As someone who is a sometimes freelance fact-checker for a national publication, (Enough qualifiers? Trust me, they're all necessary.) I've done my homework on the history of the field. For example, did you know that in the UK there are no such things as fact checkers at magazines? The fact-checking is handled newspaper style: between the writer and the editor, everything is supposed to be verified as accurate. Facts aren't explicity checked; if the editor reads something that raises an eyebrow, the writer provides backup. If the writer lied about it, and it makes it to print well, they are in deep shit, my friend. There is no system in place to bail them out, like there is in the US.
Here in New York, if a writer fumbles a fact in a story that's made it to press, it's the fact-checker who typically gets interrogated first. And if the erroneous detail cannot be accounted for by said staff member, it's THEIR ass, not the writer's. Sure, the magazine may choose not to work with the freelance writer who submitted the lie anymore, but if they are writing for the glossies, they are probably going to be able to drum up work. The fact-checker, on the other hand, is a magazine staff member, and if they make too many errors in a year (depends on the pub, but some places say 3 is the max), they are fired, out on their ass. And their colleagues and competitors know exactly why, making finding more work in the field a challenging proposition at best.
A major problem is while this system is designed to eliminate publication of erroneous information, it also encourages feature writers to flub and exaggerate their stories. If they slip one past the goalie that makes their story sound much more dramatic, it's to their benefit! If later, the facts are called into question, it's the staffer that gets in trouble, not them! The more cunning or unscrupulous (or just lazy) the writer, the more the fact-checker has to be on guard. And working with my fact checking colleagues, boy have I heard some stories of malfeasance. Entire legs of trips forged (don't forget to check the expense report for a plane ticket where there should've been a car rental). Composite characters created out of scratch. Interviews written to sound intimate, that were a bit more like a keynote address at a conference. The writer inserting himself into events, only to omit key facts or misreport those events (best to find out there was a major power outage in Italy BEFORE talking about how great a time you had there last year. It's comical if sad.
Most writers certainly don't try to exploit the system, but even so, errors slip through. And thus, Adam Gopnik's insightful football piece in The New Yorker (The Unbeautiful Game, not available online) contains two errors, neither serious, certainly neither purposeful, but nontheless a rare example of mistakes in an article screened by the world's most vaunted fact-checking department (one I'd like to freelance for, if anyone who reads this can drop a dime).
First, Mr. Gopnik paranthetically states that suits are not permitted to be worn by coaches on the sidelines. As the great site Uni Watch mentioned often, and ESPN reported, two NFL coaches, Jack Del Rio and Mike Nolan, were allowed to wear suits this season on the sidelines. For marketing purposes, Reebok wants coaches to wear all branded/logoed usually awful looking gear, but these two won permission to buck the trend and wear suits twice during the season. As late as the start of this season, this was no certainty. Thus, I bet this article was sat on for a while until the timing was right (the playoffs starting, for example), and then run. When, in that timeframe, the article got vetted, who knows, but anyone doing research in the last two months would run into multiple sources stating that these two coaches were permitted to wear suits. So this one appears to have slipped through the cracks.
More questionable would be Gopnik's assertion that Brian Billick, head coach of the Ravens, is defensive-minded. Yes, Billick's Ravens are known for their smashmouth, in your face, defenses. They won the 2000 Super Bowl playing lights-out D and just enough offense. But Billick's history is as an offensive genius. From his bio: "Prior to becoming the Ravens' head coach, Billick spent five years as Minnesota's offensive coordinator, where in 1998, the Vikings' offense scored an NFL single-season record 556 points." So the key here is phrasing. Gopnik's sentence about Billick as the subject of a book described him as: "…a tight-lipped, humorless, defensive-minded coach…" (nothing omitted changes the meaning of that phrase).
Now maybe I'm being humorless, but as soon as I read that sentence, my jaw dropped. After all, this isn't just an offensive-minded coach, this is a coach who, as coordinator, set the NFL record for points scored in a season. He's in the books as an offensive genius. He came up through the ranks on the offensive side of the ball. Chuck Noll, who Gopnik compares him to in that sentence, was a Pittsburgh coach, a team known for its Steel Curtain Defense. Noll's teams allowest the fewest yards in an NFL season four times in his career! I will soften my own argument by saying that Billick's Ravens allowed the fewest points in league history in 2000. But, one year, even a record setting year, does not undo a career spent as an offensive assistant, especially since Marvin Lewis was running the defense in Baltimore pretty much without interference from Billick, nor does it legitimize the comparison between Noll and Billick.
So, the point of checking facts is to maintain a tone of accuracy in reading. When I came across these two statements within a few paragraphs of each other, I was blown away, and my enjoyment of Gopnik's analysis (and his writing style which I enjoyed in Paris to the Moon was kind of shot. I still think he's a good writer. I still think The New Yorker's fact checking department is beyond compare. But I was, to borrow the football theme and be a bit overdramatic, blindsided by the hit.
