What Are Facts Anyway?
6 min readOct 28, 2022
Joe Friday, the archetypal police detective made famous in the 1950 police procedural Dragnet, will forever be remembered by the catchphrase — just the facts, ma’am. It’s an easy enough proposition — or so it seems.
In the world of politics, the request for the facts is as often a prelude to prevarication as it is an entrée to enlightenment. What are facts, anyway?
