Kessler joined The Washington Post in 1998 as the national business editor and later served as economic policy reporter for two years and diplomatic correspondent for nine years.[5] Kessler also was a reporter with Newsday for eleven years, covering the White House, politics, the United States Congress, airline safety and Wall Street.[6][7][8] His examination of the government's failure to recognize that DC-9-10 jets were susceptible to stalling in icy conditions[9] won the Premier Award from the Aviation/Space Writers Association.[10]
Kessler played a role in two foreign policy controversies during the presidency of George W. Bush. He was called to testify in the trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, in which he was questioned about a 2003 telephone conversation with Libby in which the name of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative, might have been discussed.[12] (Libby recalled they had discussed Plame; Kessler said they did not.[13]) Meanwhile, a 2004 telephone conversation between Kessler and Steve J. Rosen, a senior official at American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), was at the core of the AIPAC leaking case.[14] The federal government recorded the call and made it the centerpiece of its 2005 indictment of Rosen and an alleged co-conspirator; the charges were dropped in 2009.
Kessler wrote the first article on the North Korea nuclear facility being built in Syria that was destroyed by Israeli jets.[15] Kessler also wrote about the Bush administration's internal decision-making that led to the Iraq war.[16]
Washington Post Fact Checker
In his Washington Post "Fact Checker" column, Kessler rates statements by politicians, usually on a range of one to four Pinocchios– with one Pinocchio for what he argues are minor shading of the facts and four Pinocchios for what he judges as outright lies.[17] If he judges that the statement is truthful, the person will get a rare "Geppetto." Kessler has a new column at least five times a week; one column appears every week in the Sunday print edition of The Washington Post. Kessler's team includes another reporter and a video producer, who also write fact checks edited by Kessler.
Kessler, who took charge of the Fact Checker column in January 2011, is considered one of the pioneers in political fact checking,[18] a movement that inspired nearly 300 fact-checking organizations in 83 countries, according to a tally by the Duke Reporters' Lab.[19] In 1996, while at Newsday, "Kessler wrote what may have been the first lengthy fact-check story in a major American newspaper, a preemptive guide to a debate between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole aimed at helping viewers evaluate the claims they were about to hear."[20] He documented the growth of fact checking around the world in an article for Foreign Affairs magazine, written after training journalists in Morocco.[21]
James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal has criticized the whole idea of awarding Pinocchios as akin to movie-reviewing, saying "the 'fact check' is opinion journalism or criticism, masquerading as straight news."[22] The conservative Power Line political blog devoted three articles to critiquing one of Kessler's articles, calling him a "liberal reporter", and asserting that "these 'fact-checkers' nearly always turn out to be liberal apologists who don a false mantle of objectivity in order to advance the cause of the Democratic Party."[23][relevant?] Kessler's awarding of Four Pinocchios to GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain for comments he made on Margaret Sanger and the founding of Planned Parenthood was also criticized by opponents of abortion.[24][relevant?] Yet Power Line also said that Kessler's extensive review of Democratic charges that Romney was a "flip-flopper" turned out to be "admirably fair-minded."[25][relevant?]
