Make America Good Again

Fact-checking Is as Important as Passion

Dear Lefties:

I am writing this message to you because I’m one of you. I prefer difficult truth to white-washing lies and convenient “misunderstanding” or misinformation. I believe in parity for all people and reckoning with our savage histories.

I am writing to you because there is no possibility of being heard by people who believe every bit of disinformation being disseminated—from the Big Lie about the 2020 election being rigged, to JFK, Jr. being alive and well and living with his family incognito somewhere because his life was threatened, to 9/11 being an inside job, to the moon landing being faked, to every word uttered by RFK, Jr. being gospel, to political activism being nothing but “TDS” and “signal virtue.”

I am writing to you because we lefties have serious problems that need to be addressed: patterns of behavior that invite the extremism on the other side of the divide and diminish our credibility.

When I was very young and I got overemotional, my father used to accuse me of “overdramatizing.” I didn’t understand that until many years later when I was enrolled in a healing school and the teacher told me I “exaggerated,” and suddenly I saw this was true—my so-called triggered upsets were a choice I didn’t even realize I was making. I was so used to being overwhelmed by emotion that getting uncontrollably upset was natural to me. I didn’t realize I could also look at problems as things to deal with, to find solutions to, rather than get so derailed that I couldn’t function.

Our political situation is dire now. Our democracy is under assault. But many people on the left have gotten into a habit of going from information to an extreme reaction.

Examples

1. This past week, a writer in a Facebook writers group sent out an alert to call our representatives because the Library of Congress has changed what it would register in order to censor books. She quoted the response from the Library of Congress to a publisher submitting a book for registration:

- The Cataloging in Publication (CIP) Program is reducing the number of CIP applications and records that receive Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) numbers as a part of ongoing efforts to evaluate and streamline cataloging practices. This change reflects shifting priorities and allocating resources within the program.

Beginning July 1, Dewey numbers will be assigned only to those CIP titles where they are most impactful, in particular non-fiction titles that are likely to be acquired by public and K-12 school libraries, where DDC assignment is critical to access and discovery. This adjustment will allow us to focus classification resources where they are most needed, while still supporting the core mission of the CIP Program.

We appreciate your understanding as we implement this change.

Please feel free to contact the CIP Program at cip@loc.gov with any questions.

The Facebook poster concluded:

This is the first step in creating a library full of nothing but "approved" texts, and completely removing fiction and poetry, which aid in critical thinking. This is NOT what the Library of Congress was founded to do.

Call your representatives and senators and let them know that this is NOT okay.

Alarmed, I went to the Library of Congress website and could find nothing on this change. Google’s AI summary informed me, in a search that I cannot now replicate, that it was because the Library of Congress was switching softwares. Today, I searched again and got this AI summary:

· Reasons for reduction: The search results indicate changes to the CIP program to make it more efficient. For example, the LC is streamlining its Preassigned Control Number (PCN) and CIP programs into a unified system. Additionally, there's been a shift towards providing a PCN (Library of Congress Control Number) for most self-published titles and for publishers who produce fewer than 5 titles a year, rather than full CIP data. While PCNs serve as placeholders for potential future cataloging, they don't include DDC numbers.

· Impact on libraries: The reduction in DDC numbers in CIP records may require libraries to assign DDC numbers themselves, which can be time-consuming.

I have no idea if this change has been done with malicious intent to censor. So I took no action except sending the information to a research librarian here on Substack.

2. I recently began watching an Apple TV+ series called The Buccaneers credited as based on an unfinished Edith Wharton (1862-1937) book. In it, young American women of all races go to England to find royal husbands. Royal balls are fully integrated with Black and white couples dancing. And there is an attempt at “doing something different” by adding modern music (including an opening credits song lyric that screams “We are scum”), but mostly this feels like a weird, forced attempt at justifying the casting—manipulative.

On one hand, it was kind of cool to see what could have been if racially people were equal within an obviously deluded monarchical caste system. (The Americans shake up that system with their presence.) The more I see diversity on screen, the more it eats away at my inherent assumptions and knee-jerk reactions to people of different races (most of us have them whether we want to acknowledge this or not).

