Is it better to be left in the dark or blinded by the light?

This map has since been fact checked (and checked, and checked...).

Around the same time children learn that covering ones eyes doesn’t mean he or she is invisible, they usually learn that just because they say it, it doesn’t make it true. This sense of awareness, however, seems to fade when applied to the media consuming nation as a whole.  (Just one exhibit?) 

In the days of insta-news, it’s hard to forget that people like Factcheck.org are around to vet you “Faster than the speed of spin.” Or as Sarah Palin puts it, people like to do that “who said what at what time and we’ll have proof” ”thing”. With innumerable resources at hand, especially with the rise of the Internet, there are very few facts that can’t be checked. But just to make things easier, organizations like FactCheck.org have stationed themselves to “put the facts out there and let the chips fall where they may.” More or less, the facts are out there.

But questions remain.

In light of the “fact-check it” trend, Daniel Libit, of Politico.com begs the question: “Has the drumbeat of ”fact-checks” blended into white noise, letting significant misstatements and deceptions get lost in the mix?” Has “Fact” lost its clout? Republican strategist Alex Castellanos, quoted in the same article, seems to think so: “It is becoming wallpaper. After a while, you get enough of a pattern on the wall you don’t even know it’s there.” Could it be—fact checkers are blinding us with the truth?

Fact checking has been as fast and frequent as ever this campaign; and yet, its impact seems to be somewhat less than perceptible. The oft-cited case of Palin’s Bridge to Nowhere plays upon this point. “Thanks, but no thanks,’ she claims; stopped at her hand, asserts the party. A quick search on FactCheck.org, however, implies the issue is a more ”complicated” than that.

This seems to be were things get interesting. In his story “The Lies We Bought: Unchallenged ‘Evidence’ For War,” John MacArthur quotes Peter Teeley, a press secretary for George H.W. Bush as saying, “You can say anything you want during a debate, and 80 million people hear it.” In the case that “anything” turns out to be false, and journalists correct it, “So what. Maybe 200 people read it, or 2,000 or 20,000.” The drumbeat of fact-checkers might be loud, but repetition is the father of learning and the echo chamber is deafening.

It seems that it’s not the quality of the statements released but the quantity that matters. And in fact, the incessant scrutiny may be hurting whatever truths are out there. “The one thing I worry about is by doing it the way we do, putting up articles one after another, we reinforce the notion that all politicians are liars and it doesn’t matter who gets elected,” says Brooks Jackson, director of Factcheck.org. More frighteningly, “We’re so hyper about fact-checking,” said a senior McCain aide in Libit’s article, “that you have candidates actually curtailing what they believe they can tell the American people.” 

Oh the irony.  In seeking truth, it seems we have only been turned into cynics—cynics undeserving of honesty.  

This leaves me fearful: if "truthfulness" carries such little weight, then what exactly gives form to public figures and stories?  In the absence of fact, what blood pumps through the veins of journalism?  Without honest reporting, what is left?