The liberal blog Talking Points Memo took Kessler to task for giving Four Pinocchios to a Democratic web petition on Medicare, saying the errors he allegedly made "were not just small misses, but big belly flop misses."[26][relevant?] The Obama White House issued a statement titled "Fact Checking the Fact Checker" after Kessler gave Obama Three Pinocchios for statements he made on the auto industry bailout.[27][relevant?] The Democratic National Committee released a statement denouncing "Kessler's hyperbolic, over the top fact check of the DNC's assertion that Mitt Romney supports private Social Security accounts."[28]
During the 2016 presidential campaign, the comic strip Doonesbury highlighted the vast disparity in Pinocchios given to Donald Trump versus Clinton.[29][relevant?] Kessler also appeared in a segment of The Daily Show about fact-checking Trump. "In terms of fact checking, Hillary Clinton is like playing chess with a real pro," he told Jordan Klepper. "Fact-checking Donald Trump is like playing checkers, with somebody who's not very good at it. It's pretty boring. His facts are so easily disproved there's no joy in hunt."[30]
Database of false or misleading Trump claims
Shortly after Trump became President, Kessler announced a 100-day project to list every false and misleading statement made by Trump while in office.[31] Kessler's team counted 492 untruths in the first 100 days, or an average of 4.9 per day.[32] In response to reader requests, Kessler decided to keep it going for Trump's first year and then his entire presidency. By January 20, 2021, the end of Trump's four-year term, Kessler and his colleagues had counted 30,573 untruths, or an average of 21 a day.[33] "Trump averaged about six claims a day in his first year as president, 16 claims day in his second year, 22 claims day in his third year – and 39 claims a day in his final year." Kessler wrote. "Put another way, it took him 27 months to reach 10,000 claims and another 14 months to reach 20,000. He then exceeded the 30,000 mark less than five months later." The database has drawn nationwide attention and been the subject of research by academicians.[34][35][36] "Kessler is doing the poet's work. Honor him," wrote New York Times columnist Roger Cohen. "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."[37]
Because of the Trump database, Kessler and the Fact Checker Team were nominated in 2020 by the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University for inclusion in a list of the Top Ten Works of Journalism of the Decade. “A rigorously reported and continually updated list of false statements by the president, numbering more than 19,000 by June 2020. The project is a sterling example of what journalists should do – holding the powerful accountable by using reporting and facts,” the nomination said.[38] Kessler and his team in 2018 were also nominated by The Washington Post for a Pulitzer Prize.[39]
The Washington Post on April 22, 2020, announced[40] that Kessler and his team had written a book, "Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth: The President's Falsehoods, Misleading Claims and Flat-Out Lies," to be published June 2 by Scribner. "More than a catalogue of false claims, Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth is a necessary guide to understanding the motives behind the president's falsehoods," the announcement said. Kirkus Reviews, in a starred review, called the book "an extremely valuable chronicle."[41] The book appeared on Publisher Weekly's top ten best-seller list.[42]
Kessler created a database of Joe Biden's false or misleading claims, but only for the first 100 days of his presidency.[43] "I have learned my lesson," Kessler tweeted. "'Learned my lesson' means who knows what the next four years will bring. We have fact-checked Biden rigorously and will continue to do so. Trump at 500 claims/100 days was manageable; 8,000+ was not."[44]
Controversy over Bernie Sanders fact checks
In August 2018, Kessler came under fire for his coverage of a Mercatus Center study on the perceived costs of Senator Bernie Sanders's Medicare for All plan.[45][46] Kessler released corrections to his fact check, which stated the Sanders's claims of $2.1 trillion in 10-year National Health Expenditure savings were cherry-picked.[47] Kessler did not change his Three-Pinocchio rating[48] and his findings were affirmed by other fact-checking organizations, including PolitiFact,[49]FactCheck.org[50] and the Associated Press.[51]
In February 2021, Kessler was criticized by socialist magazine Jacobin for an article he wrote in which he rated a statement by Senator Bernie Sanders, in which Sanders had declared that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 had only benefited the wealthy, as three pinocchios. Jacobin criticized Kessler for what they perceived as him ignoring data in his article, and accused him of writing it in order to benefit Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post.[52]
Claim about definition of the word "millions"
Kessler has been criticized "for applying bizarrely specific standards to statements and sometimes calling obviously true statements 'misleading' if he doesn't like what they imply."[53] For example, when Bernie Sanders said that “millions” of Americans were working more than one job, Kessler cited Bureau of Labor Statistics data showing that nearly 8 million people held more than one job, but rated Sanders's statement as "misleading" because these 8 million people were just 5 percent of Americans with jobs.[53] Kessler responded to the criticism: "Since there was some Twitter outrage about this assessment, please note that this is a summary of a previous fact check, in which we said Sanders had the 'most accurate sound bite' on this issue among Democrats running for president."[54] He then provided a link to the original column.[55]
Fact check about rape and abortion
