Once a fact is twisted or a myth is spawned, can reliable news reports clear the air? Can fact-based journalism get a public debate back on track?

Research by two political scientists concludes this isn’t likely.

Columbia Journalism Review highlights work by Brendan Nyhan of Duke University and Jason Reifler of Georgia State University:

The researchers dummied up a series of news articles that contained distorted reports about U.S. policy toward Iraq. Once people had read the wrong information, they were given detailed corrections. Did the corrections straighten out reader perceptions?

“The corrections were often successful in reducing misperceptions among readers who weren’t predisposed to believe the false statements. But they didn’t affect those people who had a motive to be mistaken— and in some cases … the corrections actually backfired, making the subjects more likely to believe the false information.”

It is an unusual day in the newspaper business that an editor or reporter doesn’t receive a phone call criticizing the publication for getting the facts wrong about an event or – even more frequently – a contentious issue.

Sometimes we’ve made an error — so we run a correction. We want the record to be accurate.

In other instances, we try to explain that we’ve relied on official reports, a range of sources and on-the-record quotes. But those callers who were convinced we were wrong when they called are still convinced when they slam down the receiver.

I have used this space frequently to write about the deterioration of our civic discussions. The old-school journalist in me wants to believe that a well-informed community is a strong community.

And I must not be the only one who feels this way. A number of websites have sprung up in the past decade to evaluate the veracity of everything from campaign ads to bureacratic pronouncements. Journalists often call this “truth squading.”

But readers – not to mention TV’s talking heads and various political activists – rarely are satisfied by these truth squads. If the findings don’t match their personal perceptions, then they write off the findings as partisan.

Nyhan, the Duke researcher, suggests that many weak-kneed publications are simply willing to back away from the truth. Instead, they present two sides of a debate equally – even if it means ignoring provable inaccuracies.

It cuts down on the angry calls, I guess.

But still I worry: If a strong community is fueled by information, what kind of community is fueled by distortions and misinformation?