On the other hand, there is no heightened theater style (Hamilton) or modernizing shift (taking a classic out of its era and placing it in another time) that allows the audience to make sense of this; there is no relevance and additional meaning added by casting a Black person in a traditionally white character’s role (Gypsy with Audra McDonald); and since segregation and bias are importantly key to the story in its time, isn’t this just as disinformative and distorting about the past as Negro stereotypes in old movies and Confederate monuments?

I can make cases for both judgments. So I went online to see if others were discussing this, and found an extensive researched Reddit article talking about the skin shades of the Black characters all being light (not true—look at the minor characters and extras) and the fact that nobody behind the scenes was Black or a POC. Not a word about truthful representation of history. In fact it seemed irrelevant to the writer’s point that the diversity is not pervasive enough. “. . . do NOT hate on the actress for playing this role,” he wrote. “It’s the producers, writers and casting team who don’t care about representation.”

3. Well past the Covid pandemic peak, journalist Bob Woodward published a book in which he quoted Trump on how the Covid virus was airborne, and the Leftosphere exploded with criticism of him for withholding this information from early publication. I live in NYC, ground zero, and we were so confused about what to do. Had we known to wear masks, how many lives could have been saved? But still, my immediate reaction was “How on earth could Woodward have fact-checked that information coming out of the mouth of a chronic liar?” It would have been impossible to know if he was publishing sound information or more babbled inventions.

What is fact-checking? Does perspective matter?

Journalists are trained to fact-check. To obtain reputable confirming sources before reporting facts. Two independent confirmations are good. Three are excellent. If information cannot be confirmed, it is not published. Occasionally a piece of information is deemed critical for the public good, and then even TV journalists announce loud and clear that the information is “unconfirmed.”

In an ideal system, editorial writers (such as the Reddit writer about The Buccaneers) would examine the largest perspective possible before coming to a publishable opinion about it. (See critic Mazin Zaleem’s article on Colour-blind casting as historical whitewashing.)

Leftosphere practice

But the Leftosphere thinks nothing of publishing conclusions and/or repeating and disseminating those of others, knowing next to nothing about events.

Is it the high of being first with “breaking news” or being superiorly smart? Is it simply a young inner child’s need to vent—whether the situation merits it or not? Or is it simply the downside of internet publishing and is it up to each of us to discern from the spaghetti-on-wall “journalism” what is true and worthy of action?

Can we stop exaggerating and overdramatizing, and simply check facts before mouthing off and making proclamations about what “we all must do”? And can we as readers think and fact-check before we spread the dross?

Professional journalists

There are so many professional journalists on Substack, and I’ve grown to count on their integrity. Here, free of corporate interests directing coverage, they have found the freedom to both report fact-checked news and transparently editorialize (the notion that journalism by a human does not editorialize is a fantasy). Recently Steven Beschloss wrote in his column “Do You Believe in People Power?”:

. . . if I scan the horizon for inspiration during the five months of Trump’s sickening second term, I am most encouraged by the growing public protests, especially last week’s “No Kings” protest. The millions of indignant Americans who took to the streets tells me that there is a rising recognition that it’s not enough in this period to be a spectator—to stand on the sidelines and look to others to save our country. We are all now learning—that is, everyone who remains committed to sustaining self-governance, due process and the rule of law—what the responsibilities of citizenship are. And while this people-powered movement is building, I think we have only begun to see what the scale of it can and must be in the months ahead.

I agree with him. Our group movements can change things. I’m sure when tens of thousands of New Yorkers marched on June 14^th, we disagreed about many things. But we moved as one for our choice of democracy rather than a monarchy or authoritarian state. This did not require fact-checking; our presence proved our unity of message.

Most of us doing the screaming without proper fact-checking or investigation are adults who can do better. Screaming without fact-checking or examining a situation degrades positive movement to save democracy. Responsible citizens must stop doing this. You cannot counter misinformation with more disinformation based on exaggerated emotions.

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Betsy Robinson is an editor, fiction writer, journalist, and playwright. She has written about books for Publishers Weekly, Lithub, Oh Reader, and many other publications. Her novels Cats on a Pole and The Spectators were published by Kano Press in 2024. She writes funny stories about flawed people and examines our herd culture. www.BetsyRobinson-writer.com.