The rise of professional fact-checking in recent years has brought both praise and criticism. One of the more common laments, even from fans of fact-checking, is that it has little effect â€" that politicians judged to be untruthful ignore the judgment against them and pay little price from voters.
But a new study, by two political scientists, suggests that politicians, or at least state legislators, may care more about fact-checking than the conventional wisdom suggests.
The two political scientists, Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth and Jason Reifler of the University of Exeter, conducted an experiment during last year’s campaign in which they sent letters to more than 1,100 legislators in nine states, all with PolitiFact units dedicated to local politics.
One group of randomly selected legislators received letters reminding them of the existence of PolitiFact. “Politicians who lie put their reputations and careers at risk, but only when those lies are exposed,†the letters said. The professors also enclosed postcards that they asked legislators to return, as a sign that they had received and read the letters.
A second set of legislators received a placebo letter, in which the professors simply said they were conducting a research project studying the accuracy of officials’ public statements. A third group of legislators received no letters.
The professors then followed the legislators in the weeks leading up to the election. Among those legislators who received reminders about PolitiFact, substantially fewer made statements later that appeared to have been false. Only 1 percent of legislators who received one of the PolitiFact reminders made such statements; by comparison, 2.7 percent of the legislators in the other two groups made claims that appeared to be false.
“These results suggest that the electoral and reputational threat posed by fact-checking can affect the behavior of elected officials,†Mr. Nyhan and Mr. Reifler wrote in a version of the paper released Tuesday by the New America Foundation. “In this way, fact-checking could play an important role in improving political discourse and strengthening democratic accountability.â€
In an e-mail, I asked Mr. Nyhan, a frequent contributor to the Columbia Journalism Review, whether the letters really could have influenced state legislators. His reply:
As far as why the effect occurred, we can only offer our theory â€" as you know, experiments speak much less clearly about mechanisms than treatment effects. Our interpretation is that the letter was an effective reminder of the potential costs of a negative rating.
The PolitiFact affiliates were new in most of the states, and the typical legislator is risk-averse. Given how little coverage most of them receive and the fact that many likely have ambitions of higher office, leadership, etc., the threat of acquiring a reputation as a dissembler seems potentially meaningful. Even if they knew about PolitiFact in the abstract, being reminded repeatedly about the damage that a negative rating could inflict might make such concerns more salient.
