Michael Ray Smith

Fake News, Truth-Telling and Charles M. Sheldon's Model of Accuracy Michael Ray Smith

Daily audiences are subjected to a blizzard of information, some of which is deliberately incorrect. The best news organizations in the world are marshalling fact-checking teams to determine the accuracy of the news content. Computer wonks are working with the news industry to create computer programs that trace the information back to the source to determine the credibility of the information. Fact-checking is fashionable these days but among a little-known truth is that a clergyman-turned-journalist pioneered the passion for getting information right when he took over a general-circulation, mainstream newspaper in 1900 and tried to apply the adage, "Accuracy, accuracy, accuracy" to every news article and advertisement in the periodical. He used his faith-based sensibilities to edit the newspaper and his work came to be called "The Jesus Newspaper." Circulation soared with the experiment lasting only one week, yet it provoked the newspaper complex to reconsider some of its practices that are part of the fact-checking mania at work today.