“Fact Checkers Unit”: NBC and Samsung’s Spin on My Job

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/paurian/3550755709/">paurian/Flickr</a>

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Fact checkers: the perpetually under-appreciated employees at any publication. We’re responsible for confirming the veracity of every statement the magazine publishes, both in print and online. We become resident experts in the articles slung our way, upholding our employers’s reputation for factual accuracy and serving as a first line of defense against lawsuits. See the Jared Diamond-New Yorker debacle as an example of what can happen when articles are disputed. And remember Jayson Blair? Few sing our praises (although John McPhee once did. Thanks, John). It is thankless work, with long hours and little pay.

Or, at least, that’s the job’s reputation. It’s actually wonderful work, filled with intellectual excitement. Mother Jones is supportive of us beyond measure. I’m serious. See Lori Fradkin’s piece on her time as a copy editor at New York Magazine to give a sense of the stratum in which we lie. And that’s why NBC’s digital show “FCU: Fact Checkers Unit“, premiering today with three 6-minute episodes and slated for an 8-episode run, is so disappointing. It omits the thrilling aspects of the work in order to crack a joke.

This would be tolerable if the jokes were funny. But FCU’s first episode (below), guest-starring a ghost-fearing Luke Perry, is a tired retread of lackluster “CSI” and “Paranormal Activity” parodies. Future cameos by rocker Dave Navarro and Jon Heder of Napoleon Dynamite fame give the impression that the show is merely a venue for creators Peter Karinen and Brian Sacca to tap their celebrity cadre.

And then there’s the corporate sponsorship: A joint venture between NBC-Universal and Samsung, the show “highlights the capabilities of the Samsung Galaxy S smart phone,” according to the NBC press release. “FCU” pays little heed to product placement subtlety. In the first episode, the camera pauses on a shot of the phone and prominently features its video capabilities for more than 20 seconds. Nice phone. Now where’s the funny?

“FCU” germinated from a decent pilot that premiered at Sundance in 2008, featuring Bill Murray’s pitch-perfect deadpan. The wonderfully discomforting Kristen Schaal co-starred in the pilot and her character over to the series as a regular. But the little screen time she has cannot save a show that satisfies its creators and sponsors at the expense of truly entertaining its viewers. Unless, of course, you think that Luke Perry sleep-dancing is funny, in which case I’ve got a phone for you to buy.

 

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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