Our former colleague Dennis Yedwab has long insisted that sports reporting is significantly better -- or at least more accurate -- than political reporting. Here's some anecdotal evidence in his favor, courtesy of Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight:

I have written for perhaps a dozen major publications over the span of my career, and the one with the most thorough fact-checking process is by some margin Sports Illustrated. Although this is an indication of the respect with which SI accords its brand, it does not speak so well of the mainstream political media that you are more likely to see an unverified claim repeated on the evening news than you are to see in the pages of your favorite sports periodical.