Fact-checking belongs in politics, not fishing

With a U.S. Presidential election ahead, we are hearing a lot of fact checking from the national media during the endless speeches, rallies and debates. And while we all know many politicians are phonies and liars, I think the real demographic that could use a good dose of fact-check reality are outdoorsmen like me.

“There is, among hard-core fishermen, a conviction that the truth, like pure water and the fish that live in it, is a precious commodity, not to be squandered or overused.” – Ed Zern

With a hotly contested U.S. Presidential election ahead, we are hearing a lot of fact checking from the national media during the endless speeches, rallies and debates, as well we should.

And while we all know many politicians are phonies and liars, I think the real demographic that could use a good dose of fact-check reality are outdoorsmen – hunters and anglers, to be precise.  

Even great 19th Century scholars knew that, at times, such outdoorsmen are less than honest. “Are all fishermen liars?” pondered Canadian scholar William Sherwood Fox. “Or do only liars fish?”

But the fishermen’s wives knew this even before those days of scholarly yore. “All fishermen are liars,” wrote Beatrice Cook. “It’s an occupational disease with them like housemaid’s knee or editor’s ulcers.”

But along came the Internet, and in today’s world of fake news and fact-checking in the media and on social media, the truth is now more than ever a much-sought-after and often evasive commodity.

So what if Facebook, one of our favorite online hangouts to boast about our catches and kills and exaggerate our outdoor prowess, started fact-checking behind anglers and hunters like me?

We’d be out of business, that’s what!

It would be horrible. It may look something like this:

As you can see, fact-checking and truth verification have absolutely no business in the world of fishing or on the social media bragging pages of any outdoorsman, and we should continue to be governed by our own peculiar and complicated code of honor.

Or, as Fox wrote, “Of all the liars among mankind, the fisherman is the most trustworthy.”

A version of this column was originally published on Sporting Classics Daily.