“I will tell you the facts to the best of my ability”: Fact Checking in THE LIFESPAN OF A FACT
Exploring the facts-first side of the play’s central debate
Here are the facts: In The Lifespan of a Fact by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell, and Gordon Farrell — onstage at Lantern Theater Company February 2 through March 5, 2023 — an essayist and a fact checker do battle over truth and authenticity, art and information, transcendence and honesty. They also argue over the exact percentage of the moon visible on a given night, the number of strip clubs in Las Vegas, and the precise color of the bricks at (or near?) the base of the tallest observation tower in the United States.
In our current informational landscape, the term “fact checker” has, for many, come to mean someone who tells us when politicians are lying or misinformation is spreading, doing so-called post hoc fact checking — debunking claims that have already been made. No one has ever accused career politicians of scrupulous honesty, but the internet has made it easier than ever to quickly spread errors, false narratives, and flat-out misinformation. With their Pinnochios, Truth-O-Meter needles, and fast-talking cable news appearances, high-profile post hoc fact checkers and the growing number of independent fact-checking organizations have become a bulwark against ever-bolder claims made by those who know a lie will travel halfway around the internet before the truth logs on for the day.
But The Lifespan of a Fact is more interested in the less flashy, but no less important, ante hoc fact checking — the kind that happens before errors and mistruths are ever printed. The practice has its roots in 19th century journalism, but became the basis of an organized profession in the 1920s with the creation of Time. Fact checkers were overwhelmingly women until the 1970s, when the balance began to even out.
These fact checkers’ jobs are often mundane: attempting to confirm absolutely everything that might be construed as a fact in a published piece, from whether there is adobo in a restaurant’s dip to which direction the Adriatic tectonic plate is drifting. They use printed sources, internet searches, and phone calls with sources and more to confirm quotes and details before the printing press is fired up. Jim Fingal’s dogged pursuit of the truth in The Lifespan of a Fact is right in line with these professional fact checkers — one fact checker for The New Yorker went so far as to track down a former nuclear scientist at the mall where he was shopping in Florida to confirm a theretofore apocryphal story from more than 60 years earlier.
To prepare for the Broadway production of The Lifespan of a Fact — a play based on a book based on an essay—actor Daniel Radcliffe went even more meta by spending a day with The New Yorker’s famed fact checkers. He found himself needing to check on that adobo dip. “The first step, [Peter] Canby [lead fact checker] explained, was to underline all checkable facts. ‘Let’s crack on,’ Radcliffe said, scanning the line ‘The dip itself was excellent, laced with chilies in adobo and cilantro and dressed up with cotija cheese and slightly smoky, lightly charred cherry tomatoes.’ He underlined everything except ‘was excellent.’”
But it is not just researchable facts that are subject to the fact checker’s eagle eye — “epistemological problems,” as Fingal terms them in The Lifespan of a Fact, also crop up. If an assertion is made in an article, a fact checker might also explore the likelihood that such a thing is even knowable or be tasked with gauging the accuracy of a personal impression. During his day at The New Yorker, Radcliffe called the restaurant to check the adobo, but also to ask if the writer’s impression of the design vibe was in line with the chef’s intentions.
The New Yorker’s fact-checking operation is legendary — the process can take weeks for even a short article. Celebrated essayist John McPhee writes that one of the only times he saw an error get through to publication was when a source gave the fact checker wrong information. Radcliffe himself received a call from a fact checker, fact-checking the article about his own fact-checking experience. In our current climate where truth and fiction are harder than ever to distinguish, other publications like The Atlantic have likewise expanded their fact-checking departments.
But that is not true of every publication, and the ongoing shrinking of traditional media has meant serious cutbacks at other publications, like the one depicted in The Lifespan of a Fact. Some fact-checking departments have shrunk; others have been cut altogether along with dedicated proofreaders and copy editors. Their duties either fall by the wayside or are farmed out to other employees, as they are in the play. Magazines are much more likely to employ dedicated fact checkers than newspapers. In book publishing, authors are generally expected to do their own fact checking or hire an independent researcher to do it for them.
“By changing paint colors and statistics… by misrepresenting official and searchable documents, you undermine your argument, you undermine society’s trust in itself,” Jim Fingal says in The Lifespan of a Fact. “Which is why facts have to be the final measure of the truth.”
In a time when misinformation and disinformation are rampant — when the ability to lie and get away with is regarded by some as a badge of honor — fact checkers are as crucial as ever in maintaining that trust.
Lantern Theater Company’s Philadelphia premiere production of The Lifespan of a Fact by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell, and Gordon Farrell is onstage February 2 through March 5, 2023, at St. Stephen’s Theater. Visit our website for tickets and information.