In July 2022, Kessler was criticized[56][57][58][59] for calling into question, with little evidence, a report of an abortion by a 10-year-old child from Ohio.[60] The report was later exhaustively confirmed by reporters[61] and public records[62] requests. “The intent of the piece was to spotlight the need for careful reporting in a time when information spreads rapidly," Washington Post spokeswoman Shani George told the Associated Press.[63]
In his article, Kessler wrote that, "None of the officials we reached were aware of such a case in their areas." A subsequent Freedom of Information Act request revealed a previous email exchange between Kessler and officials at Children Services for Franklin County, where the alleged assault occurred in which the FCCS replied, "Their agency could not comment on specific cases, because this information is treated as confidential under Ohio law."[64] In a correction, The Washington Post said "an email the county spokeswoman sent was inadvertently missed during the reporting."[65]
Fact checks examining biographical claims
Kessler has conducted a number of fact checks that examined biographical claims. He wrote in 2018 that House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy's claim of being a small-business entrepreneur — “my own deli” — was exaggerated; McCarthy only had a counter in his uncle's yogurt shop for a year.[66] Kessler wrote many fact checks of claims that President Joe Biden made about his life, including whether he was arrested trying to see Nelson Mandela[67] or arrested while advocating for civil rights.[68]
Some of Kessler's biographical fact checks have been criticized by their subjects. Rev. Robert W. Lee IV had stated In The Washington Post, in a lawsuit and at public events that he was a great-great-great-great nephew of Robert E. Lee, but in 2021 Kessler said a review of historical and genealogical records found there is “no evidence that Rob Lee, who was born in North Carolina, is related to Robert E. Lee.”[69] Kessler traced Lee's roots to a confederate soldier in Alabama called Robert S. Lee. In response, Lee said he had withdrawn from the lawsuit. But 8 months later Rob Lee said a 400-page family genealogy report gathered by a hired genealogist had found ties to Lee.[70] The Washington Post said he declined to provide a copy of the report for examination by the newspaper.
Also in 2021, Kessler said he had examined property and census records regarding the family of Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, discovering that Scott's great-grandfather was a substantial landowner.[71] “Scott tells a tidy story packaged for political consumption, but a close look shows how some of his family's early and improbable success gets flattened and written out of his biography,” Kessler wrote. “Against heavy odds, Scott's ancestors amassed relatively large areas of farmland, a mark of distinction in the Black community at the time.”
Scott denounced the article, referring to it in his response to President Biden's address to Congress that “a national newspaper suggested my family's poverty was actually privilege because a relative owned land generations before my time.”[72] Other commentators also criticized the report.[73] “I was really surprised by the intensity of the reaction, much of which was fanned by Fox News,” Kessler said in an interview with National Public Radio. “Not in any way did I ever suggest in the piece that Scott's great-grandfather lived a privileged life. I mean, after all, this is the Jim Crow South we're talking about.”[74]
Awards and honors
Sigma Delta Chi Award (2022) presented by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) (formerly Sigma Delta Chi) for excellence in journalism, in the category of fact checking across all platforms.[75] Kessler won for a series of fact checks on claims about Hunter Biden, the president's son. Kessler had provided “a very detailed, balanced analysis of a complicated and horrifically convoluted story that spawned a thousand rumors and falsehoods," the announcement said.[76]
After addressing the Kentucky legislature in 2019 on behalf of its ethics commission, Kessler was named a Kentucky Colonel, the state's highest honor, for his contributions to the nation. Kessler noted on Twitter[78] that he had awarded Four Pinocchios to the two people who had signed the declaration: Gov. Matt Bevin and Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes.
Personal life
Kessler lives in McLean, Virginia, with his wife, Cynthia Rich. They have three children, Andre, Hugo, and Mara.[79][80]
Kessler is a great-grandson of Jean Baptiste August Kessler, an oil industrialist who stood at the basis of the oil supermajorShell, and a grandson of Geldolph Adriaan Kessler, who helped create the Dutch steel industry through his involvement with Hoogovens.[81] He was born in Cincinnati, where his father, Adriaan Kessler, was an executive at Procter & Gamble,[82] and he attended high school there and in Lexington, Kentucky. Kessler's mother, Else Bolotin, was a psychologist[83] who in Lexington "helped women in that era of feminist awakening confront a society dominated by men."[84] Both of his parents were Dutch, and immigrated to the United States after marriage.[85]
Books
The Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy New York: Saint Martin's Press, 2007. ISBN978-0312363802
Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth: The President's Falsehoods, Misleading Claims and Flat-Out Lies New York: Scribner, 2020. ISBN978-1982151072
Fact-checking is the process of verifying the factual accuracy of questioned reporting and statements. Fact-checking can be conducted before or after the text or content is published or otherwise disseminated. Internal fact-checking is such checking done in-house by the publisher to prevent inaccurate content from being published; when the text is analyzed by a third party, the process is called external fact-checking.
