This is Hear Me Out. I'm Celeste Hedley. The fact check is one of the most important tools in a

journalist's toolbox and in the digital age, in the MAGA age, it's more important than ever.

You probably expect the news sources you engage with to

debunk falsehoods when they see them or hear them. When a candidate is up on stage saying

something that's just wrong, you want a credible person to let you know. But alternative

facts have become a convincing cover for what are just lies. And the American people trust journalists and fact checkers less now than perhaps

ever before. So could it be that this profession is too eager to debunk and we're turning audiences away in the process.

They don't say like hey we're a fact-taking website this past month we checked a

hundred claims and 60 of them turn out to be true by the way.

They don't say that but maybe that would help because that were my people like hey

actually most of the time we are playing nice.

Randy Stein is an assistant professor of marketing at Cow Polypemona and joins Hear Me Out in just a moment.

Stay with us.

Welcome back to Hear Me Out. I'm Celeste Hedley. If you remember the June 27th

presidential debate in Atlanta, it's probably because it eventually led to

Biden stepping down from his candidacy and not because of the debate format.

But one thing that stuck out to many journalists in that debate

is that the moderators didn't fact check the candidates in real time

and that allowed both Trump and Biden to say things that

spanned the entire gamut from misleading to outright lies. Look there's a robust

debate raging in media right now over the effectiveness of live fact-checking,

and research shows fact checks are pretty good at correcting inaccurate information.

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