Opinion: The problem with PolitiFact's 'Lie of the Year'

This week, the allegedly unbiased fact-checkers at PolitiFact awarded their "Lie of the Year" award to the "online smear machine" that attempted "to take down" the survivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. "The attacks against Parkland's students stand out because of their sheer vitriol," the piece explains. "Together, the lies against the Parkland students in the wake of unspeakable tragedy were the most significant falsehoods of 2018."

It should go without saying that those who spread the conspiracy theory that the activists in the wake of the horrific school shooting were "crisis actors" -- kids only pretending to be victims -- are exceptionally terrible people. It's debatable, though, whether this conspiracy theory, which had no effect on policy or the students' ability to march or speak out, should be considered the most significant political lie in 2018. I'm relatively positive that the vast majority of Americans have never heard it. 

It's debatable, in fact, that it was even the most significant lie disseminated about the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High. After all, at a widely covered CNN anti-gun rally, the sheriff of Broward County misled the nation about the failures, cowardice and incompetence that allowed the shooting to occur. And the sheriff of Broward County isn't some random Twitter troll.

The internet, particularly social media, has made conspiracy theories seem more pervasive and immediate. Conventional wisdom tells us that fake news is a serious and growing problem in American life. I'm skeptical that the trend is unique to our age. Whatever the case, it's become a misleading tactic of some journalists to collect random tweets of crazy people or anonymous attention seekers and use them as a digital straw man. This hyper-focus on fringe players is a way to create the impression that one side of the debate continues to stubbornly embrace The Truth while the other is infested with slack-jawed yokels who'll believe just about anything. PolitiFact is just employing a larger-scale version of this maneuver.