Robert Hunter Biden is an American attorney and businessman. He is the second son of U.S. President Joe Biden and his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden. Biden was a founding board member of BHR Partners, a Chinese investment company, in 2013, and later served on the board of Burisma Holdings, one of the largest private natural gas producers in Ukraine, from 2014 until his term expired in April 2019. He has worked as a lobbyist and legal representative for lobbying firms, a hedge fund principal, and a venture capital and private equity fund investor.
The 60 Plus American Association of Senior Citizens is an American conservative advocacy group founded in 1992 and based in Alexandria, Virginia. Its stated purpose is to promote solutions to seniors' issues that are grounded in free markets, less government, and less taxes. The organization is pro-Republican Party. The organization is known for its advocacy for the privatization of Social Security and senior citizen health programs, as well as its opposition to the estate tax. The organization has been funded by Charles and David Koch. Although the organization did have ties to Koch family in the past, they said in 2022 that there have been no contributions from anyone in the Koch network for well over a decade.
PolitiFact.com is an American nonprofit project operated by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, with offices there and in Washington, D.C. It began in 2007 as a project of the Tampa Bay Times, with reporters and editors from the newspaper and its affiliated news media partners reporting on the accuracy of statements made by elected officials, candidates, their staffs, lobbyists, interest groups and others involved in U.S. politics. Its journalists select original statements to evaluate and then publish their findings on the PolitiFact.com website, where each statement receives a "Truth-O-Meter" rating. The ratings range from "True" for statements the journalists deem as accurate to "Pants on Fire" for claims the journalists deem as "not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim".
Sean Michael Spicer is an American former political aide who served as the 30th White House Press Secretary and as White House Communications Director under President Donald Trump in 2017. Spicer was communications director of the Republican National Committee from 2011 to 2017, and its chief strategist from 2015 to 2017.
Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, addressed a joint session of the United States Congress on February 28, 2017. It was his first public address before a joint session. Similar to a State of the Union Address, it was delivered before the 115th United States Congress in the Chamber of the House of Representatives in the United States Capitol. Presiding over this joint session was the House speaker, Paul Ryan, accompanied by Mike Pence, the vice president in his capacity as the president of the Senate.
Russell Thurlow Vought is an American former government official who was the director of the Office of Management and Budget from July 2020 to January 2021. He was previously deputy director of the OMB for part of 2018, and acting director from 2019 to 2020.
The Palmer Report is an American liberal fake news website, founded in 2016 by Bill Palmer. It is known for making unsubstantiated or false claims, producing hyperpartisan content, and publishing conspiracy theories, especially on matters relating to Donald Trump and Russia. Fact-checkers have debunked numerous Palmer Report stories, and organizations including the Columbia Journalism Review and the German Marshall Fund have listed the site among false content producers or biased websites.
Occupy Democrats is an American left-wing media outlet built around a Facebook page and corresponding website. Established in 2012, it publishes hyperpartisan content, clickbait, and false information. Posts originating from the Occupy Democrats Facebook page are among the most widely shared political content on Facebook.
On April 25, 2019, former vice president Joe Biden released a video announcing his candidacy in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries. On November 3, 2020, Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, defeated incumbent Republican president Donald Trump and vice president Mike Pence in the general election.
During and after his term as President of the United States, Donald Trump made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims. The Washington Post's fact-checkers documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his presidential term, an average of about 21 per day. The Toronto Star tallied 5,276 false claims from January 2017 to June 2019, an average of 6 per day. Commentators and fact-checkers have described the scale of Trump's mendacity as "unprecedented" in American politics, and the consistency of falsehoods a distinctive part of his business and political identities. Scholarly analysis of Trump's tweets found "significant evidence" of an intent to deceive.
