It’s hard for fact-checkers to debunk a Big Lie when it is repeated over and over
Normally, I’m optimistic about the future of independent journalism, the kind that produces trustworthy news and information. But I wanted to start the year with a warning: there are powerful forces working against this valuable public service.
The Big Lie. A royalty-free image from Schwerdhoefer for Pixabay.
I’ve just been reading an article “Combating Repeated Lies: The Impact of Fact‐Checking on Persistent Falsehoods by Politicians.” The authors are former colleagues from the University of Navarra in Spain, Irene Larraz , Ramón Salaverría , and Javier Serrano‐Puche.
Among their questions was whether fact-checking affected “actual political discourse, particularly in terms of compelling the author of a false claim to correct themselves or, at the very least, to cease its propagation.” They also tried to analyze what common elements did certain repeated phrases have that caused “some political arguments [to] persist over time despite evidence against them.”
Is fact-checking effective?
The authors laid out the problem: “During the campaign for the Spanish regional elections of May 28, 2023, the fact‐checking organization Newtral identified false claims repeated more than 30 times, even after having been debunked on multiple occasions (Real, 2023b).”
And, “In 2021, The Washington Post tallied over 55 false claims made by former President Donald Trump that were repeated at least 20 times, with one instance reaching a staggering 493 repetitions (Kessler & Fox, 2021).”
The key word here is “repetition.” My colleagues said that many studies they consulted revealed that “in the absence of additional information, people tend to base their beliefs on the apparent familiarity of a statement, under the assumption that if they’ve heard it before, it’s probably true.”
Supporting references listed at the end or their article include studies well known in academic circles — Festinger, 1954; Horne & Adalı, 2017; Pennycook & Rand, 2021; Reber & Schwarz, 1999.
Debunking techniques that work
When false reports are repeated, some fact-checkers like Newtral publish special reports that “highlight the recurrence of false claims.”
“Special reports are also done by other organizations such as Aos Fatos in Brazil, which tracked the falsehoods made by former President Jair Bolsonaro.”
The Washington Post launched the Bottomless Pinocchio category to track repeated falsehoods “when a politician refuses to drop a claim that has been fact‐checked,” explained Glenn Kessler, director of The Washington Post Fact Checker.
I’ve written about the work of NewsGuard’s Reality Check, which probes in-depth to trace the ultimate sources of misleading rumors, gossip, and conspiracy theories. For example, they investigated the “wild claims” about the killing of the United Health Care CEO in New York.
They also showed how both conservative and liberal media fell for a false claim that Trump appointee RFK Jr. planned to ban Diet Coke.
Final thoughts
Jonathan Swift wrote in 1710, “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.” And in the age of electronic communication, Mark Twain is supposed to have said, “A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.”
But while we have evidence of Swift’s quote in print, there is no evidence that Twain ever used the memorable metaphor attributed to him. Also, it had been in use many years before he was born, according to the Quote Investigator, who did an extensive search to identify its ultimate source.
The moral: Superficial Google searches aren’t enough to verify facts. Debunking of false claims needs to be swift (pun intended), deep, creative, and sustained — at least as sustained as the misinformation itself.
Beyond that, like investigative journalists, fact-checkers need to repeat the call for accountability of serial liars, propagandists, and manipulators. Being right isn’t enough. We can’t let them get away with misleading the public.