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anyone noticed this? re:FactCheck.org

JoeTheJuggler

Penultimate Amazing
JoeTheJuggler
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I like the idea of FactCheck.org very much--although I think that fact checking should be a routine part of journalism.

At any rate, has anyone seen a bias in FactCheck.org? I'm not sure if the bias leans one way or the other, but it seems like they subscribe to Fox's "fair and balanced" idea. That is, if they catch one side in a lie, they have to find something on the other side.

Now there are lies, and there are LIES. I recall in the last presidential election a factcheck article about Bush and Kerry's statements about how many Iraqi soldiers were trained and ready. I think Kerry was guilty of a generous rounding down error (basically truncated the number to the nearest thousand, I think). But, IIRC, Bush's figure was exaggerated by a couple of orders of magnitude. The article reported that they were both wrong or both lying. One was off by hundreds, the other was off by tens of thousands. It's irresponsible to treat these as equivalent factual problems.

Anyway, an example from the current campaign is this bit criticizing something Biden said about McCain's economic plan:

Same Old Energy Tax Cut Distortion
Biden repeated yet another misleading statement we’ve previously debunked when he said this about McCain’s plans for corporate tax cuts:

Biden: …he thinks the Exxon-Mobils of the world should get an additional $4 billion dollars a year in tax cuts.

In fact, McCain supports a broad-based reduction in the corporate income tax rate for all companies – not a special break for the oil and gas industry. The left-leaning Center for American Progress Action Fund concluded that McCain’s tax plan would produce a tax cut of roughly $4 billion for the top-five U.S. based oil companies. But it would also produce a tax cut for companies in other sectors of the economy – a fact Biden fails to mention.
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Link.

Seems to me that the fact Biden failed to mention does nothing to belie the statement he made. In fact, Biden could probably include the tax cuts to other corporations in his criticism of the "trickle down" policies of the McCain plan.

I fail to see how Biden's statement is a distortion.

The only evidence cited about the relevant effect of McCain's plan exactly supports his statement. If they think there is a "left leaning" bias in how that organization figured the numbers, they should at least cite some non-partisan organization that came up with substantially different figures.
 
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politifact.com is also good and publishes more stories with a handy "truth-o-meter".

(thanks, Oliver.)
 
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That's from my neck of the woods. Go St. Pete Times! (one of the good guys)
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
Thanks! I like the "pants on fire" rating.

I've seen a few other mainstream media do some fact checking where it should be--in the original presentation of the story. I wish it would become more commonplace.
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It's actually quite sad when fact-checking, instead of simply reporting competing claims, is a novelty rather than the norm.
 
gnome said:
That's from my neck of the woods. Go St. Pete Times! (one of the good guys)
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They must have changed some since I left the area (1998). At that time I was being given the disgruntled subscriber rate.
 
Another factcheck.org article that is not about the facts:

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/call_of_the_wild.html

The part this article quibbles with are clearly opinions--whether hunting wolves from airplanes is "unethical and cruel". This is the same sort of opinion allowed in campaign ads as "candidate x is wrong on healthcare".

The facts are all valid, yet the factcheck article makes it sound like there's something factually wrong or misleading about the ad.

For no reason whatsoever, the article spends a lot of time talking about the Endangered Species List--something not mentioned in the ad at all. They even got the facts wrong in the factcheck article with regard to the Endangered Species List and had to do a self-correction after the article was posted.

The target of this ad is obviously people concerned about animal rights--those of us who do consider shooting wild animals from an airplane to be cruel and unethical. People like me ARE concerned that an ad like this has its facts right. Did Palin support this plan? Was her administration responsible for setting up the $150 payments for each foreleg of a freshly killed wolf?

Factcheck should stick to the fact checking and leave off the editorializing.
 
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