Fake News, Truth-Telling and Charles M. Sheldon's Model of Accuracy: How a Clergyman Insisted on Accuracy as Job One

Daily audiences are subjected to a blizzard of information, some of which is deliberately incorrect. The best news organizations in the world are marshalling fact-checking teams to determine the accuracy of the news content. Computer wonks are working with the news industry to create computer programs that trace the information back to the source to determine the credibility of the information. Fact-checking is fashionable these days but among a little-known truth is that a clergyman-turned-journalist pioneered the passion for getting information right when he took over a general-circulation, mainstream newspaper in 1900 and tried to apply the adage, “Accuracy, accuracy, accuracy” to every news article and advertisement in the periodical. He used his faith-based sensibilities to edit the newspaper and his work came to be called "The Jesus Newspaper." Circulation soared with the experiment lasting only one week, yet it provoked the newspaper complex to reconsider some of its practices that are part of the fact-checking mania at work today.

Michael Ray Smith penned nearly 2,000 articles for the popular press and nine peer-reviewed journal articles. "Fake News" is his eighth book. In late 2015 College Media Advisers presented Smith with Noel Ross Strader Memorial Award for exercising the principle of freedom of the press, the award said "at some risk to personal or professional welfare." His journalism students covered the candidates during the turbulent U.S. presidential race of 2016. He spent 11 years at Campbell University near Raleigh, leading their student media to state and national recognition. In 2012 journalismdegree.org named him one of the best 50 journalism educators in the nation. Also in 2012, Campbell University selected Smith for the first teaching excellence award. World Journalism Institute named him the John McCandlish Phillips Scholar for 2011. Among his previous books is "7 Days to a Byline that Pays." He spent a career either in the newsroom or the classroom. In 2018 he was scheduled to teach as a Fulbright Specialist in 2018.