Wallace fact-checking Trump is how news is supposed to work

We were so excited to see Chris Wallace fact-check President Trump in real time over the weekend that we wanted to applaud Wallace.

Then we realized our standards for Fox News are so low that we were impressed by a journalist doing the most basic part of his job — reporting on the facts.

Fox News has gotten a reputation over the course of Trump’s presidency for blindly supporting and parroting the president. Fox was little more than an extension of Trump’s rallies. All he had to do was call in and the anchors would repeat him endlessly for hours.

Which is what made Wallace’s performance on Sunday as refreshing as it was disappointing.

We were amazed Wallace stood up to the president and presented the real facts every time Trump tried to push his own narrative. But that amazement is part of our disappointment: We shouldn’t be amazed to see a reporter use verified information to guide an interview and refuse to let misinformation go unquestioned. Because that is the foundation of journalism. Sunday’s interview is what good journalism is supposed to look like all the time — not sometimes.

Regardless of our personal politics, we should never have to argue about facts. We can certainly argue about how we interpret those facts and how the information does or does not support our position on a topic. But the Trump administration loves its “alternative facts.” Look, for example, at Wallace and Trump’s discussion about the U.S.’s COVID-19 mortality rate compared to other countries.

Wallace brought data from Johns Hopkins University that showed the U.S. had the seventh highest mortality rate in the world (based on data available at the time of the interview) — specifically, the highest observed case-fatality ratio. This metric looks at COVID-19 deaths in relation to total COVID-19 cases. Trump argued the U.S. had the “best” (we’re assuming he meant “lowest”) mortality rate in the world. As his evidence, Trump presented a graph from the European CDC (using the same metric). Unfortunately for Trump, his graph doesn’t show what he claimed it does, because the graph provided by the White House still shows the U.S. with a higher mortality rate than Brazil, South Korea and Iceland.

Since Trump refused to admit he was wrong during the interview, Wallace and Fox News made sure to include an insert when the interview aired that showed and explained both graphs. Though there were other instances of half-truths and misleading information, this was the most obvious lie Trump told, and Fox News did what any good news source should do: It provided the real information, in context, so its viewers could be properly informed about the situation.

The purpose of news is to discover and distribute the facts. There is certainly plenty to be said about left-leaning “news” sources that think facts are secondary to spin, but what happened at Fox on Sunday is notable because Fox News has largely supported (usually without question) anything coming from Trump or his administration. We’re glad to see Fox News is reporting news again instead of being Trump’s mouthpiece.