This morning, Politico reported that BuzzFeed has created a dedicated ‘opposition research team’ in order to ‘comb archives, the Internet, tips and everything in between for past and present information on all of the 2016 candidates:’

“We set up our own independent research organization,” Kaczynski said in an interview. “We wanted to make it so we’re not dependent on campaigns to dig into candidates. We’re building out our own research documents on candidates. We want to make sure there’s nothing about any of the candidates we don’t know about it when it comes to their history.”

This is a strange approach to political journalism. It reminds me somewhat of the ‘fact-checking’ craze that crops up every presidential election cycle, in the sense that practices that are necessary but insufficient to produce good journalism are extracted out as standalone products.

In the case of fact-checking, projects like The Tampa Bay Times’ PolitiFact and The Washington Post’s Fact Checker have become brands in their own right, replete with individualized terminology: ‘four Pinocchios’ and ‘pants on fire,’ for example. In one widely mocked 2012 piece that was nevertheless representative of the peak of fact-checking’s newsroom ghettoization, former Times public editor Arthur Brisbane inquired, ‘Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?’

Well, yes. The argument was then, and always has been, that good political journalism necessarily includes the evaluation of falsifiable statements, whether spoken by public figures or the proverbial man on the street.

A similar affliction bedevils BuzzFeed’s concept of ‘opposition research’ as a separate department of its newsroom. If detailed candidate research were considered a routine portion of newsroom efforts, there wouldn’t be a need to establish a dedicated ‘opposition research’ section. So the impending launch seems to imply one of two causes:

  • Either BuzzFeed currently abstains from research into presidential candidates’ policies, ideas, and history, and thus wants to build out this capability for the first time

or

  • While it does already conduct standard journalistic research in the course of its political reporting, BuzzFeed is looking to establish a ‘gotcha’ machine designed to dig up the most inane details of a candidate’s biography and past indiscretions, no matter how trivial

I’m inclined to conclude that the latter is the more accurate assessment. Even in this era of remarkably trivialized political news coverage, and even when practiced by the least-respected journalistic outfit of them all, most news organizations incorporate the background details of public figures’ lives as part of their standard repertorial duties.

BuzzFeed’s announcement seems to point in a different direction: “We want to make sure there’s nothing about any of the candidates we don’t know about it when it comes to their history…We’re building our own research book on every aspect of their lives.” Later on in the same Politico piece, BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith is quoted:

While opposition researchers and campaigns will often time the release of their information for maximum impact, BuzzFeed is publishing its finds as soon as it can.

“I heard from the Obama campaign in 2012 that it was a real frustration to them that they’d have some gem to hold until October, and Andrew would publish it when he found it,” Smith said. “The senior staffer would call up opposition researchers and say ‘why didn’t we have it?’”

Given that the major candidates’ historical policy positions are generally widely known already, Kaczynski’s and Smith’s comments indicate an interest in digging up something else entirely. As anyone who’s ever followed a presidential campaign knows, the opposition ‘gems’ released by rival candidates in the closing, desperate moments of a campaign are rarely germane to their opponents’ fitness for office or likelihood of becoming competent leaders.

Far more often, these precisely-timed leaks are explicitly designed to inflict maximum damage with minimally incriminating material. After all, if the revelations were truly that damning, it would be best for the public to know as early as possible, not just before the polls open.

So the fact that Smith is favorably comparing his new operation to that of a political campaign is concerning: it merely reinforces that peculiarly self-defeating American tendency to make politics about personalities, rather than policy. And given BuzzFeed’s proclivity for running afoul of conventional journalistic ethics, it’s not too far-fetched to assume they’d eventually monetize their research by selling ‘gems’ directly to the opposition candidates themselves.