The worst thing about a presidential campaign year - and Lord knows there are many contenders for that dishonor - may not be the terrible ads or the awful debates. The worst thing in my view is the growing prominence of the media "fact-check" genre of journalism. If you ever engage in online discussions about politics, I'm sure you've seen it. Person A makes an assertion about something. Person B responds not by saying anything at all, but by posting a link to a media "fact-check" site that presumes to disprove or debunk Person A's assertion. And that is supposed to settle it, because these media fact-checkers are nonpartisan, unbiased and unfailingly factual in their assessments. When they issue a "ruling" of true, half-true, false, pants-on-fire or whatever else, you can consider that ruling tantamount to absolute truth. They're fact-checkers, dammit! And because so many people simply assume the "fact-checkers" are operating in accordance with such lofty standards, their pronouncements are indeed given the weight of unassailable truth, authority and accuracy.

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