Daniel Dale is a Canadian journalist known for rebutting a large number of false claims made by United States President Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign and presidency. Dale credits an encounter with Toronto Mayor Rob Ford while covering the mayor and his brother Doug for the Toronto Star as the inspiration for developing his brand of adversarial journalism.
Social media was used extensively in the 2020 United States presidential election. Both incumbent president Donald Trump and Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden's campaigns employed digital-first advertising strategies, prioritizing digital advertising over print advertising in the wake of the pandemic. Trump had previously utilized his Twitter account to reach his voters and make announcements, both during and after the 2016 election. The Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden also made use of social media networks to express his views and opinions on important events such as the Trump administration's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the protests following the murder of George Floyd, and the controversial appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
Michelle Ye Hee Lee is an American journalist who is the Tokyo bureau chief of The Washington Post as of 2020. She previously served as the president of the Asian American Journalists Association.
The Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory is a series of false allegations that Joe Biden, while he was vice president of the United States, improperly withheld a loan guarantee and took a bribe to pressure Ukraine into firing prosecutor general Viktor Shokin to prevent a corruption investigation of Ukrainian gas company Burisma and to protect his son, Hunter Biden, who was on the Burisma board. As part of efforts by Donald Trump and his campaign in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, which led to Trump's first impeachment, these falsehoods were spread in an attempt to damage Joe Biden's reputation and chances during the 2020 presidential campaign, and later in an effort to impeach him.
Donald Trump, President of the United States from 2017 to 2021, and a Presidential candidate for the upcoming 2024 United States presidential election, has elicited highly polarized public perceptions about his performance as a head of state and largely negative opinions about his temperament and personal conduct while in office. Before entering politics, he was a businessman and television personality famous for his image as a real estate tycoon. Viewed as a heroic figure by many of his supporters, Trump was seen by some as a business "huckster" and was the frequent butt of jokes.
In October 2020, a controversy arose involving data from a laptop that belonged to Hunter Biden. The owner of a Delaware computer shop, John Paul Mac Isaac, said that the laptop had been left by a man who identified himself as Hunter Biden. Mac Isaac also stated that he is legally blind and could not be sure whether the man was actually Hunter Biden. Three weeks before the 2020 United States presidential election, the New York Post published a front-page story that presented emails from the laptop, alleging they showed corruption by Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee and Hunter Biden's father. According to the Post, the story was based on information provided to Rudy Giuliani, the personal attorney of incumbent president and candidate Donald Trump, by Mac Isaac. Forensic analysis later authenticated some of the emails from the laptop, including one of the two emails used by the Post in their initial reporting.
The United States House Oversight Committee investigation into the Biden family is an ongoing investigation since January 2023 by the United States House of Representatives into US President Joe Biden and his family. The investigation was initiated on January 11, and includes examination of the foreign business activities of Biden's son, Hunter, and brother, James, as well as Twitter's involvement in the Hunter Biden laptop controversy.
In October 2020, a controversy emerged involving data from a laptop that belonged to Hunter Biden that was abandoned at a computer shop in 2019. On October 19, 2020, a group of 51 former senior intelligence officials, who had served in four different administrations, including the Trump administration, released an open letter stating that the release of the alleged emails "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation".
↑ Stephanie Grace (January–February 2018). "Just the Facts". Brown Alumni Monthly. Archived from the original on September 9, 2018. Retrieved September 24, 2022.
↑ Stephanie Grace (January–February 2018). "Just the Facts". Brown Alumni Monthly. Archived from the original on February 18, 2018. Retrieved February 16, 2018.
↑ Taranto, James (October 7, 2008). "The 'Fact Checking' Fad". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on December 4, 2021. Retrieved January 3, 2012.
↑ Glenn Kessler (February 21, 2016). "100 days of Trump claims". washingtonpost.com. Archived from the original on August 18, 2018. Retrieved August 18, 2018.
↑ Glenn Kessler (April 30, 2017). "100 days of Trump claims". washingtonpost.com. Archived from the original on December 14, 2018. Retrieved August 18, 2018.
↑ van der Zee, Sophie; Poppe, Ronald; Havrileck, Alice; Baillon, Aurelien (November 5, 2018). "A personal model of trumpery: Deception detection in a real-world highstakes setting". arXiv:1811.01938 [cs.CL].
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