The standard method of fact checking in professional news journalism is confirming testimony with a second source. This method does nothing, however, to establish fact. It simply provides a second opinion as to factuality. It does not step outside the subjectivity of opinion. This methodological flaw is not original to news journalism. It belongs to simple empirical induction. This form of induction was stated in its modern scientific form by Francis Bacon (for instance, in The New Atlantis). In Baconian induction, the investigator collects instances of phenomena and then categorizes them according to similarities and differences. The collection of instances is based on the notion that a fact, as revealed by one instance, must be true if another instance can be found, thereby confirming it. The method quickly leads to error, because it assumes without testing that the original instance is a fact. Bacon had many useful insights about the psychological impediments to objective use of induction, but he failed to see the method's fundamental inability to establish objective properties (that is, factuality).
The founders of modern experimental science - Galileo and Newton - went beyond Baconian induction with two procedural innovations. Galileo created experimental verification. In the Galilean method, factuality requires experimental confirmation with mathematical measurement. To this, Newton added the procedure of using a control variable. The modern method of clinical trials of a new medicine, using a placebo along side the medicine being tested, is an example of the Newtonian method.
The Galilean and Newtonian methods were based on testing confirming instances to prove factuality. These methods did not entirely escape the flaws of confirmation, because confirmation begins with the assumption that a fact exists. In the twentieth century, disciplinary statistics provided a means to step out of the circle of assumptions built into the notion of confirming instances. Statistics is based on proving the null hypothesis. The null hypothesis is the hypothesis that there is no relationship between variables - i.e., there is no fact. In statistical investigation, the scientist tries to prove that a purported fact is not a fact. Only when the scientist fails to disprove factuality does the instance get accepted as fact. Modern scientific method therefore is based on disconfirmation. Only when disconfirmation fails, does the scientist proceed to confirmation.
From this recitation of the history of scientific method, we can see that the professional methods of news journalism fail to include the major tools developed by science over the past 350 years. Journalists have two responses to this critique. The first response is that the scientific methods are not relevant, because they deal with patterns. News journalism, on the other hand, deals with events, which are unique. The second response is that it not practicable to employ scientific procedures to determine fact, because journalists do not have the time to do so. If they were to have the time, then they would not be dealing with events, which are transitory, but with states of affairs, which are not what journalism reports.
For the moment, let us accept the objection of journalism to a scientific critique (but we will come back to it). Are there other models available to critique the methods of news journalism? Would the procedures of a jury trial provide a useful model for journalism?
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