Glenn Kessler (journalist)

Kessler is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy. The book, which revealed previously unknown details on the making of Bush administration's foreign policy, was described as "brilliantly reported" by The New York Times Book Review and generated news articles and reviews in two dozen countries around the world.[2]

Kessler's reporting played a role in two foreign policy controversies during the presidency of George W. Bush. He was called to testify in the trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, in which he was questioned about a 2003 telephone conversation with Libby in which the name of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative, might have been discussed.[3] (Libby recalled they had discussed Plame; Kessler said they did not.[4]) Meanwhile, a 2004 telephone conversation between Kessler and Steve J. Rosen, a senior official at American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), was at the core of the AIPAC leaking case.[5] The federal government recorded the call and made it the centerpiece of its 2005 indictment of Rosen and an alleged co-conspirator; the charges were dropped in 2009.

The Wall Street Journal called Kessler "one of the most aggressive journalists on the State Department beat."[6] The Atlantic, in a 2007 profile of Condoleezza Rice, said that "week after week, Kessler asks the best questions, and the most questions, at the secretary’s press conferences." [7] Kessler, a specialist on nuclear proliferation (especially in Iran and North Korea) and the Middle East, wrote the first article on the North Korea nuclear facility being built in Syria that was destroyed by Israeli jets.[8] He was immediately attacked for spreading neoconservative propaganda[9] but his reporting turned out to be correct and apologies were later offered.[10] In a lengthy article, Kessler also revealed the Bush administration's internal decision-making that led to the Iraq war.[11] He traveled with three different Secretaries of State – Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton – and for several years wrote a blog about his experiences on those trips.[12] An article he wrote on apparent tensions between Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during a 2006 trip to Iraq[13] was later denounced by Rumsfeld as "just fairly typical Washington Post stuff."[14]

Kessler joined The Washington Post in 1998 as the national business editor and later served as economic policy reporter. Kessler also was a reporter with Newsday for eleven years, covering the White House, politics, the United States Congress, airline safety and Wall Street. His investigative articles on airline safety led to the indictments of airline executives and federal officials for fraud, prompted congressional hearings into safety issues and spurred the federal government to impose new safety rules for DC-9 jets and begin regular inspections of foreign airlines. He won the Premier Award from the Aviation Space Writers Association and the investigative reporting award from the Society of the Silurians.

At Newsday, Kessler shared in two Pulitzer Prizes given for spot news reporting.[15]

In the Washington Post "Fact Checker," Kessler rates statements by politicians, usually on a range of one to four Pinocchios—with one Pinocchio for minor shading of the facts and four Pinocchios for outright lies.[16] If the statement is truthful, the person will get a rare "Geppetto." Kessler has a new blog post at least five times a week; one column appears every week in the Sunday print edition of The Washington Post. Kessler's team includes another reporter and a video producer, who also write fact checks edited by Kessler.

Kessler is considered one of the pioneers in political fact checking,[17] a movement that inspired about 100 fact-checking organizations in nearly 40 countries, according to a tally by the Duke Reporters’ Lab.[18] In 1996, while at Newsday, "Kessler wrote what may have been the first lengthy fact-check story in a major American newspaper, a preemptive guide to a debate between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole aimed at helping viewers evaluate the claims they were about to hear."[19] He documented the growth of fact checking around the world in an article for Foreign Affairs magazine, written after training journalists in Morocco.[20]

In a 2012 study of fact checkers, the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University concluded that Kessler "splits almost evenly between the two parties."[21]

A columnist for The Wall Street Journal attacked the whole idea of awarding Pinocchios as akin to movie-reviewing, saying "the ‘fact check’ is opinion journalism or criticism, masquerading as straight news."[22] The conservative Power Line political blog devoted three articles to critiquing one of Kessler’s articles, calling him a "liberal reporter", and asserting that "these 'fact-checkers' nearly always turn out to be liberal apologists who don a false mantle of objectivity in order to advance the cause of the Democratic Party."[23] Kessler's awarding of Four Pinocchios to GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain for comments he made on Margaret Sanger and the founding of Planned Parenthood was also criticized by opponents of abortion.[24] Yet Power Line also said that Kessler's extensive review of Democratic charges that Romney was a "flip-flopper" turned out to be "admirably fair-minded."[25]

The liberal blog Talking Points Memo took Kessler to task for giving Four Pinocchios to a Democratic web petition on Medicare, saying the errors he allegedly made "were not just small misses, but big belly flop misses."[26] The Obama White House issued a statement titled "Fact Checking the Fact Checker" after Kessler gave Obama Three Pinocchios for statements he made on the auto industry bailout.[27] The Democratic National Committee released a statement denouncing "Kessler’s hyperbolic, over the top fact check of the DNC’s assertion that Mitt Romney supports private Social Security accounts."[28]

In 2013, Kessler launched an iOS app, titled GlennKessler for iOS, for his column on the App Store.[29] The app was created by his son, Hugo Kessler.[30] It contained his newest articles and general biographical information. The app was updated with a new design for iOS 7 in the fall of 2013. In 2014, he released a redesigned version of the app for the iPad and added a Pinocchio Game based on his column and a multitude of video interviews.[31]

