For American politicians, this is a golden age of lies. Social media allows them to spread falsehoods quickly and efficiently, while their supporters amplify falsehoods that serve their cause. When I started PolitiFact in 2007, I wanted to raise the cost of lying. We didn’t expect just calling out a candidate to change people’s votes, but we did at least hope that our journalism would nudge them to be more truthful.
I was wrong. More than 15 years of fact-checking has done little to nothing to stem the tide of lies. I underestimated the power of partisan media on both sides, especially conservative news outlets, to relentlessly denigrate our work. (A typical insult: “At this point, fact checkers are basically just the PR arm of the Democratic Party.”) PolitiFact and other news outlets issued thousands of checks, but over time, Representatives and voters alike increasingly ignore our journalism. etc. or dismissed it. Of course, Democrats did that sometimes, but they were more often mindful of our work, sometimes issuing corrections when they found falsehoods.
Lying is ubiquitous, but politicians are rarely asked why they lie. Perhaps journalists think the reason is obvious. Many people hesitate to even use the word lie. Because lying is divisive and demands proof. But the answer may help solve the problem. So for the past four years, I’ve been asking members of Congress, political operatives, local officials, Congressional staff, White House aides, and election consultants this simple question. “Why do politicians lie?”
In some ways, these conversations gave me hope that officials of both parties might lie less if we found ways to change their incentives. The decision to lie can be reduced to something like a point system. If I tell this lie, will it garner enough support and attention from voters, party leaders, and corners of the media to outweigh the negative consequences?Admitting to having had an affair Cal Cunningham, a Democrat who lost the North Carolina Senate race in 2020, said, “I have something to stand on, and I have a case to support and strengthen.” “The benefits of intentionally misrepresenting the truth are judged to be greater than the disadvantages of telling the truth. I think there’s a lot of calculation involved.” Arizona Jim Kolbe, a former Republican congressman who is now out of the party, explained the benefits more vividly. Lies “incite and provoke their constituencies.”
Politicians have always acted in their own positions, but polarization has left them unable to do much else. Now that many politicians speak primarily to their supporters, lying has become less dangerous and more beneficial. “They either get political support or they end up winning elections,” said Mike McCurry, who served as White House press secretary under President Bill Clinton. Former Democratic Sen. Bob Kelly told me, “It’s human nature to want to get a standing ovation.” Lies also provide easy ammunition to attack your opponents. There is no need to study the adversary. Damon Circosta, a Democrat who recently chaired the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said they are “taking away points from other candidates.”
Anthony Fauci has often been caught in the crossfire. Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas has suggested that the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases does not intend to give the public access to financial statements, when in fact they are available to anyone who requests them. I’ve done it before. Republican politicians have repeatedly and falsely accused Fauci of lying and even used his face in fundraising appeals. He took one of the pieces of mail to a Congressional hearing. “It said, ‘Fire Fauci,’ and underneath it said, ‘Donate $10, $20, $50, $100, even $200,'” he told me. Therefore, there was no ambiguity. ”
In the past, “if someone said something outlandish, they would be shamed,” Fauci said. That deterrence has disappeared. “There’s no shame in lying now.”
To study political lies, I became particularly interested in Mike Pence. We were friends and neighbors when he was a member of Congress, and I saw him as a typical politician who sometimes hides the truth. When he won the Indiana gubernatorial election, I watched his lies grow. By the time he became Donald Trump’s vice president, he was almost unrecognizable to me.
Olivia Troy, who served as homeland security adviser in Pence’s office from 2018 to 2020, has seen two versions of Pence. “It was like watching ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ at times,” she told me. As a boss, he was detail-oriented and wanted the facts. But when asked to recite the key points of the Trump administration, he would compromise them all.
“Mike Pence was probably the most honest person I’ve ever seen at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic,” she said. He spoke to the people more frankly and more responsibly than Trump. But Troy cited an op-ed he wrote for the Wall Street Journal as a turning point. In June 2020, under the headline “There is no ‘second wave’ of coronavirus,” he claimed that “we are winning the battle against the invisible enemy.” Critics understandably singled out statistics and accused him of ignoring reality.
However, appeals to “reality” have lost their effectiveness. Several of the people I interviewed talked about how partisan media, particularly on the right, has undermined our common sense of what is true and promoted lies. Democratic Rep. Jeff Jackson of Charlotte, North Carolina, said the media expects politicians to repeat falsehoods as the price of admission. “If you’re not willing to treat certain lies as fact, you’re not going to get invited to speak in an echo chamber,” said Tim Miller, a former Republican operative who left the party in 2020. Because of gerrymandering, “most of the voters in your district get their information from Fox and conservative talk radio, so you too…” Hold tight to your lies in a way that you wouldn’t have been true 15 years ago. ”
The hollowing out of local media outlets also makes it easier to lie. “There are no local reporters following these races,” Republican pollster Neil Newhouse told me. “All these local bureaus just got wiped out, so there’s no one to track this shit down on a daily basis and hold people accountable.”
Experimental studies show that fact checking can really persuade people. However, academic findings often do not reflect the real world. Voters rarely ask for fact-checking targeted at their party, and conservatives in particular hear constant criticism of the business, leading them to question its legitimacy. (A 2019 survey by Pew Research Center found that 70% of Republicans believe fact checkers take sides, compared to just 29% of Democrats. )
If politicians lie because they believe they can gain more points than they lose, they need to change their calculations. Technology and media companies need to create incentives to tell the truth and deterrents to lying. Platforms of all kinds are likely to charge higher advertising rates to candidates with the worst record among fact-checkers. If a candidate is found to be lying, television networks could take away speaking time from the candidate during the debate.
But these reforms will require more than just well-intentioned corporate intervention. They will require widespread and sustained public support. Voters may not prioritize integrity over partisan preferences in all cases. But more people will have to worry about lies, even if their candidate is the culprit.
This essay is an excerpt from Bill Adair’s new book, Beyond the Big Lie.
Written by Bill Adair
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