Perhaps the model of full-time fact checking needs to change? I've been a fact checker at a magazine. My job consisted of calling sources up, and asking them e

Perhaps the model of full-time fact checking needs to change? I've been a fact checker at a magazine. My job consisted of calling sources up, and asking them each line of identifiable facts - to see if they actually said this, or whether this person's birth date is actually x month, y day, z year. Whether the moon really was waxing on this time of this month like the writer said in the article. Whether Nasa did publish this photo on this day, and where? I'd say make mandatory fact checking a prerequisite of the writer's submission. All forms of public/recordable and fact-checkable (inventing a new word here) resource must be recorded, logged, delivered in electronic form for searching and listening. For those cases where you can't keep these records, you won't be able to "fact-check" them anyway. For actual facts and events, historical records, etc - I'd say we have a whole internet that is waiting to connect us with the actual people who it happened to. Use skype to call direct contacts, heck, I'd even support the New York Times creating their own verified wiki. Fork wikipedia and create a journalism-standard wiki. I can't believe that the NYT hasn't actually done this yet. It's so obvious - they have teams of people on fact-checking duty. Create places where these facts that are gathered don't just disappear into the air after this issue is printed. Keep everything. With the cost of electronic storage so cheap, I highly believe that we can keep every single fact that we check, together with references and probabilities of accuracy and correctness (ie this factoid came from a scientist, maybe it's true. But now, I have found this paper that shows these equations and has been peer reviewed by these additional scientists and debated by these media and these researchers, then perhaps I can rate this to be more believable than just what the scientist said.) These are all doable things with the amount of resources we have. Just missed opportunities.