When is fact-checking more rhetoric than fact

https://www.chronicle.com/newsletter/chronicle-review/2021-07-29

“Twitter’s enforced brevity privileges the factoid,” for instance, and outlets like Vox have “built a brand around a house style that blends earnest righteousness and complacent, self-satisfied wonkery.”  (https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-rise-of-the-pedantic-professor/)

“fact-grubbing” rhetoric, not fact-checking; their purpose was to persuade, not to explain, and at their worst they shaded into propaganda.

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more on fake news in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=fake+news