This dissertation studies the new class of political fact-checkers, journalists who specialize in assessing the truth of public claims -- and who, it is argued, constitute a professional reform movement reaching to the center of the elite US news media. In less than a decade this emergent genre of news has become a basic feature of political coverage. It figures prominently in national debates and commands the direct attention of elite political actors, who respond publicly to the fact-checkers and dedicate staff to dealing with them, especially during electoral campaigns. This study locates fact-checking in a wider practice of "annotative journalism," with precursors in the muckraking tradition in American news, which has come into flower in an online media environment characterized by promiscuous borrowing and annotation. Participant observation and content analysis are used together to examine the day-to-day work of the news organizations leading the fact-checking movement. This approach documents the specific and forceful critique of conventional journalistic practice which the fact-checkers enact in their newswork routines and in their public and private discourse. Fact-checkers are a species of practical epistemologists, who seek to reform and thus to preserve the objectivity norm in American journalism, even as their daily work runs up against the limits of objective factual analysis. In politics, they acknowledge, "facts can be subjective." Fact-checkers are also active participants in an emerging news ecosystem in which stories develop, and authority is constructed, in patterns of citation and annotation across discursive networks of media and political actors. This study demonstrates how attention to these media-political networks subtly informs and constrains the work of producing objective assessments of factual claims. And it suggests that the objective status of the fact-checkers themselves can be seen as a function of their position in media-political networks, reproduced in formal and informal partnerships and, most immediately, in the pattern of outlets which cite and quote and link to them. This perspective helps to account for the surprising limits of the political critique offered by professional fact-checkers, who argue for a more honest, fearless journalism but carefully avoid the largest and most controversial political conclusions that emerge from their own work. In seeking to redefine objective practice for a changed media environment, the new genre of fact-checking underscores the essentially defensive nature of what has been called the "strategic ritual" of journalistic objectivity.

I argue that contemporary journalists paradoxically require a subjectivist epistemology to comply with the standards of what is known as "the ideal of objectivity." Because of this, these writers have lost much of the fact-claiming and meaning-making ability that makes their work so important. In order to understand how knowledge and meaning are constructed in journalism, we need to look past the surface rhetoric of the reporter and uncover the institutional rhetoric that has developed during the course of the 20th century. In this dissertation, I apply the classical rhetorical terms kairos and nomos to the political economy of the news industry and the professional conventions produced by that industry.

Lee King Hang Roger. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 143-144). / Abstract also in Chinese. / Chapter 0 --- INTRODUCTION / Chapter 0.1 --- Why Study Thomas Nagel? / Chapter 0.2 --- The Contribution of Nagel / Chapter 0.3 --- Why do we need such Reformulation? / Chapter 0.4 --- The Approach of This Paper / Chapter 1 --- INTUITION / Chapter 1.1 --- Rorty's Argument against Intuitive Realism / Chapter 1.2 --- The Priority of Intuition / Chapter 2 --- VIEWPOINTS / Chapter 2.1 --- The Nature of Viewpoints / Chapter 2.2 --- The Subjective and the Objective Viewpoints / Chapter 2.3 --- The Existence of the Two Viewpoints as a Fundamental Fact of Reflective Human Beings / Chapter 3 --- REALITY / Chapter 3.1 --- Reconsidering Reality / Chapter 3.2 --- Subjective Reality / Chapter 3.3 --- Objective Reality / Chapter 3.4 --- The Inescapabilily of the Idea of Subjective and Objective Reality / Chapter 4 --- THE CONFLICT / Chapter 4.1 --- Subjective and Objective Reconsidered / Chapter 4.2 --- The Nature of the Conflict / Chapter 4.3 --- The Significance of Nagel's Reformulation / Chapter 5 --- CONCLUSION: THE ULTIMATE MYSTERY

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2003. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 145 p.; also includes graphics. Includes abstract and vita. Advisor: Louise M. Antony, Dept. of Philosophy. Includes bibliographical references (p. 142-145).

