Fact-checking as separate from most journalism

Alec MacGillis nicely sums up the point that the "fact checker" columns shouldn't be something totally separate from all reporting; indeed, this new "fact checker" set up seems to explicitly imply that it's not the job of "normal" news pieces to hold anyone accountable. Leave any actual thinking to the fact checker column, apparently.

Of course, (do pardon me here), while it's nice everyone is getting on this point now (while the self-appointed factcheckers are rightly in ill-repute), a number of us were making this point back several years ago when the "fact checker" trend was taking off.

It's not unrelated to the problem of the term "investigative journalism" -- implying that other journalism doesn't involve investigating stuff.