Tim Worstall has a post about US newspapers' fact-checking. Fact-checking is one of those things which sounds and seems a wonderful idea - who could be against checking facts?! - until on closer examination it turns out to be something of a waste of time.

I speak from experience, having been both a fact-checker and someone who was regularly fact-checked.

Some years ago, I did freelance work for the New Yorker as a fact-checker. My job was to go through one of their regular writer's work with a fine toothcomb, providing a citation for anything which could be construed as a fact. That sounds very sensible, but in truth it was utterly pointless. Although I supposedly had to find a source for every fact that was in the copy, with the implication being that anything without a source would not appear, there was a get-out which rendered the whole excercise worthless. If I could not souce something, I would ring the writer up and ask him for his source. If he could not point me in the right direction, but was insistent on the veracity of his remark, I could simply source it as 'on author'. And then everything was swell.

So much for the famed rigour of fact-checkers. All anyone had - has - to do, is write 'on author', and the 'fact' passes muster.

As for being checked, the most inane example of being fact-checked I experienced when I wrote for the New York Times was when I described Robin Cook as 'hirsute'. The fact checker rang me for a source for this. When i said she could look at any picture of Mr Cook ever published, she said this would not do. I needed to supply them with one to prove my assertion. I took great delight in refusing to do this, and telling my fact-checker that she should mark the claim that Mr Cook was hirsute with the phrase 'on author'.

Fact-checking is a waste of time. Fisking, on the other hand - now there's no escape from that.

UPDATE: Oh, the irony: a friend has pointed out that it's fine-tooth comb, not fine toothcomb. Duh me!

UPDATE: Today's Times has a deliciously stupid line from one of Dave's A-listers, Sayeeda Warsi, who clearly doesn't buy the idea of fact-checking. Defending a piece she has written which is full of nonsense figures, she has this to say:

I don’t believe that I have to justify everything I write, line by line and word by word.

Well no, you don't. Not, that is, unless you want anyone to take anything you say seriously.