The elite press has created the ritualized real-time "fact check" of political speech, stemming from the George W. Bush years, to advertise their objective reliability.
In practice, the vision of reporters as priests of a higher empirical truth is ill suited to the Trumpified political age, leading to a kind of institutional helplessness.
The belief that compulsively calling out the movement's empirical shortcomings is effective is a self-undermining futility, akin to pointing out a mugger's shoe is untied.
Despite threats to journalists and derision from political leaders, fact-checking outfits at major papers continue their work as if the environment is unchanged.
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