In today’s newsletter, we take a look at the fact-checking operation at the Washington Post that manages a database of 10,000 falsehoods spoken, tweeted and otherwise communicated by the 45th president of the United States. The official tally is 10,111 “false or misleading claims” in 828 days in office as of 27 April. How are they managing this?
Each member of (Glenn Kessler’s) three-person team picks a day of the week to sift through Trump’s tweets, speeches and media appearances for potential claims to add to the database. Each person generally picks up two days, and in practice, someone usually ends up losing their weekend.
“It’s now become a bit of a burden because it consumes so much time,” Kessler said. “I’m trying to figure out how we can handle more of this during the week. I don’t know what we’ll do when it comes to campaign season and he’s holding three rallies a day.”
How The Washington Post tallied more than 10,000 Trump falsehoods in less than three years , by Daniel Funke, Poynter
They have added up the time spent, and Kessler said that they have worked an extra 118 8-hour workdays. The project was initially only supposed to last the first 100 days of his presidency, but readers actually called and emailed asking for the project to continue. That’s brilliant.
In addition to that, we also have:
- The rise of fear-based social media like Nextdoor, Citizen, and now Amazon’s Neighbors, by Rani Molla, Vox
- Planting seeds: The new Podfund wants to invest in early-stage podcasts, Caroline Crampton, Nieman Lab
- What stories do well on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google, Sara Fischer, Axios
If you’ve got a story that you’d like me to include, say hello over on Twiter, @kevglobal.