from Patrick McKenzie | by Patrick McKenzie

I suppose I am not surprised by this, as a sometimes comms professional, but there is no trick for getting media appearances nearly as effective as getting media appearances, and after a representation passes one set of fact checkers it is repeated verbatim as if holy writ.

Like, one thing that you can probably say about someone who repeatedly shows up in any media is that they might have a calculated PR strategy. But a sufficient set of facts to cause that is a) show up once on something salient and b) answer your emails.

This is neither a good nor a bad thing in isolation, but I think many consumers of media output would benefit from understanding its production function better.

This includes one case I'm aware of which was passed by Fact Checker Group A as "obviously a tongue-in-cheek metaphor in context, not in scope for fact checking" and then in Outlet B as "As previously reported in A, [assertion made as straight truth]."