The latest TIME magazine cover story documents “The Fact Wars” in the current presidential contest, and managing editor Richard Stengel offers some interesting thoughts on the topic.

Michael Scherer’s smart and insightful cover story on the fact wars suggests that truth in the 2012 campaign is in the eye of the beholder. To say that the candidates are out-and-out lying wouldn’t exactly be true. The candidates see the world in different ways and deploy their own facts to confirm those views. The most disturbing truth in the story is not about the falsehoods of any one candidate but the scientific studies showing that voters with more information are likely to be more biased than those who know less. That’s worrisome in a country where government derives its powers from the consent of the governed.

One “truth” that’s hard to dispute is the media’s poor record of fact-checking the political campaigns, a topic John Hood discussed during the John Locke Foundation’s recent election preview panel.