It is time for the news business to admit that “fact-checking” is a tiresome, misleading, and dishonest blight on actual reporting.

It hardly existed in Fleet Street when I left Britain in 1997. Checking facts was understood to be the core of a reporter’s job, not something sloughed off to someone else. Perhaps this was because British education was mostly essay writing, not checking multiple-choice boxes. Students quickly learn to write fluently when faced with blank sheets of foolscap and limited time to fill them. Quality obviously varied, but educated people were assumed to be capable of coherent composition.