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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

Press Fact Checkers: Lemmings To Their Own Death

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  August 30th, 2012 at 11:10 AM  | 

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The press really is beclowning itself this election year. Like lemmings off a cliff, the press is running to its own ignoble death at the hands of an American public tired of spin and lies.

The last forty-eight hours clearly demonstrate the American press corp and Team Obama are working hand in hand to drive a narrative designed to advance Barack Obama’s re-election. From claims of racism related to the GOP to Paul Ryan’s supposed lies, the media is really self-destructing.

David Harsanyi has the one must read of the day on this subject and he gladly calls out a few of the bullcrappy fact checkers too.

Democrats are energetically attempting to create the perception that Republicans — specifically, Paul Ryan — are running around Tampa making stuff up about Barack Obama (as if that’s necessary). And when I say Democrats, as regrettably cliché as it may sound, I also mean the mainstream media.

The following assertions, for instance, are true:

  • Obama did cut over $700 billion from Medicare to fund Obamacare.
  • The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare and cronyism.
  • The Janesville, General Motors plant was closed down under Obama (though Ryan made a more nuanced assertion that we’ll cover below)
  • Obama did blow off the bipartisan debt commission.
  • Obama’s waivers do allow for the relaxing of work requirements in welfare reform.

Go read the whole thing and note that my reference to lemmings is very intentional.

In the 1950′s and 60′s some very bad reporting on the behavior of lemmings got picked up by the press, expanded by Walt Disney, and the fact checkers of the press treated the idea of lemmings running off cliffs as truthful for a very long time.

The damnedest thing to it all though is that the media does not get it. They really do believe that press fact checkers are really checking facts and conservatives who complain have trouble with the truth. As David notes though that’s not true. Consider Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post’s in-house fact checker and apologist for Margaret Sanger and the eugenics movement. Kessler “gave Republican groups knocking Obama for not visiting Israel Two Pinocchios…. You realize, I’m sure, that it is an indisputable fact that the president has not visited Israel, but Kessler was unimpressed by the ads.”

The fact checkers are not checking facts, they are spinning. And the media, which is no longer respected by the American people, has abdicated the fact checking role it consistently refused to do to a group it created. The media’s fact checkers are propped up as arbiters of truth when they just still promote the media’s own bullcrap, just this time with a “truth” label stuck to it.

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COMMENTS

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  • jamesm

    Disagree Erick. Members of the liberal media do get it. Their techinique is dissumulation. 1) Fact checkers give the liberal media plausible deniability when they are busted. 2) Part of what fact checkers is saying is truth mixed with lies. (Spinning? Or lies. But not the truth and nothing but the truth) 3) They wll try to influence this election at any cost. It is going to get worse

  • dadu

    Obama did cut over $700 billion from Medicare to fund Obamacare. Absolutely true. What was deceptive is that Ryan proposed precisely the same savings in his plan.The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare and cronyism. This can’t be characterized as a fact.Obama did blow off the bipartisan debt commission. Absolutely true. What was deceptive is that Ryan, who served on it, failed to support the commission’s recommendations himself.
    Obama’s waivers do allow for the relaxing of work requirements in welfare reform. They allow for flexibility in meeting the goals, the kind of thing small government types should want (and one that Republican governors requested).

  • kentucky

    My favorites are:

    ” Absolutely true. What was deceptive is that Ryan proposed precisely the same savings in his plan.”

    and

    “Absolutely true. What was deceptive is that Ryan, who served on it, failed to support the commission’s recommendations himself.”

    Apparently the rules have changed and it is no longer enough to simply make an “absolutely true” statement of fact. You also have to provide counterpoints to your own argument or else you will be labeled as a misleading liar who lies and misleads.