The goal of this project is to attempt a logical unfolding of one basic idea -that value emerges out of the chaos of energy through natural selection. The goal of the first chapter is to attempt to determine the origin of value. The goal of the second chapter is to attempt to determine the origin of the conception of value. A s a first approximation, it can be said that the first chapter seeks for an objective and the second for a subjective account of the origin of value. There is a paradox in this description, however. The objective gives rise to the subjective, but the subjective then constructs the objective. Objects give rise to subjects, but subjects then construct their objects, and different subjects may construct the world into different objects. This thesis shall attempt to resolve this paradox by describing the course of the emergence of value from the objective into the subjective and then back into the objective, without falling into the vicious circle that results from seeing the world as a juxtaposition of the objective and the subjective. As I hope to show, in the course of the first two chapters, and the ones to follow, the objective and the subjective are idealizations. They are two asymptotes which knowledge approaches but cannot touch. Knowledge ranges between objectivity and subjectivity, without attaining either. Knowledge is knowledge of something and is to that extent objective. Knowledge is knowledge by someone and is to that extent subjective. Because knowledge has an element of subjectivity, it cannot be purely objective. And because knowledge has an element of objectivity, it cannot be purely subjective. The resolution of the juxtaposition between the objective and the subjective, will allow us to describe the emergence of value out of the objective into the subjective and back in terms that do not presuppose either. Subjects arise out of reality that is undivided, and only then divide it into objects in accordance with their constitution, provided to them by undivided reality.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of Philosophy, 2006. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Nov. 27, 2008) Includes bibliographical references (p. 139-146). Also issued in print.

Thesis (M.A.)--Catholic University of America, 1990. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [93]-98).

The anti-realist maintains that all thoughts that we may entertain are thoughts whose truth-values we can in principle come to recognise. The realist refuses to make any such claim about the limits of our thinking. The anti-realist purports to arrive at her position on the basis of considerations which relate to the manifestability of understanding, i.e. the idea that grasp of thoughts must be manifested in linguistic abilities. Thus she argues against the realist that this requirement cannot be met unless truth is understood not to extend beyond what we can know. Turning the tables, I argue that it is the antirealist who cannot vindicate her position on these grounds. Some thoughts are apt for objective truth; their truth cannot be equated with their current assertibility. Our grasp of such thoughts is not yet manifested in our ability to assert or deny sentences. Once we have identified patterns of linguistic usage which display our grasp of such thoughts however, it transpires that there is no reason either to believe that their truth-values can in principle be recognised.

The goal of this project is to attempt a logical unfolding of one basic idea -that value emerges out of the chaos of energy through natural selection. The goal of the first chapter is to attempt to determine the origin of value. The goal of the second chapter is to attempt to determine the origin of the conception of value. A s a first approximation, it can be said that the first chapter seeks for an objective and the second for a subjective account of the origin of value. There is a paradox in this description, however. The objective gives rise to the subjective, but the subjective then constructs the objective. Objects give rise to subjects, but subjects then construct their objects, and different subjects may construct the world into different objects. This thesis shall attempt to resolve this paradox by describing the course of the emergence of value from the objective into the subjective and then back into the objective, without falling into the vicious circle that results from seeing the world as a juxtaposition of the objective and the subjective. As I hope to show, in the course of the first two chapters, and the ones to follow, the objective and the subjective are idealizations. They are two asymptotes which knowledge approaches but cannot touch. Knowledge ranges between objectivity and subjectivity, without attaining either. Knowledge is knowledge of something and is to that extent objective. Knowledge is knowledge by someone and is to that extent subjective. Because knowledge has an element of subjectivity, it cannot be purely objective. And because knowledge has an element of objectivity, it cannot be purely subjective. The resolution of the juxtaposition between the objective and the subjective, will allow us to describe the emergence of value out of the objective into the subjective and back in terms that do not presuppose either. Subjects arise out of reality that is undivided, and only then divide it into objects in accordance with their constitution, provided to them by undivided reality. / Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies / Graduate