Brendan Nyhan

My co-author Jason Reifler and I announced the results of a new study today in a Politico op-ed. Here’s how it begins:

Although the federal government is currently shut down as a result of Republican efforts to defund the Affordable Care Act, many important debates over health policy going forward will take place at the state level. Unfortunately, continuing public confusion over the law is likely to be exploited by opportunistic politicians if they aren’t fact-checked aggressively by the press.

The study is summarized in a New America Foundation report that is also being released today. Here’s the executive summary:

Politicians in the United States are coming under increasing scrutiny from fact-checkers like PolitiFact, Factcheck.org, and the Washington Post Fact Checker, who examine the accuracy of public statements that are often reported without challenge by traditional news organizations. However, we know little about the effects of this practice, especially on public officials. One possibility is that fact-checking might help to deter the dissemination of misinformation, especially for candidates and legislators at lower levels of government who receive relatively little scrutiny and are sensitive to potential threats to re-election.

To test this hypothesis, we conducted a field experiment during the 2012 campaign evaluating the effects of reminding state legislators about the electoral and reputational threat posed by fact-checking. Our experimental sample consisted of nearly 1200 legislators in nine states with state PolitiFact affiliates. We found that legislators who were sent reminders that they are vulnerable to fact-checking were less likely to receive a negative PolitiFact rating or have the accuracy of their statements questioned publicly than legislators who were not sent reminders. These results suggest that the electoral and reputational threat posed by fact-checking can affect the behavior of elected officials. In this way, fact-checking could play an important role in improving political discourse and strengthening democratic accountability.

Finally, the full results of the study are presented in an academic working paper on my Dartmouth website – here’s the abstract:

Does external monitoring improve democratic performance? Fact-checking has come to play an increasingly important role in political coverage in the United States, but research suggests it may be ineffective at reducing public misperceptions about controversial issues. However, fact-checking might in- stead help improve political discourse by increasing the reputational costs or risks of spreading misinformation for political elites. To evaluate this deter- rent hypothesis, we conducted a field experiment in nine U.S. states in which a randomly assigned group of state legislators were sent a series of letters about the risks to their reputation and electoral security if they are caught making questionable statements. The legislators who were sent these letters were substantially less likely to receive a negative fact-checking rating or to have their accuracy questioned publicly, suggesting that the threat posed by fact-checking can reduce inaccuracy in statements made by political elites.

I was interviewed by On the Media’s Bob Garfield about how the media should cover the role of polarization in the government shutdown for this week’s show – here’s the audio:

In my latest column for CJR, I urge reporters to go deeper in their coverage of the shutdown/debt ceiling fight and investigate the positions held by individual members of the House GOP and the political implications of those positions in their districts. Here’s how it begins:

Washington is in full blame-game mode as the federal government moves into shutdown this morning, including facile attributions of blame to national leaders.

The true culprit, however, is deepening legislative polarization, which has its roots in intra-party dynamics playing out in districts around the country. To help voters understand what is happening and why., reporters should go local, providing richer and more detailed coverage of the positions and district politics of the legislators who are pushing the House GOP toward confrontation.

For more, read the whole thing.

My new CJR column points out how journalists are overestimating the effects of Syria on the Obama administration. Here’s how it begins:

The media love simple narratives based on dramatic events, so it’s no surprise that many journalists have suggested that President Obama’s fortunes hinge on Syria. In pursuing this line of reasoning, reporters have started to blame every second-term problem Obama faces on his failed effort to attract Congressional support for a military intervention. But while his efforts were not very popular and did temporarily displace other issues from the national agenda, it’s not clear that the episode fundamentally changed the president’s standing with Congress or the public.

Read the whole thing!

My new piece for CJR summarizes new research on how media coverage of conspiracy theories and scandal can reduce trust in government and promote misperceptions. Here’s how it begins:

We often speculate about how media coverage could make people cynical about politics and government. But new political science research suggests just how significant those effects can be, using Jack Welch’s jobs report conspiracy theory and coverage of the IRS scandal as case studies.

Read the rest here.

