The rubric is ‘Heads Democrats win, tails Republicans lose,’ and we see it over and over.
The rubric is ‘Heads Democrats win, tails Republicans lose,’ and we see it over and over.
T he general ineptitude of what passes for media “fact-checking” is no secret. We all see it, this pitiful charade.
What feels especially disheartening about it right now is that it stands against the backdrop of a presidential election. It’s a bit like being a lonely heart at Christmastime. The void is there year-round, sure, but the pain is especially pronounced during the holidays. Likewise, if ever there was a time for rigorous fact-checking, it’s a political face-off between two terrible presidential candidates.
At National Public Radio, for example, reporters and editors beclowned themselves on August 11 when they declared in a “fact-check” that Republican nominee Donald Trump made at least 162 misstatements, exaggerations, and “outright lies” during a 64-minute press conference.
Trump exaggerates. He loves hyperbole. He also lies. A lot. But 162 falsehoods and exaggerations in a little more than an hour? That’s unlikely even for Trump. The wonderbrains at NPR thought it was worth undercutting their credibility and the value of their “fact-check” to try to run up the score against Trump, shoehorning in “gotchas” and “well, actuallys” where none were needed.
“We have a lot of bad things coming up,” Trump said. “You could end up in a Depression of the 1929 variety, which would be a devastating thing, took many years — took many decades to recover from it, and we’re very close to that.”
NPR assessed, “There is nothing to suggest that a 1930s style Depression is on the horizon for the United States. And the Depression did not take ‘many decades to recover from.’ It ended during World War Two, in 1941.”
Thanks, NPR. We can almost smell the smug from here.
“[President Joe Biden is] a very angry man right now,” Trump said. “I can tell you that. He’s not happy with Obama, and he’s not happy with Nancy Pelosi. Crazy Nancy, she is crazy, too.”
To this, NPR responded, “Trump can’t speak to Biden’s state of mind; all evidence is that Nancy Pelosi is perfectly sane — see her recent multiple rounds of interviews about her book, including with NPR.”
These are not serious people.
At CBS, Chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes on August 15 cobbled together a similar “fact-check,” flunking Trump for saying that the presumptive Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, “wants to get rid of private health care” and “she wants to abolish coal, oil, and natural gas.”
“None of that is true,” declared Cordes.
Yet Harris supported the elimination of private health insurance up until 2019, when she entered the Democratic presidential primary. And in 2020, during that primary, she said there was “no question” she would ban fracking. As California attorney general, she opposed a Chevron refinery expansion in the City of Richmond. More specifically, “Harris has said that she would phase out all fossil fuel development on public lands and would implement conservation and renewable energy strategies to make public lands net carbon sinks by 2030,” Inside Climate News boasted in 2019. “She said she would halt all new federal leasing for and work with Congress to phase out existing leases. She also said she would prohibit methane flaring on public lands and would link production royalties to the social cost of carbon.”
It’s true Harris has not vowed to abolish coal, oil, and natural gas entirely. It’s also true that there’s far more nuance regarding her previously hostile positions on American energy versus what she says now for general-election audiences — a nuance that deserves better than a flat “none of that is true.”
Then, of course, there’s this annoying effort by the press to present Harris’s proposal to end taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers, which she cribbed directly from the Trump campaign, as an original policy she came up with all by herself.
For the record, in June, the Trump campaign announced a proposal to end taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers. At the time, CBS News reported, “Former President Donald Trump’s vow to stop taxing tips would cost the federal government up to $250 billion over 10 years, according to a nonpartisan watchdog group.”
In August, after the Harris campaign stole and repacked the tax-free-tips proposal as its own, CBS News reported, “Vice President Kamala Harris is rolling out a new policy position, saying she’ll fight to end taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers.”
Meanwhile, at CBS, White House correspondent Weijia Jiang and others concluded last week that we may never know who first came up with the idea.
“One of the first new policies Kamala Harris has introduced in her presidential campaign is eliminating taxes on tips for service workers,” CBS announced in a news blurb, “an idea the Trump campaign is accusing her of stealing from them.”
During a live TV hit, Jiang herself explained, “This is an idea that Trump rolled out in June, and he accused Harris of stealing it from [him]. In fact, he wrote on X . . . about how she copied his idea. So, we’re trying to drill down on whether that was true or whether this was an organic idea of hers, something that she and President Biden have discussed before.”
It sure is interesting to watch reporters go from “None of that is true” to “Who is to say who stole from whom?” in the blink of an eye.
For the record, Harris cast the tiebreaking vote in 2022 to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which funneled an astonishing $80 billion to the IRS in additional funding. Soon after, the IRS announced a new service-industry tip-reporting program to monitor for tips for tax-reporting compliance.
At the Los Angeles Times, columnist Michael Hiltzik argued that Harris’s version of Trump’s plan was superior.
“Trump says Harris stole his idea for exempting tips from tax, but her version beats his,” reads the blurb to his column last week.
“A tax exemption for tips is a crowd-pleaser, but doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Trump’s version, and a bill introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) to put meat on its bones, are half-baked,” Hiltzik writes. “Harris paired hers with a proposal to raise the federal minimum wage, which is a much better policy. If all this jockeying is the two parties vying to be more family-friendly, the crown goes to the Democrats, hands down.”
The funniest thing about Hiltzik’s analysis is that he wrote it before the Harris campaign had released anything — anything! — explaining her version of Trump’s proposal. The most that he had to go on at the time of publication was a single line from a Harris speech and a separate pledge to raise the minimum wage. Point: HARRIS!
What are we even doing here, folks? What is the purpose of these news organizations if they cannot be serious even in an election year?
On August 14, Washington Post tech reporter Taylor Lorenz, who focuses largely on online “disinformation,” shared an image of herself at a White House event featuring President Biden. The photo she uploaded to a private Instagram group bore a caption that said “War criminal :(” — positioned just below the image of the president.
Screengrabs of her Instagram were soon shared on other social-media platforms. Lorenz panicked, suggesting the screengrabs were fakes, digital counterfeits produced by saboteurs and other invisible enemies! She has since admitted to the picture’s authenticity, and editors at the Washington Post said they are investigating the matter.
Despite the outright lying, NBC News “disinformation” reporter Brandy Zadrozny rushed to Lorenz’s defense, arguing that the real villains are the evil right-wingers who notice the things the Washington Post reporter does in public.
We have a barely functioning media fact-checking apparatus, and reporters given to hysteria about disinformation are too busy creating disinformation to check on the stuff peddled by this country’s most influential and powerful people.
It’s a real shame we don’t have a well-functioning press with a solid fact-checking apparatus. It’s an especial shame during election years. Decent coverage of the two candidates vying to be the leader of the free world would be good for journalism and politics.