Quotes & Sayings About Fact Checking

People often think that reporters write their own headlines. In fact, they almost never do. The people who do write headlines are the copy editors who are the front and last lines of quality-checking in a newspaper before it goes to print. — Jennifer Lee

I do a little fact checking now and then. Other than that its impact is simply that email has revolutionized communication for me, and my website has built up a community of readers, which is a lot of fun. — Lee Child

They got into fact checking at the 'Paris Review,' and it was mortifying. There was a wrangle about Hemingway's lost stories that nearly killed me. It turns out he didn't lose those stories. They weren't stolen from the platform. — Padgett Powell

Unburdening, she'd told Laurie about a vision she'd had when she was four or five years old. Unable to sleep on Christmas Eve, she'd tiptoed downstairs and seen a fat bearded man standing in front of her family's tree, checking items off a list. He wasn't wearing a red suit - it was more like a blue bus driver's uniform - but she still recognized him as Santa Claus. She watched him for a while, then snuck back upstairs, her body filled with an ecstatic sense of wonder and confirmation. As a teenager, she convinced herself that the whole thing had been a dream, but it had seemed real at the time, so real that she reported it to her family the next morning as a simple fact. They still jokingly referred to it that way, as though it were a documented historical event - the Night Meg Saw Santa. — Tom Perrotta

People don't bother to check with anything anymore. They just like to speculate in print. We like fact-checking! — Mick Jagger

Rather than doing the kind of fact-checking that normally goes with a story, you ran with certain stories for not wanting to get beat. There's a pressure that exists in your profession. I would be surprised in any honest exchange that you say that doesn't exist. — Rahm Emanuel

As soon as the door closed, Levi popped his eyes again. Bluely. "That's your twin sister?"
"Identical," Reagan said, like she had a mouth full of hair.
Cath nodded and sat down at her desk.
"Wow." Levi scooted down the bed so he was sitting across from her.
"I'm not sure what you're getting at," Cath said, "but I think it's offensive."
"How can the fact that your identical twin sister is super hot be offensive to you?"
"Because," Cath said, still too encouraged by Wren and, weirdly, by Abel, and maybe even by Nick to let this get to her right now. "It makes me feel like the Ugly One."
"You're not the ugly one." Levi grinned. "You're just the Clark Kent."
Cath started checking her e-mail.
"Hey, Cath," Levi said, kicking her chair. She could hear the teasing in his voice. "Will you warn me when you take off your glasses? — Rainbow Rowell

Okay, I'm not in the news business, and I'm not going to tell anyone how to do their job. However, it'd be good to have news reporting that I could trust again, and there's evidence that fact-checking is an idea whose time has come. — Craig Newmark

Hey, Volusian, you haven't been checking me out, have you?"
He gave me his trademark bland stare. "I assure you, mistress, the only allure your bare flesh has for me is to remind me how easy it will be to slice open."
I laughed. If not for the fact he was actually serious, he'd be so much fun. — Richelle Mead

Grab the work when it comes, my man. Your competition is now a fourteen-year-old in pajamas with the username Truth-ninja-12 who believes fact-checking a story is reading his subject's Twitter feed. Be afraid. — Marisha Pessl

In fact Sarah Palin has created more jobs than Obama has. She created eleven jobs fact-checking at the AP just for the Palin autobiography. — Ann Coulter

When I talk with my students, I introduce a process of work I call the three R's: First comes research, then real world exploration, and finally, and perhaps most important, a fact-checking review of all that has been written. — Lee Gutkind

There is no fact-checking on tertiary celebrities. You can say whatever you'd like, and it will just rise up again. — Wayne Knight

The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms. — Oscar Wilde

There were signs. Probably more of them than I ever caught, even after the fact. But I missed them all.
Maybe because I wasn't looking for them. I was too busy checking over my shoulder at the fire I'd
just come through to pay much attention to the thousand-foot cliff looming in front of me. — Gayle Forman

In fact you can begin to discover and investigate whether you are an actor or not, whether you're in my view, qualified for a life in this profession or in this endeavor by checking yourself out and acting every day, getting plays and scripts and getting together with people and divvying up the parts and acting in one way or another, or writing things. — Jeff Goldblum

He was in a cage. He quickly rolled onto his back and stood, not checking to see how high the cage was. His skull made contact with the bars on top, knocking his gaze downward as he cursed out loud. And then he saw himself. He was wearing a flowing, puffy white shirt. Even more troubling was the fact that he also appeared to be wearing a pair of very tight leather pants. Very tight. Very leather. Simon looked down at himself and took it all in. The billows of the shirt. The deep, chest-exposing V. The tightness of the leather. "Why is it," he said after a moment, "that whenever I think I've found the most terrible thing that could happen to me, I'm always wrong." As — Cassandra Clare

I have to do more close research and fact checking for the science fiction. This is not however to say that writing good fantasy does not involve doing good research. — Sarah Zettel

When you use the language of 'fact checking' to talk about a film, I think you're sort of fundamentally misunderstanding how art works. You don't fact check Monet's 'Water Lilies.' That's not what water lilies look like; that's what the sensation of experiencing water lilies feel like. That's the goal of the piece. — Graham Moore

A lot of people, myself included, are excited about blogging and stuff like that, citizen journalism, but I do remind people that no matter how excited we are, there's no substitute for professional writing, no substitute for professional editing, and no substitute for professional fact-checking. — Craig Newmark

Unfortunately, fact checking has become a lost art — Gary Hopkins

But, generally, the law is made by one man or one class of men. And since law cannot operate without the sanction and support of a dominating force, this force must be entrusted to those who make the laws. This fact, combined with the fatal tendency that exists in the heart of man to satisfy his wants with the least possible effort, explains the almost universal perversion of the law. Thus it is easy to understand how law, instead of checking injustice, becomes the invincible weapon of injustice. It is easy to understand why the law is used by the legislator to destroy in varying degrees among the rest of the people, their personal independence by slavery, their liberty by oppression, and their property by plunder. This is done for the benefit of the person who makes the law, and in proportion to the power that he holds. — Frederic Bastiat

