Check your facts

The term “fake news” has been around a long time, but it is a phrase that particularly has been highlighted through US politics in the last decade. This phrase has a wide definition, embracing things like satire and comedy, as well as propaganda and conspiracy theories. It can be very damaging and have disastrous consequences. Various organisations have been set up for the purpose of checking the facts of social media and other news stories. One group called RMIT Fact Lab prioritises checking “content that has the potential to harm people’s health, safety, and financial well-being, as well as content that undermines democratic processes, such as inaccurate information about voting in elections and referendums.”¹

Have you considered that checking your own facts when you write and publish is also important? You may not be undermining democracy or harming people’s health, but still we must, as Christians, take accuracy seriously. Many times in the Bible, we are exhorted to live truthful lives. Alas, even with the best of intentions, we can convey false information and mislead or hurt people if we fail to double-check our facts.

Japan Harvest fact-checking

With all these things in mind, we spend time at Japan Harvest checking facts. We check all sorts of things—the publishing details and page numbers of quoted sources, email and website addresses, and names of institutions. We confirm historical facts and the details of Japanese customs. The accuracy of quotes and which Bible translation an author has quoted from are also things that we look at. Numbers and names that aren’t accurate are identified and corrected.

You may think: These are not world-altering facts; why are you so pedantic? There are several reasons. First, when we print inaccurate information, readers can be annoyed, for example, if a website address doesn’t lead to where it should. Authors can also be upset. Being sloppy in what we print also reflects on the magazine and JEMA: it makes it look like we don’t care about truth. Checking our facts is a matter of integrity. So we work hard to ensure all our content is accurate and truthful.

Confidence of readers

Have you ever listened to a speech or sermon that had obvious inaccuracies? It’s distracting and can mean you lose confidence that the speaker is telling the truth.

The same thing can happen with readers. If they pick up that you’ve inaccurately referenced or quoted a Bible passage, they begin to question other things that you’ve written. They start to doubt you and may lose interest in continuing to read. On the other hand, if they trust you and find your writing compelling, they might even recommend your work to others.

I have chosen not to continue reading a book (a big deal for this reading addict) when I didn’t feel the author had checked their facts. One novel I didn’t finish was set in Tokyo. The description of the city didn’t sound like the Tokyo I knew. The main characters had been suddenly relocated from the US to Japan by their government, and the descriptions of what they did and how they did it just didn’t sound consistent with what I knew about an international lifestyle.

As an example, on the first page, the main character makes this observation about her view outside the window on the approach to Narita International Airport: “the ground, a jumbled, dingy, brown, relieved here and there by patches of green.” It made me wonder if the author had ever flown into Tokyo before, as 20 minutes out from Narita, you’re either over the ocean or Japan’s green mountains.

I persevered for a while but lost interest in the book as the inaccuracies continued.

Conclusion

Why is fact-checking important? As a Christian, I am committed to truth-telling, and I don’t want anything I write or publish to cause readers to stumble or to hurt someone I have written about. But as an author, I also want to be worthy of the trust that readers put in me. I don’t want to distract them from what I’ve carefully written, nor do I want them to question my integrity. As an editor, I want the same thing for the authors I work with. I want this publication to be trustworthy and the authors we publish to be respected.

When you write something and submit it to be published or publish it yourself by sending it off to prayer supporters or share it online, take time to check your facts before you send it.

1. “How We Work,” RMIT University, https://www.rmit.edu.au/about/schools-colleges/media-and-communication/industry/factlab/methodology (accessed July 18, 2024).
Images: https://thenounproject.com/term/detecting/3331499 and https://thenounproject.com/icon/fact-3331495 (modified)