In 2015, Kessler exposed a series of false and misleading statistics about sex trafficking, which led politicians and advocacy groups to stop making those claims.[32]

During the 2016 presidential campaign, the comic strip Doonesbury highlighted the vast disparity in Pinocchios given to Donald Trump versus Clinton.[33] Kessler also appeared in a segment of The Daily Show about fact-checking Trump. "In terms of fact checking, Hillary Clinton is like playing chess with a real pro," he told Jordan Klepper. "Fact-checking Donald Trump is like playing checkers, with somebody who’s not very good at it. It’s pretty boring. His facts are so easily disproved there’s no joy in hunt."[34]

Kessler was instrumental[35] in convincing Google to begin elevating fact checks in its search results, after pitching a Google executive on the idea "over a couple of Spanish espressos" during a conference in Valencia, Spain.[36] The discussion led to the creation of Claim Review, as defined by schema.org,[37] and the increased visibility of fact checks in Google News[38] and Google search results.[39]

Shortly after Trump became President, Kessler announced a 100-day project to list every false and misleading statement made by Trump while in office.[40] Kessler's team counted 492 untruths in the first 100 days, or an average of 4.9 per day.[41] In response to reader requests, Kessler decided to keep it going for Trump's first year and then his entire presidency. As of January 20, 2020, Trump's three-year anniversary, Kessler and his colleagues had counted 16,241 untruths, or an average of 15 a day.[42] Trump "averaged six such claims a day in 2017, nearly 16 a day in 2018 and more than 22 a day in 2019," Kessler wrote, noting that "in a single year, the president said more than the total number of false or misleading claims he had made in the previous two years." The database has drawn nationwide attention and been the subject of research by academicians.[43][44][45] "Kessler is doing the poet’s work. Honor him," wrote New York Times columnist Roger Cohen. "The database he compiles with his colleagues Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly, listing every one of Trump’s untruths, will become a reference, a talisman."[46]

In August 2018, Kessler came under fire for his coverage of a Mercatus Center study on the perceived costs of Senator Bernie Sanders's Medicare for All plan.[47][48] Kessler released corrections to his fact check, which stated the Sanders's claims of $2.1 trillion in 10-year National Health Expenditure savings were cherry-picked.[49] Kessler did not change his Three-Pinocchio rating[50] and his findings were affirmed by other fact-checking organizations, including PolitiFact,[51] FactCheck.org[52] and the Associated Press.[53]

After addressing the Kentucky legislature in 2019 on behalf of its ethics commission, Kessler was named a Kentucky Colonel, the state's highest honor, for his contributions to the nation. Kessler noted on Twitter[54] that he had awarded Four Pinocchios to the two people who had signed the declaration: Gov. Matt Bevin and Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes.

The Washington Post on April 22, 2020 announced[55] that Kessler and his team had written a book, "Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth: The President's Falsehoods, Misleading Claims and Flat-Out Lies," to be published June 2 by Scribner. "More than a catalogue of false claims, Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth is a necessary guide to understanding the motives behind the president’s falsehoods," the announcement said. Kirkus Reviews, in a starred review, called the book "an extremely valuable chronicle."[56] The book appeared on Publisher Weekly's top ten best-seller list.[57]

• S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University's Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting, Honorable Mention (2019) — Kessler and the Washington Post Fact Checker team were honored for the Fact Checker's database of Trump's misleading claims; the judges praised fact checks that are "clear, deliberate and never hyperbolic."[58]
• National Association for Media Literacy Education's Media Literate Media award (2015) — received the award, which honors achieves in media literacy education or media literacy, for his work on "The Fact Checker."[59]

Kessler lives in McLean, Virginia, with his wife, Cynthia Rich. They have three children: Andre, Hugo, and Mara Kessler.

Kessler is a great-grandson of Jean Baptiste August Kessler, who was largely responsible for the growth and development of the Royal Dutch Shell (Shell Oil Company) and a grandson of Geldolph Adriaan Kessler, who helped create the Dutch steel industry.[60] He was born in Cincinnati, where his father, Adriaan Kessler, was an executive at Procter & Gamble, and he attended high school there and in Lexington, Kentucky. Kessler's mother, Else Bolotin, was a psychologist who in Lexington "helped women in that era of feminist awakening confront a society dominated by men."[61] Both of his parents were Dutch, and immigrated to the United States after marriage.[62]

In an interview with Brian Lamb broadcast on C-SPAN, Kessler said he had decided he wanted to be journalist when he was only in fifth grade, after he created a neighborhood newspaper. "Even though it was a newsletter for only a few blocks in the neighborhood, I grandly called it the 'Cincinnati Fact,'" he said.[63]

Kessler is a 1981 graduate of Brown University and received a Masters of International Affairs in 1983 from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

• 2007: The Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy
• 2020: Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth: The President's Falsehoods, Misleading Claims and Flat-Out Lies

• Stewart, James B. (2011). Tangled Webs: How False Statements are Undermining America: From Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff. Penguin Press. ISBN 978-1-59420-269-8.
• Graves, Lucas (2016). Deciding What's True: The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in American Journalism. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-23117-507-4.

• Glenn Kessler's official website
• Glenn Kessler's official app
• Glenn Kessler's "The Fact Checker" column
• Washington Post articles by Glenn Kessler
• Appearances on C-SPAN