Why Politicians Lie The Atlantic

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 6, 2025, 9:18 AM

When I founded PolitiFact, I thought fact-checking would make politicians more truthful. We need to think bigger. For American politicians, this is a golden age of lying. Social media allows them to spread mendacity with speed and efficiency, while supporters amplify any falsehood that serves their cause. When I launched PolitiFact in 2007, I thought we were going to raise the cost of lying. I didn’t expect to change people’s votes just by calling out candidates, but I was hopeful that our journalism would at least nudge them to be more truthful.

I was wrong. More than 15 years of fact-checking has done little or nothing to stem the flow of lies. I underestimated the strength of the partisan media on both sides, particularly conservative outlets, which relentlessly smeared our work. (A typical insult: “The fact-checkers are basically just a P.R. arm of the Democrats at this point.”) PolitiFact and other media organizations published thousands of checks, but as time went on, Republican representatives and voters alike ignored our journalism more and more, or dismissed... Democrats sometimes did too, of course, but they were more often mindful of our work and occasionally issued corrections when they were caught in a falsehood.

Lying is ubiquitous, yet politicians are rarely asked why they do it. Maybe journalists think the reason is obvious; many are reluctant to even use the word lie, because it invites confrontation and demands proof. But the answer could help us address the problem. So I spent the past four years asking members of Congress, political operatives, local officials, congressional staffers, White House aides, and campaign consultants this simple question: Why do politicians lie? In a way, these conversations made me hopeful that officials from both parties might curtail their lying if we find ways to change their incentives. The decision to lie can be reduced to something like a point system: If I tell this lie, will I score enough support and attention from my voters, my party leaders, and my corner...

“There is a base to play to, a narrative to uphold or reinforce,” said Cal Cunningham, a Democrat who lost a Senate race in North Carolina in 2020 after acknowledging that he had been... “There is an advantage that comes from willfully misstating the truth that is judged to be greater than the disadvantage that may come from telling the truth. I think there’s a lot of calculus in it.” Jim Kolbe, a former Republican member of Congress from Arizona who has since left the party, described the advantage more vividly: A lie “arouses and... Thomas Friedman thinks only a third party can save us: "If competition is good for our economy," asks Diamond, "why isn't it good for our politics?" We need a third party on the stage of the next presidential debate to look Americans in the eye and say: "These two parties are lying to you.

They can't tell you the truth because they are each trapped in decades of special interests. I am not going to tell you what you want to hear. I am going to tell you what you need to hear if we want to be the world's leaders, not the new Romans." These media sources have a slight to moderate liberal bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by appeals to emotion or stereotypes) to favor liberal causes. These sources are generally trustworthy for information but may require further investigation.

See all Left-Center sources. Bias Rating: LEFT-CENTER (-3.3) Factual Reporting: HIGH (1.0) Country: USA MBFC’s Country Freedom Rank: MOSTLY FREE Media Type: Magazine Traffic/Popularity: High Traffic MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY The Atlantic is an American magazine founded in 1857 as The Atlantic Monthly in Boston, Massachusetts. Since 2006, the magazine has been based in Washington, D.C. Created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine, it has grown to achieve a national reputation as a high-quality review organ with a moderate worldview. The periodical has won more National Magazine Awards than any other monthly magazine.

Read our profile on the United States government and media. On July 28, 2017, Emerson Collective became the majority owner of The Atlantic, purchasing the majority stake from Atlantic Media’s David G. Bradley. The outlets owned by Emerson Collective include The Atlantic magazine and its digital properties, its standout events line, and Atlantic Media Strategies. The Washington Post reports Emerson Collective plans to move to full ownership of The Atlantic in “three to five years” after their 2017 investment. The Atlantic is funded through a subscription and advertising model.

Weak-sauce as objectivity--what a notion. Can't you tell your readers what happened, instead of this "but others say." And by the way--aren't you media fact-checkers. Isn't that your job? What politicians have long figured is that whole swaths of the press corps are so lazy and, frankly, just soft that their idea of journalism as little more than On The Other Hand-ism, as... It all makes you long for the day when journalism still was blue-collar job. Trump has twice earned the title of PolitiFact’s liar of the year, with 76 percent of his claims rated ‘mostly false,’ ‘false,’ or ‘pants on fire’

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We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it. The creator of a top political fact-checking website has finally revealed which party lies more: Democrats or Republicans. Immigration isn’t breaking our society. We are. This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here.

