Factchecking Won’t Save Democracy
On this episode of The Time of Monsters, a talk about the rise of anti-system politics.

Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
For this week's edition of The Time of Monsters podcast, we're posting a talk that host Jeet Heer gave at Carleton University earlier this November on how the crisis of democracy is related to the crisis of journalism. In the talk, I argue that we are living in an age where the salient political divide is not so much left/right as system/antisytem. Liberals have tried to fight antisystem politicians like Donald Trump by doubling down on factchecking.
But as I argue, this strategy is deeply flawed since voters who respond to antisystem arguments are also skeptical of institutions that claim to check facts. The talk tries to lay out a strategy for engaging with antisystem anger in a more productive way.
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Keynote speaker Jeet Heer questions the role of fact-checking in an increasingly distrusting society at the Reimagining Political Journalism conference at Carleton University on Nov. 15, 2024.
(Natasha Baldin)For this week’s podcast, I’m posting a talk I gave at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, earlier this November on how the crisis of democracy is related to the crisis of journalism. In the talk, I argue that we are living in an age where the salient political divide is not so much left/right as system/anti-system. Liberals have tried to fight anti-system politicians like Donald Trump by doubling down on fact-checking.
But I maintain that this strategy is deeply flawed, since voters who respond to anti-system arguments are also skeptical of institutions that claim to check facts. The talk tries to lay out a strategy for engaging with anti-system anger in a more productive way.

Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
Many of Joe Biden’s closest advisors are now well-ensconced in the sinecures reserved for the elite, working at think tanks, academia, and major media outlets. Normally, they could expect to have future jobs when the Democrats retake the White House. But this cozy situation is being disrupted by ongoing reporting showing the extent of their complicity in the Gaza genocide and other US crimes in the Middle East. I spoke about this with Connor Echols, managing editor of Responsible Statecraft, who wrote an excellent article on the efforts to hold these officials accountable.
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