥淭he genius, if you can use that word, behind the better ads 鈥 and there are many good ones 鈥 is that they tell you enough of the truth to make it sound somewhat credible. Even an intelligible person with access to the internet would have to go through a few rabbit holes to figure out if the claims are valid.鈥
Plunkett said the Post鈥檚 pilot program could serve as a role model. 鈥淕iven the fact that newsrooms everywhere have just been crippled by layoffs, it鈥檚 good to look to other venues to fulfill that role, as long as they are credible 鈥 like a university.鈥
National fact checkers fight over merits of rulings but agree that fact checks do good
FactCheck.org has proven that an independent fact-checking project at a university can be successful 鈥 even on the national level.
Director Eugene Kiely said the goal to change a candidate鈥檚 behavior is unrealistic. Instead, he strives to be a voter advocate.
FactCheck.org publishes stories on a wide variety of channels, from the USA Today print edition, website and its AdTracker app to Politico.com and the Bing News App.
Kiely and his four and a half staffers (one of them works only two days a week) can use the freedom that comes with operating outside the economic boundaries of a newsroom to rethink the approach to fact-checking.
In their case, that means getting rid of ratings. Kiely calls 鈥減inocchios鈥 and 鈥渉alf true鈥 labels arbitrary.
鈥淵ou really can鈥檛 justify them,鈥 he said. 鈥淲hat鈥檚 the difference between half true and mostly true? It becomes subjective, and we deal with things objectively as much as we can.鈥
Sean Gorman disagrees. The PolitiFact Virginia reporter fact-checked the state鈥檚 neck-and-neck Senate race between Ed Gillespie and Mark Warner. He also took a close look at Dave Brat鈥檚 primary upset of then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.
鈥淲hen folks disagree with the ruling, they will email and oftentimes come up with a really good rationale,鈥 he said. 鈥淧eople engage with the rulings. That鈥檚 where the effectiveness comes in. People take in the information.鈥
Gorman said in the weeks leading up to the election, traffic on the PolitiFact Virginia website spiked.
He and Kiely agree that fact checking has its impact. The FactCheck.org director vividly remembers two instances from the 2012 presidential campaign trail. One was when Republican candidate Mitt Romney dropped the talking point that his company had created 100,000 jobs after eager fact checkers had pointed out that he couldn鈥檛 support the number. The other example was President Obama鈥檚 attempt to decry his challenger as the 鈥渙utsourcer in-chief鈥 who shipped jobs to Mexico and China. Repeatedly, fact checkers made it clear that while Romney later invested in the company in question, Bain Capital, he wasn鈥檛 doing work for them at the time. Obama stopped using the label.
Campaigns entering the fact-checking ring could be a game-changer
Whether it is the presidential race or a toss-up Senate contest in Colorado, as fact-checkers point out inconsistencies in campaign claims, getting labeled as biased by the candidate鈥檚 supporters and partisan hacks comes with the territory.
Dartmouth鈥檚 Brendan Nyhan said people are programmed to see the media as biased against them.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 the cost of doing business in a partisan era. You have to be willing to take your lumps.鈥
Twenty-nine percent of respondents in the CU News Corps/Aspen Research survey said fact checks in Colorado anno 2014 were biased toward liberal views, while another 24 percent had sensed a bias toward conservative convictions.
Increasingly, political campaigns commandeer fact checks and re-spin them.
During debates and on the candidates鈥 websites, staffers fact-check their opponents in real time. But their goal isn鈥檛 the truth 鈥 it鈥檚 to convince yet another voter by stretching the truth the other way.
They also recycle favorable portions of fact checks to help prove a point in attack ads, hoping that the fact-check reference will lend credibility to their claim.
PolitiFact Virginia鈥檚 Sean Gorman said the campaigns understand that fact-checking is becoming a part of the political landscape.
鈥淎 lot of times we see our fact checks cited by the campaigns 鈥 and sometimes not correctly,鈥 he said. 鈥淚f they are mischaracterizing something we have said it is up to us to correct the record. Interestingly enough, when they do it, it becomes fodder for additional fact checks. it is kind of like being part of the conversation.鈥
But the API鈥檚 Jane Elizabeth said fact-check 鈥渃ould become a bad word鈥 if campaigns continue to misuse it.
While fact-check advocates like her say that now more than ever journalists need to be the guardians of truth, siding with voters to tell them what鈥檚 right and wrong, others are not so sure if that has all the hoped-for effects.
Denver pollster Floyd Ciruli is one of those skeptics. He says voters are weary of hearing that all politicians are liars. He believes fact checks, however noble their cause, are contributing to that sentiment.
鈥淚t just reinforces the fact that we all are being convinced that there is little honesty out there.鈥
But Nyhan said, 鈥渨hen it comes to matters of fact, when the accuracy of a claim can be assessed, you are doing your reader or viewer a disservice if you don鈥檛 try to help them sort through the evidence.鈥
As he was doing research on fact-checking, Nyhan found proof that it actually has a positive effect.
鈥淟egislators who received reminders of the threat of fact-checking were less likely to have the accuracy of their claims questioned publicly,鈥 he said.
In the end, even with the effectiveness of fact checking hard to assess, the general question is: How many more accidents would there be if the state trooper wasn鈥檛 parked at the side of the highway?