Santa, We're Making a List and Fact-Checking it Twice

By: Roy Peter Clark | Tampa Bay Times

Good reporters have always checked things out. Arguably the most famous case of fact-checking — long before theTampa Bay Times' PolitiFact lit its first pants on fire — goes back to Sept. 21, 1897. It appeared in an unsigned editorial in the New York Sun, titled "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus." The author was Francis Pharcellus Church, a former Civil War correspondent, who has earned a place as a patron saint of fact-checking.