  • Ausonius

    “Facts” and “The Truth” are whatever the Left says they are. Remember that we are down the rabbit hole in modern-day America, and like Humpty Dumpty, words for a relativist Leftist means “only what he wants it to mean.”
    Relativism goes back to pessimistic philosophies of the 19th century, e.g. Nietzsche, and was taken to a reductio ad absurdum by French deconstructionists like Jacques Derrida. “Words have no meaning” until one places a meaning on them: opinions are all equal, even when they are patent nonsense.
    Truth is determined by the level of the high-minded intention behind the words: so a lie in the service of “helping the poor” and “societal fairness” becomes The TRUTH.
    I can guarantee that MAObama and his crew are descendants, consciously or unconsciously, of Jacques Derrida, whose career may have been one of the greatest intellectual frauds in history.

    From Ignatius Insight:

    Quote
    “Philosopher Roger Kimball, in an essay titled “The Meaninglessness of Meaning,” denounced the “baneful ideas” of Derrida. “Even if deconstruction cannot be defined, it can be described,” Kimball stated, “For one thing, deconstruction comes with a lifetime guarantee to render discussion of any subject completely unintelligible. It does this by linguistic subterfuge. One of the central slogans of deconstruction is ‘there is nothing outside the text.’ In other words, . . . the meanings of words are completely arbitrary and that, at bottom, reality is unknowable.”
    Set aside the big word and you’ll recognize that we’re surrounded by amateur deconstructionists who say, “We really can’t know if something is true or not” or “That statement means something different for everyone” or “That depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.” Deconstructionism is aptly named because it seeks to deconstruct—that is, destroy—the nature and meaning of language. ”

    (My emphasis above)
    See:
    http://www.ignatiusinsigh…/colson_derrida_nov04.asp

  • mikelindell2

    Republicans will have a tougher and tougher time winning national elections as the media becomes increasingly shameless and increasingly biased(hard to imagine increasing more). Immediately following Ryan’s speech, every major network went right into attacking him, his speech, his “lies.” There has to be a better way than the current one to combat the media. Yes, a lot of people recognize the media as being biased, but many casual voters will still be influenced. Places like RedState and Newsbusters are good but I don’t believe they permeate beyond people who already know the media is biased. The GOP needs a longer term plan to either get more of a balance to some of these news outlets (by getting more of their people working there to counter the preponderance of liberals) or to wage an all-out PR attack to totally discredit them in the eyes of all voters. This will either force them to change or go out of business.

  • jamesm

    FactCheck.org in another biased piece. The slanted article you cite is a prime example.

  • Viet71

    My opinion: R&R should hammer Obama with undeniable facts. Such as, the national unemployment rate; GDP numbers; consumer sentiment; the successes of Republican governors.

    Looking backward is a losing hand. Americans don’t give a damn what Obama said in 2008. They want to hear how R&R are going to make for a better day beginning in 2013.

    This nonsense over whether Ryan prevaricated is a big distraction. Score 1 for the Dims because the Republicans didn’t call the right play despite having the best player on the field.

    If I miss the boat, it’s because I don’t watch TV but read and watch a lot on the internet.

  • jamesm

    As an addendum. Factcheck.org is sponsored by the Annenberg public policy center. Another bunch of leftists.

  • renl57

    The president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin admitted as much:

    Mediaite: In public comments you have taken more
    ownership of, “Yes, our audience wants a more liberal progressive point
    of view, and we’re okay with that, and we’re owning that.”

    Griffin: Our audience has a progressive point of
    view. Now, it’s not an ideology, because we differ often in how we get
    there, but it’s challenging all the status quo and trying to figure out
    how to make the world better. It’s challenging what’s going on in
    Washington. We’ve got smart people, and they do their research. But yes,
    we do have a sensibility and we embrace it, but we’re about ideas.

    http://www.mediaite.com/online/msnbc-president-phil-griffin-if-people-want-to-say-we%E2%80%99re-an-alternative-to-fox-great/
    or
    http://tinyurl.com/3butpz5

  • renl57

    The collapse of the New York Times isn’t due to their liberal point of view. Many other newspapers across the country, including conservative dailies in rural areas and exurbs, are folding too.

    The Internet has killed the newspapers’ classified ad business, which is how newspapers made most of their money.

