The vast majority of news (even knowledge in general) isn't centred around clearly delineated falsifiable facts. The Trump "biggest inauguration crowd ever, period" statement is an outlier, a far one, because it's so easily falsifiable.
What they do, for each statement, is opaquely deciding on a falsifiable interpretation of the statement, then proving it wrong. It's a devil-reading-the-bible thing (not that Trumps speeches really bear any comparison to the bible). They do not make a rigorous attempt to tease out all (or even most, or even more than one) reasonable interpretations of the statement, and figuring out which are more or less true.
The first statement is illustrative. Trump said (abridged, see the link for the full quote) "Washington has gotten rich off the backs of the rest of the country". WaPo finds that growth in DC hasn't outpaced the rest of the country since 2006, and thus that there is no empirical evidence to Trumps statement. That's it. In the process of reaching this very clear conclusion, they do state that household income is one of the highest in the country (not offering any explanation for this observation) -- directly falsifying their own conclusion. There is, evidently, some empirical evidence of this.
This process, which is called fact checking, by one of the most esteemed newspapers in the nation -- it's not some crank blogging -- is epistemologically dubious to the extreme.
Trump may very well have a very dubious relationship with the truth, but I have no faith that "fact checking" is going to save us.
> This process, which is called fact checking, by one of the most esteemed newspapers in the nation... Trump may very well have a very dubious relationship with the truth, but I have no faith that "fact checking" is going to save us.
I'm torn on this. The truth, especially if it's from multiple sources, still matters. The challenge is to break through the partisan barrier and unfortunately I think that can only be done on a personal level. Personal credibility can break through partisanship far more effectively than any reposted article can.
Of course the truth matters. My argument is that fact checkers won't (can't) have a central role (they have a supporting one, sure) in working out the truth, as the GP posited.
A statement like "Washington has gotten rich off the backs of the rest of the country" can be both true and false, depending on which interpretations and assumptions you apply when evaluating it. WaPo decided on a (fairly lazy, IMO) false evaluation, but you can easily do the opposite: The federal government has grown, it's financed by taxes predominantly collected in the rest of the country and directly or indirectly, the federal government dominates employment in DC. There - 100% correct, verifiable facts that support the original statement.
But why is this true of DC? Perhaps it's a good thing that we have highly paid professional management of the federal government, and that this is geographically concentrated? Perhaps everything is more effective, with better services and ultimately cheaper than if the same agencies had been geographically spread out, devolved to states or cities, or didn't exist at all? How do you decide that? There are decades of argument (roughly 25, to be exact) about the proper size and organisation of the federal government -- these are fundamental areas of disagreement between reasonable people and the best fact checker in the world won't get you closer to settling that.
Francis Bacon cast "truth" as an almost impossible thing to discern, being influenced by tribal, cave, marketplace and theater influences, especially cave. The Great Divide between Conservatives and Progressives is Conservatives keep pointing to truth as an unchanging thing while Progressives use "truth" as a tool to dupe fools. The Enlightenment took Western man from Revealed Religion to Natural Law to Materialistic Psychology to Self-Realization to Self-Religion. Bacon would say Western man has returned to the cave, except now, man is god.
It's really hard, because first you have to agree on what the statement means. In the case of your example, what does he mean by "Washington?" Is he talking about the city? Suburbs? Political establishment? Military establishment?
It is, in fact, a straw-man meant to invoke anger and distrust. So your point that the fact-checkers (alone) can't save us is a strong one.
Yes, like most political speeches, it's meant to evoke emotion, but that doesn't make it a straw man. All politicians talk about "Washington" and no, it's not unambiguous, but it doesn't follow that it's a straw man.
I enjoyed WaPos fact checking of the inauguration speech, here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/01/...
What they do, for each statement, is opaquely deciding on a falsifiable interpretation of the statement, then proving it wrong. It's a devil-reading-the-bible thing (not that Trumps speeches really bear any comparison to the bible). They do not make a rigorous attempt to tease out all (or even most, or even more than one) reasonable interpretations of the statement, and figuring out which are more or less true.
The first statement is illustrative. Trump said (abridged, see the link for the full quote) "Washington has gotten rich off the backs of the rest of the country". WaPo finds that growth in DC hasn't outpaced the rest of the country since 2006, and thus that there is no empirical evidence to Trumps statement. That's it. In the process of reaching this very clear conclusion, they do state that household income is one of the highest in the country (not offering any explanation for this observation) -- directly falsifying their own conclusion. There is, evidently, some empirical evidence of this.
This process, which is called fact checking, by one of the most esteemed newspapers in the nation -- it's not some crank blogging -- is epistemologically dubious to the extreme.
Trump may very well have a very dubious relationship with the truth, but I have no faith that "fact checking" is going to save us.