While he has a personal stake in closing the gap as an African-American parent who has raised three boys, Dr. Ferguson does not get emotional in tense situations — he gets factual.
The facts are clear, even if one wants to argue a global warming doesn't exist position, that George Will quoted people out of context (turning 'yes into 'no') and got factual information wrong on multiple issues (pdf) in his effort to peddle disinformation.
Two main limitations of this approach are inadequate capability to get factual time images and strike of the ionizing radiation on the patient's body.
Don't Knows are most concerned about getting specific factual questions on the currency and the EU.
"Getting a factual programme to deliver in peak time, that's the school of hard knocks that is," he told me in a BBC wine bar two years ago.
So get counter-factual if you must, HBO but please consider how many existing, compelling facts can and should be added to our collective memories and conversations as well.
And every non-fiction writer lives in dread of making a factual mistake, getting it wrong in a way that budget-strapped publishers will not catch.
The best known of these figures is Paul Theroux, whose vengeful memoir, Sir Vidia's Shadow (1998), gets corrected on factual matters by French but sounds reliable on Naipaul's brisk way with hangers-on.
The Big Reunion has also proved that never mind it being series two or that we're now "reuniting" a boy band we've invented ourselves from the dregs of failed pop stardom (and you thought the others were dregs), "constructed factual" gets so much better than Made in Chelsea and Towie.
"Leutze wanted to convey the idea of Washington's heroism and to mythologize him, and you're not going to do that necessarily by getting terribly hung up on factual information," said Elizabeth Kornhauser, a curator of American paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