I wrote a column for CJR yesterday on the limits of traditional approaches to campaign reporting. Here’s the lede:

CNN’s Peter Hamby has written a must-read retrospective on coverage of the 2012 Romney campaign. His report, “Did Twitter Kill the Boys on the Bus? Searching for a better way to cover a campaign”, which weighs in at a hefty 95 pages, documents recent changes in the business models and journalistic practices of media outlets and how those have affected campaign coverage. Hamby, who interviewed with more than 70 journalists and campaign staff, places a particular emphasis on the youth and inexperience of many reporters who followed Romney, the lack of access to the candidate or senior staff that they were provided by the Romney campaign, and the effects of Twitter on how reporters covered the race and the relationship between the Romney campaign and its traveling press corps…

These sorts of trends are often cited in wistful laments for the good old days of journalism when candidates and journalists traveled the road together, but we should avoid nostalgia for the era when a few insiders from elite publications dominated how campaigns were covered.

Read the whole thing for more.

My new column for Columbia Journalism Review examines how the media lost interest in the IRS scandal before all the facts came out. Here’s an excerpt:

The problem is what we might call the “scandal attention cycle.” George Washington University political scientist Danny Hayes has described how the “issue attention cycle” results in a surge in news coverage of a new issue like gun control followed by a fairly rapid decline, which received increased attention after the Sandy Hook massacre but ultimately trailed off, following a similar trajectory to previous high-profile shootings. A similar pattern often occurs for scandal—there’s a surge in initial interest as reporters rush to embrace the scandal narrative, but the press quickly loses interest after the most sensational charges are not substantiated. The problem is that it often takes time for the full set of facts to come out. By that time, the story is old news and the more complex or ambiguous details that often emerge are buried or ignored.

Read the whole thing for more.

Update 9/4 12:46 PM – I wrote a followup that begins with this:

The Weekly Standard’s Mark Hemingway objected Friday to my latest CJR post in a goalpost-shifting effort titled, “The Campaign to Wish Away the IRS Scandal.” The steep dropoff in coverage of the controversy even as new facts emerged is unremarkable, Hemingway argues, because later developments “didn’t fundamentally change the perception of what was driving the scandal.”

Despite his assertions, the evidence to date of disparate IRS treatment of groups on different ends of the political spectrum is not consistent with the initial coverage (which frequently suggested conservatives were targeted exclusively) or with the early hype from Obama’s opponents (who intimated IRS inquiries might be part of a politically motivated effort directed by the White House). Reporters should investigate whether conservative groups who applied for tax-exempt status received disproportionate scrutiny, but the fact remains that the impression left by the early coverage was far more simplistic and sensationalized than the state of the evidence today.

Read it here.

My new column for CJR is an interview with Gay Alcorn, the editor of The Conversation’s Election FactCheck, an Australian news site that is taking a different approach to political fact-checking. Here’s an excerpt:

One of the most interesting aspects of the site is the changes you have made to the standard fact-checking format used by elite US fact-checking sites. Can you explain what you changed, why, and how it fits in with the mission and approach of The Conversation?

We’re using The Conversation’s greatest resource—Australia’s academics, who write opinion and analysis for the general site all the time. The editors commission an academic with subject expertise to check a statement from a politician, a political party, an interest group, or the media. We then have a “blind” review process. A second academic with subject expertise reviews the check without knowing the identity of the original author. We just wanted to add an extra layer of rigor to the process.

Read the whole thing for more.

My new column at Columbia Journalism Review critiques the initial coverage of Jenny McCarthy’s views on vaccines in stories on her hiring at The View. Here’s how it begins:

ABC’s announcement yesterday that actress/comedian Jenny McCarthy will become a co-host of The View brought forth a torrent of condemnation from doctors, science journalists, opinion writers, and even entertainment commentators who oppose giving the anti-vaccine activist a high-profile platform to spread misinformation.

Unfortunately, however, the early coverage has generally failed to follow best practices for covering false or unsupported claims, giving greater reach to discredited claims that have potentially dangerous consequences for public health.

Read the whole thing for more.

My new column at CJR lauds The New Republic’s “Second Term Recovery Guide” as a welcome break from a mostly awful White House coverage we’ve seen from the press, including the latest outbreak of bully pulpit hype. Here’s how it begins:

During second terms, the Washington press corps gets bored. There’s usually not much going on! As a result, reporters hype scandals and speculate about the next election. They exaggerate the president’s influence and then condemn him for failing to live up to their magical-realist visions of executive power. As we’ve seen in the months since President Obama’s re-election, these tedious exercises may fill time and column inches, but they do little to enlighten or engage.

The New Republic’s “Second Term Recovery Guide” is an impressive break from the tedium. The left-of-center magazine’s contributors recognize the institutional and political constraints Obama faces and propose novel approaches to overcoming those obstacles.

Read the whole thing for more.