The blindness of the intelligentsia.

Today we address the latest fad from publishing, courtesy of a major journal known for its deep dives into thorny intellectual problems. I am of course referring to Esquire magazine.

"Fact Checking Is the Core of Nonfiction Writing," notes the title of the article in question. "Why Do So Many Publishers Refuse to Do It?"

Well, as someone who has done fact-checking work for more than twenty years, I can tell you one reason right off the top of my head: Publishers are cheap. Even in the heady days of 2000, when publishers had money, and the Internet hadn't started to pick off newspapers and magazines like tin monkeys in a shooting gallery, publishers were tightfisted about copyediting and fact-checking. Why? Because the production budget margins were slim, and anything that wasn't sales (advertising, special direct sales, subscriptions), fat paychecks for talent, editorial bonuses, or loaded expense accounts was overhead. We were overhead. We were speed bumps that the editors and writers hit on their way to the sunny uplands of publishing glory. We were the damp sock in the face that said "This author writes like a fourth-grader with narcolepsy" or "Everything in this piece is a lie." It was never phrased that way, but that's how it feels on the other end of the sock. Who'd want to pay for that?

But that's not what the author is driving at here. Best-selling true-crime-story peddler Emma Copley Eisenberg is asking why book publishers don't pay for fact-checking staff to make sure the books they publish are accurate.

Fact checking is a comprehensive process in which, according to the definitive book on the subject, a trained checker does the following: “Read for accuracy”; “Research the facts”; “Assess sources: people, newspapers and magazines, books, the Internet, etc”; “Check quotations”; and “Look out for and avoid plagiarism.” Though I had worked as a fact checker in two small newsrooms, did I trust myself to do the exhaustive and detailed work of checking my own nonfiction book? I did not.
      From reading up on the subject and talking to friends who had published books of nonfiction, I knew that I would be responsible for hiring and paying a freelance fact checker myself. This is the norm, not the exception; in almost all book contracts, it is the writer’s legal responsibility, not the publisher’s, to deliver a factually accurate text.
      As a result, most nonfiction books are not fact checked; if they are, it is at the author’s expense. Publishers have said for years that it would be cost-prohibitive for them to provide fact checking for every nonfiction book; they tend to speak publicly about a book’s facts only if a book includes errors that lead to a public scandal and threaten their bottom line. Recent controversies over books containing factual errors by Jill Abramson, Naomi Wolf, and, further back, James Frey, come to mind.

I'm willing to take her question at face value here. The main reason that publishers don't want to fact-check -- and neither do authors -- is it means less money for everybody else. She says that for one her books she had thousands of pages of documents and hours of transcripts. I am not questioning her work ethic at all. I am saying that it would take the fact-checker about the same amount of time to go over all this information, even if it were well organized (which most writers are not), so what does she expect them to be paid? The starvation wage for such work is $20 an hour, so you're looking at possibly $20,000 at least if you want such research checked. That's all going to come out of sales, and thus out of the writer's pay. How many of them would sign on for that, especially writers who are more confident about their research?

Unbelievably, Eisenberg was able to get someone to do one of her books for just twelve grand, for which she paid herself out of pocket. I credit her for the willingness to do that rather than face fire or possibly lawsuits for getting the facts wrong. And she was lucky to get a good fact-checker; elsewhere the article cites the story of a writer who hired a freelance fact-checker that was not so good, and introduced more errors into the work. Not many people really have experience in the field, you know, and those that claim to often have worked for biased publications or celebrity outfits that just want a rubber stamp on what they publish.

Then there's this thought:

But the reason why the publishing industry has been slow to implement such guidelines for fact checking may lie further down in the foundation of the whole system. Without widespread consumer awareness that most books are not fact checked, or about which imprints publish which books, there’s no real reason for publishers to care about fact checking. If it comes to light that a book contains major errors, it’s the author, not the publisher, whose reputation takes the hit.

She's right about that, but doesn't make the case why the publisher should care. I've done a lot of work for a publisher that will put almost anything labeled nonfiction in print, all kinds of stuff, and they really and honestly don't care if it's truthful. Why should they? No one's going to say, "This book on the Reptilian Conspiracy leaves out crucial data! I'll never buy a book from Knucklehead Press again!" No, they'll say, "Joe Bloe's book on the Reptilian Conspiracy is a waste of time! Don't buy it!" And if the sales are lousy, the editors at Knucklehead won't bother to contract Mr. Bloe for more books. It's still cheaper than having a big fund for fact-checking and lawyers that doesn't come out of author's royalties. But Eisenberg, who I suppose as a reporter is studious about facts, seems to think publishers can pay for this out of the unicorn golden fart fund, because the Internet has demolished the book publishing industry pretty well, and most books lose money.

The person who brought this story to my attention -- you probably guessed I'm not an Esquire reader -- was fuming because publishers ought to pay! for fact-checking, to stop the spread of fake news! I'd like to know whose fake news was intended by that statement. The healthcare pros who said we couldn't visit Grandpa's deathbed but it was okay to mob the streets for a protest? The fact-checkers at Rolling Stone who gave a thumbs-up to the Duke Lacrosse story? The sharp-eyed researchers at CNN who approved the "fiery but mostly peaceful" reportage?

NB: This is fake but accurate.

For some reason, the same people who ask "Who watches the watchmen?" about the police are completely willing to trust reporters and fact-checkers, as if they don't have their own biases and prejudices. Or, more likely, they know they have biases and prejudices, but they're the "right kind." Which is how I've gotten in trouble over the years for my fact-checking work.

One last point, and this may be the most important point: Insane or not, con artist or not, the book author will almost certainly know more about his subject than the fact-checker will, but the fact-checker can only go by accepted wisdom. So in cases where the book goes against conventional wisdom, the fact-checker would red-pencil everything until the publisher has no choice but to pay a kill fee and cancel the project. What does this mean? Surely half the diet and nutrition books peddled to the lay audience would never see the light of day. And no book questioning orthodoxy on global warming, sexual identity, or the sanctity of certain politicians would ever get to galley stage. What would be next? Books arguing against Keynesian economics, the 1619 Project, abortion and euthanasia, and whatever else is a "protected subject" would never be published. Many people in the business, almost left-wingers all, might say "So what?" Here's what: Other books under the don't-question-orthodoxy rule would include Darwin's On the Origin of Species, Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri vi, Pasteur's The Germ Theory and Its Applications to Medicine and Surgery, and Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. In other words, if I de-platform (as the kiddies say) the cranks and the crooks because they disagree with mainstream opinion, I'm likely to kill the truth as collateral damage. Better to publish them all and let the truth work its way forward.