    The pioneer of online classified ads was Craigslist, which was started by a far left-wing guy (from Berkeley, IIRC).

  • renl57

    Here’s my suggestion:

    Once Romney gets elected POTUS, he can appoint Sarah Palin to post the most egregious examples of media bias on the Whitehouse.gov website.

    Together with a tutorial explaining to the American people how to recognize their sophistries: The heavy use of adverbs in what should be a factual news article; the use of buzzwords like “More and more….:”, “Many observers say….,” “seems,” “appears to,” etc.

    (A news article that purports to give facts and events, shouldn’t have adverbs.)

  • Common_Cents

    We need a serious strategic plan to combat total propaganda media. media has waged war and we better acknowledge it soon. Including CNN.

  • renny

    But it is. Years ago, c. 1990s, the NYTimes hired consultants to see how to boost circulation and ads. They were advised to appeal more to the ‘burbs and suburban interests. The Times did start big cuts for Westchester and LI, et. al., but, it never changed its leftist editorializing all over the place in geog. areas that were more cons. and not like Upper Westside socialists. Ergo, even tho’ newspapers are not doing well in some ways (the WSJ and NY Post — both Murdock papers are thriving), the Times decided to shoot itself in the head. AND now it faces a bad pinters’ strike, which I am hoping for soon and to carry through the election.

  • renny

    Good for you, Ausonius, I post all the time that the big zero is a deconstructionist whose words are nothing but so much air that mean nothing.

  • renny

    Obama and Ayers worked for the Woods Foundation that is sponsored by the Annenberg Trust.

  • streiff

    And in this episode joeyfoster shows everyone what an unsuccessful evolutionary strategy looks like.

  • renny

    “someone has alleged” “a source close to the WH” “but women disagree with that assertion” “conventioal wisdom says” “our own poll shows” “the country feels” “the right is dead”
    A real example from years ago was the Alsop brothers (before many of your times) who admitted in retirement they often used each other as a “Washington insider” when they wanted to write their own opinion and needed an attribution. But they were writing opinions and not pretending to be news anchors or news reporters.

  • renny

    Wikipedia is not quotable.

  • tnfriendofcoal101368

    NY Times and WaPo are internet concerns as well. CNN isn’t hurt by collapse of classified ads, neither is MSNBC…they are being killed by lack of eyeballs. Literally, Bill O’Reilly is drawing more viewers himself. The issue is they aren’t selling their product so they lack of eyeballs is going to kill their businesses. The product they sell is news and opinion and a large portion of their customer base thinks they are full of crap. Long term this is not sustainable. Of course, they could continue as is and go out of business. No skin off my nose if the Sulzberger/Ochs family members have to get a job.

  • garfieldjl

    I don’t know which is sadder the fact that the left wing press actually believes their own propaganda, or the fact there are still people that haven’t wised up…

  • garfieldjl

    streiff have pity on him/her, he/she probably was spoon fed on MSNBC for most of his/her life, kinda hard for him/her to understand what is real and what isn’t when all he/she hasn’t heard anything but a pack of lies for most of their life.

  • daniel22

    Especially when Soros has a hand in it. The man is a saint lol ; )

  • ihateliberals

    “Trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they are
    ignorant its that they know so much that isn’t so” – President Ronald Reagan

  • docnick

    This is shocking. Our President and the national media lies? Misrepresents reality! These facts needs to be check closely.

    If we look at our president’s accomplishment and wanted to be reelected I certainly would want to misrepresent and lie also.

    So the problem, for us, is how do we get him out of office?

    It is simple and difficult…. Get more people to vote for Romney. We can do this with some time and effort. We have 67 days before the voting begins.

    Romney can’t do this by himself. Its our country and each of us are responsible for what happens in November.

    Ron

  • wrknight

    I seldom find a commentary so comprehensive, articulate, sagacious and profound; the like of which there is no equal. I must admit his commentary left me nearly speechless. All I can say is — I gotta puke.

  • wrknight

    You are prejudiced. Period.

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    You can do that outside.

    Not a suggestion.