Here's a post entry about a guy who says he has the best job in journalism: Fact Checker for Trump. Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post was interviewed by Roger Cohen yesterday in an Opinion piece published in the New York Times. Editors persuaded him seven years ago to write “The Fact Checker,” awarding “Pinocchios” on a scale of one (for the shading of facts) to four (for a whopper). Over the years, a Pinocchio has entered the Washington political lexicon as a unit of dishonesty. Now it defines the zeitgeist. . . It's data-driven
Readers of this blog no doubt have noticed that an animated Pinocchio has been inserted in different posts on this blog site next to politicians and some City Hall insiders for the same range of reasons Kessler uses the character: “Most politicians, I find they may exaggerate or stretch, but they don’t want to out-and-out mislead people,” Kessler told Cohen. Don't know about that, but politicians like Mesa Mayor John Giles don't change much because you fact-check them - they double down and keep saying it. . . >
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Here's a question and give-and-take between Fact Checker Kessler and Roger Cohen:
"Is journalism remotely adequate to describe the moral decay and mind-bending corruption, material and spiritual, of the Trump administration?
Many Americans pose such questions, even as many Americans believe that Trump is the most honest president ever because he “tells it like it is.” I sought out Kessler because I believe he’s doing the critical work that might save the country. Trump, he says, is “in another realm completely.”
(Image insert: Giles waiting to talk to Trump the other day)
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“Are you going to go on doing this?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“Indefinitely?”
“Yeah, I have the best job in journalism.”
“The best?”
“I write what I want, and I piss people off.”
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The database he compiles with his colleagues Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly, listing every one of Trump’s untruths, will become a reference, a talisman.
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