Fact-checking is so boring compared to writing fiction. — Francine Prose

Fact-checking doesn't exist primarily because some of us are liars and cheats. It exists because writers will be writers, much as they may mean to be historians. — Alice Dreger

The internet connects us all and provides this fabulous fact-checking mechanism, and yet at the same time, the power of lies is conveyed much more efficiently now because they're accepted so fast. — Alex Gibney

Sense About Science is much more than an innocent fact-checking service. It is a spin-off of a bizarre political network that began life as the ultra-left Revolutionary Communist Party and switched over to extreme corporate libertarianism when it launched 'Living Marxism' magazine in the late eighties. — Zac Goldsmith

When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, it becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about big issues. — Thomas L. Friedman

Fact-checking can wreak havoc on Chinese political mythology. — Evan Osnos

When I say 'publishing is the new literacy,' I don't mean there's no role for curation, for improving material, for editing material, for fact-checking material. I mean literally, the act of putting something out in public used to be reserved in the same way. — Clay Shirky

Never act upon wishful thinking. Act without checking the facts, and chances are that you will be swept away along with the mob. — Jim Rogers

In principle, there's nothing wrong with the concept of an infographic. What concerns me is the types of things that people are doing with them. They get far off topic, or the fact checking is really poor. The infographic may be neat, but if the information it's based on is simply wrong, then it's misleading people. — Matt Cutts

Consider in fact, a body of six hundred and fifty-eight miscellaneous persons, set to consult about "business," with twenty-seven millions, mostly fools, assiduously listening to them, and checking and criticising them. Was there ever, since the world began, will there ever be till the world end, any "business" accomplished in these circumstances? — Thomas Carlyle

Laughing behind my hand, I followed him out to his motorcycle. "I like to think I'm hot enough that I don't need to flirt well."
"Do you? Fortunately, I agree. In fact, this time when you walk in front of me and think I'm checking out your ass, it'll be true."
"Cooper, you have such a way with words. A real poet."
"Don't I know it," he said, sliding on his bike. — Bijou Hunter

And, I also had to admit, no matter where I went and what I did, Niles didn't seem bothered with whether I arrived safe and sound. He didn't check in, even if I was traveling for work and would be away for a few days. And when I checked in, he didn't seem bothered with the fact that I was checking in. Or, lately (because I tested it a couple of times), when I didn't check in and then arrived home safely, sometimes days later, he didn't seem bothered by the fact that I hadn't checked in. — Kristen Ashley

A partner's different perspective is valuable, but the very fact that it is different means that it will require work, humility, time, and resources to incorporate that perspective. At times, this will require checking one's pride at the door. — Ron Garan

As an editor, you develop a B.S. meter - an internal warning system that signals caution about journalism that doesn't feel trustworthy. Sometimes it's a quote or incident that's too perfect - a feeling I always had when reading stories by Stephen Glass in the New Republic. Sometimes it's too many errors of fact, the overuse of anonymous sources, or signs that a reporter hasn't dealt fairly with people or evidence. And sometimes it's a combination of flaws that produces a ring of falsity, the whiff of a bad egg. There's no journalist who sets off my bullshit alarm like Ron Suskind. — Jacob Weisberg

If anyone should talk to her," Renfield piped up, "it should be me. We're the most compatible, culturewise. I'm sure that on top of feeling as if she's been thrust into one of the many levels of Hades, with all of its attendant demons, she feels like a lady wandering, lost, amongst the mannerless cads of the slums."
We were all silent for a moment before Tom asked, "You do realize that we're sitting right here, right?"
"Oh, I am horribly aware of this fact."
"Just checking. — Lia Habel

When "news stories" are broken, do we not expect a certain amount of fact-checking or source-checking? One has to ask if this falls under the guise of sloppy reporting or deception as a source of spin. We seem to accept a certain amount of deception and we seem to be helpless to doing anything about it, as illustrated so clearly by where we are right now in this moment in our history. — Sheryl Crow

Interviews, research, more interviews, fact-checking, writing, rewriting - and then, in an instant, it is over, — Hanya Yanagihara

I'm not in the news business and won't tell people how to do their job. I'd like to restore trust in the news business, though, and feel that restoring fact-checking will really help. News business realities mean that such fact-checking has to be practical, it has to be fast and cheap. — Craig Newmark

I think the idea of fact-checking, I think the idea that you come up through a system where you know how to cover night cops, and then you go on, and you go on to various beats, including writing obituaries, and you get names right, you know how to spell them, really has some advantages to it. — Juan Williams

Studies have proved that checking records, possible diagnoses and drug interactions on a computer during a medical examination can interfere with what should be not only a fact-based investigation but a deeply human, partly intuitive and empathetic process. — Anonymous

Eric was incensed, to use a good entry from my word of the day Calender. In fact his eyes were almost throwing sparks he was so angry. "This woman has been mine, and she will be mine" he said in tones so definite I thought about checking my rear end for a brand. — Charlaine Harris

I try not feel jealous of the fact that he's been checking in with them but not me. After all, they're his family. I'm only me, the most important person in his life, for a while at least. — Jennifer Niven

When did fact checking and journalism go their separate ways? — Jon Stewart

Do people even look at one another?"
"Not really. Everything that matters is on your screen. There's an agenda that rearranges itself. There's a back-channel chat. And there's fact-checking! If you get up to speak, there are people cross-referencing your claims, supporting and refuting you
"
It sounds like an engineer's Athens. — Robin Sloan