Who Checks the Checkers?

RealClearPolitics has leapt into the breach and is launching a review of fact checkers:

The RealClearPolitics Fact Check Review is an initiative to explore how the flagship fact-checking organizations operate in practice (as opposed to their self-reported descriptions), from their claim and verification sourcing to their topical focus to just what constitutes a “fact.” To answer these questions, we’ve created a centralized searchable database, updated weekly, that codifies key characteristics of all fact checks bearing on issues of civic and public concern published by six highly prominent fact-checking organizations: Factcheck.org, New York Times, Politifact, Snopes, Washington Post, and Weekly Standard. These fact checkers were selected due to their influence in the fact-checking landscape and the reliance of major internet platforms like Facebook on their decisions.

Each week we’ll review every fact check published the previous week on those six sites and compile a list of those that bear on civic and public concern, given their importance to the functioning of democracy. In practice, we define “civic and public concern” as any topic that relates to politics or American civil life. Issues involving past or present public officeholders or topics of national or international discussion are included under this heading, while run-of-the-mill urban legends are not. A fact check about how many votes a particular U.S. senator has missed would be included, but a fact check about reports of UFOs landing in Area 51 this week would not.

On the one hand that’s something that’s long overdue but on the other journalism covering journalism is beginning to sound like a low ebb to me.