During a White House meeting on Tuesday, surrounded by his Cabinet, President Donald Trump referred to Somali immigrants as “garbage” and said, “We don’t want them in our country.” No one in Trump’s Cabinet... D. Vance enthusiastically banged on the table. The president’s remarks were ostensibly in response to real events—in Minnesota, dozens of members of the Somali diaspora have been implicated in fraud related to social services—but the community does not bear responsibility for... Similarly, white Americans as a whole are not responsible for Trump largely dismantling the federal government’s capacity to fight white-collar crime and corruption, his doling out of pardons for people who donate money or... I don’t believe that there is something inherent in white culture that causes Trump to act this way; he is simply a particularly reprehensible human being.

The next day, at an Oval Office event, Trump again disparaged Somalis, claiming that Somali immigrants have “destroyed our country” and that the Somali American congresswoman Ilhan Omar “should be thrown the hell out... Given the president’s plunging approval ratings, one wonders whether these slurs are yet another attempt to shore up his support through appeals to racism. Posted September 24, 2012 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan With the presidential and congressional campaigns in the homestretch, the quadrennial contest for deception, misdirection, fact-bending, half-truths, and downright lies, in other words, the challenge to win the hearts and minds of voters, is... In writing this post, I’m trying to maintain a neutral stance on which party and which candidates are the most disingenuous and dishonest, but I will say that lying seems to be reaching its... I’m constantly amazed by how often politicians lie and then, of course, their unwillingness to admit that they lied.

The euphemisms that politicians use for what is, in many cases, bold-faced lies are legend. Politicians misspoke. The biased media misinterpreted what they meant. Politicians’ words were distorted, misrepresented, twisted, exaggerated, or taken out of context. They overstated, understated, or misstated. But, of course, politicians never lie, at least that’s what they say.

Yet, the unvarnished truth is that politicians do lie about things substantive, for example, Anthony Wiener’s denials of his physically self-adoring tweets, and trivial, such as Paul Ryan’s physically self-adoring claims of having run... The $64,000 question that is constantly asked is: Why do politicians believe they can lie and not get caught? Particularly in this age of the Internet and its army of professional and amateur fact-checkers, the chances of lies standing up under the glare of the inevitable cyber-scrutiny are slim to none. Of course, some politicians don’t even try to adhere to “honesty is always the best policy” (thanks George Washington), as the Romney pollster Neil Newhouse now famously stated, “We’re not going to let our... The surprisingly complicated controversy that has divided journalists for years. In the New York Times, Public Editor Arthur S.

Brisbane has reignited a long-running debate in journalism: When, if ever, should newspaper staff writers challenge rather than merely report the "facts" that are asserted by newsmakers? His real world example: "On the campaign trail, Mitt Romney often says President Obama has made speeches 'apologizing for America,' a phrase to which Paul Krugman objected in a December 23 column arguing that... As an Op-Ed columnist, Mr. Krugman clearly has the freedom to call out what he thinks is a lie. My question for readers is: should news reporters do the same?" One school of thought is that reporters ought to try, whenever possible, to independently verify claims, and to report that they are true or false if that can be established.

This would, of course, stoke controversy about whether certain claims are in fact false, or merely matters about which there is legitimate disagreement. For that matter, there'd be disagreements about what constitutes legitimate disagreement! It would make the job of reporters much harder, more frequently result in the inadvertent revelation of their biases, and diminish their perceived objectivity, especially among unsophisticated news consumers. Proponents of this style of journalism often underestimate how difficult it would be to implement: lots of journalists are perfectly capable of reporting "Team Red says this, Team Blue says that," but lack the... These reporters would be prone to declaring matters settled that are in fact contested. But perhaps the alternative is worse: the status quo is a system that enables folks who manipulate the public.

These disingenuous people brazenly feed the press lies knowing that at worst they'll be printed alongside, and given equal billing with, a quotation from "the other side." "He said the world is flat. She said the world is round." A striking new study reveals that elected officials have a far more pessimistic view of voter behavior than do citizens themselves. Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Overcast | Pocket Casts Across 11 different democracies, politicians share a shockingly pessimistic view: They believe that their voters are uninformed, unreasonable, and short-sighted.

Why Politicians Lie The Atlantic

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