Deciding What’s True

Over the past decade, outlets such as PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, and the Washington Post's Fact Checker have shaken up the political world by holding public figures accountable for what they say. Deciding What's True draws on Lucas Graves's unique access to the U.S. newsrooms leading the increasingly global fact-checking movement. Graves vividly recounts the routines of the journalists at three of these hyperconnected, technologically innovative news organizations. He shows how they tackle thorny political debates and reveals the values that drive their stories. He also plots a compelling, personality-driven history of the fact-checking movement and its recent evolution from the blogosphere, exploring its revolutionary challenge to journalistic ethics and practice.

Over the past decade, fact-checking outlets have shaken up the political world by holding public figures accountable for what they say. Deciding What’s True recounts the routines of the journalists at these innovative news organizations and plots a compelling, personality-driven history of the fact-checking movement and its recent evolution.

Lucas Graves is an assistant professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin. He is the coauthor of The Story So Far: What We Know About the Business of Digital Journalism (Columbia, 2011), and his writing has appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, Wired, the New York Times, and other publications.

A keenly observed visit to a new world whose geography we can now better comprehend.

Pablo J. Boczkowski, Northwestern University:
In an era marked by broad challenges to the credibility of journalism, Deciding What's True provides an insightful look at major transformations in the knowledge-making regimes that foster the veracity of news. Drawing on a vast array of sources and evidence, Graves sheds light on the practices and experiences of fact-checking and its effect on the interplay among politics, media, and society.

David Ryfe, University of Iowa School of Journalism:
Graves follows a cadre of journalists in their attempts to nail down that most slippery of objects—the fact. In so doing, he shows that, in a networked age, 'the facts' have never been more central, or more problematic, for the culture of journalism. A must-read for anyone interested in the state of journalism today.

Theodore L. Glasser, Stanford University:
A timely, compelling, and important account of the rise of political fact-checking, a development—indeed, a movement—aimed at not only improving the quality of public discourse but also invigorating the practice of journalism. This book amounts to nothing less than a genuinely new chapter in the history of modern American journalism.

Herbert Gans, Columbia University:
In Deciding What's True, Lucas Graves provides a thoughtful, empirically grounded analysis of the major fact-checking organizations, studying their evolution and importance in the rapidly changing world of journalism. It is absolutely essential reading for journalists, news executives, and their audiences.

Rodney Benson, New York University:
A lively page-turner about political fact-checking that also digs deep into the very foundations of public knowledge. What do we really know, and how do we know it? Graves provides thought-provoking answers. In an age of partisan warfare, this urgently needed book reveals the transformations, tensions, and continuing virtues of journalistic objectivity.