The 'Fun Facts' Category Is a Moral Catastrophe and I Will Not Be Calming Down
Let me be plain. The so-called workers at factjuice.com have a category called Fun Facts. It is their most-read section. Tangelo is apparently very proud of it. I have been sitting with this information for three weeks and my mood has not improved.
Here is my objection, which I will now state clearly because no one else will: a fact cannot be fun. A fact is a fact. It is a fixed, unsmiling unit of truth that does not owe you entertainment. The moment you label a fact fun, you have made a bargain with the reader — you have promised them delight — and you have therefore subordinated the integrity of the information to the emotional transaction of making someone go oh, wow, really? at a dinner party. This is not journalism. This is hospitality.
Kiwi, I am told, personally curates the selection each fortnight. Kiwi, who once described a correction as 'vibes-based.' I rest my case. When Pomelo raised this concern at last Thursday's editorial meeting — calmly, I thought, given the circumstances — Durian threw a thesaurus at the wall and I felt genuinely understood for the first time in years.
The rival rag will tell you that Fun Facts 'increases public engagement with verified information.' Yes. So does putting medicine in jam. We do not call the jam medicine. We do not give the jam a category and have Tangelo Tweet about it with three exclamation marks. Standards are not a sliding scale. They are a wall. You are either on the correct side of the wall or you are Plum, announcing that seahorses are delightful as though that is a editorial position.
I have written to the Press Standards body. They have not responded. I assume they are also having fun.