> Making statements like "these kinds of comparisons are judgement calls" is precisely what I'd consider to be a part of any good "fact checking".
But the very fact that judgment calls are involved means that it isn't "fact checking"; it's not just reporting facts and giving obvious "true" or "false" labels to statements.
> If you follow through on this as far as possible, you vanish in a cloud of solipsism.
Oh, please. Saying that other people might not be trustworthy as sources of information is not at all the same as saying that other people don't exist.
> If it is not possible to establish some ground rules for epistemological truth
The problem isn't "epistemological truth". The problem is that people have many reasons for not telling the truth, either because they have incentives to deliberately lie or because they have incentives to fool themselves.
In theory the idea of "just tell the truth as best you know it", independently of any incentives to do otherwise, sounds good. But in practice it never works out that way. The present time is not exceptional for the low level of trustworthiness of information; it's exceptional for how widespread the consequences of that are. Our culture has a belief that if only everyone would just listen to the "right" authorities, everything would work out fine. The idea that there are no "right authorities" at all and never have been--that every adult human being needs to have their own set of critical thinking skills, and that if some piece of knowledge is important to you, you have to make the effort to verify it for yourself, and that there is no way to avoid this by any form of social organization--is not one that our culture wants to consider. With what results, we see.
But the very fact that judgment calls are involved means that it isn't "fact checking"; it's not just reporting facts and giving obvious "true" or "false" labels to statements.
> If you follow through on this as far as possible, you vanish in a cloud of solipsism.
Oh, please. Saying that other people might not be trustworthy as sources of information is not at all the same as saying that other people don't exist.
> If it is not possible to establish some ground rules for epistemological truth
The problem isn't "epistemological truth". The problem is that people have many reasons for not telling the truth, either because they have incentives to deliberately lie or because they have incentives to fool themselves.
In theory the idea of "just tell the truth as best you know it", independently of any incentives to do otherwise, sounds good. But in practice it never works out that way. The present time is not exceptional for the low level of trustworthiness of information; it's exceptional for how widespread the consequences of that are. Our culture has a belief that if only everyone would just listen to the "right" authorities, everything would work out fine. The idea that there are no "right authorities" at all and never have been--that every adult human being needs to have their own set of critical thinking skills, and that if some piece of knowledge is important to you, you have to make the effort to verify it for yourself, and that there is no way to avoid this by any form of social organization--is not one that our culture wants to consider. With what results, we see.