Anyone who's paying attention to CNN knows that their Toronto-based "fact checker" Daniel Dale is almost entirely focused on the dishonesty of Donald Trump. Unless it's "Vance Repeats Trump's Fiction," on occasion. Trump certainly keeps the "fact checkers" busy. But it's amazing how they seemingly consider fact-checking Democrats to be "normalizing" Trump, like you can't ever suggest "both sides do it."
Dale posted a big-picture analysis on Sunday under the headline "I started fact-checking Trump 10 years ago. Here are 15 things I’ve learned." This one is by far the funniest, that Dale's liberal colleagues are all worthless and weak:
The mainstream media doesn’t handle Trump’s lying well enough
Pro-Trump media entities have shown embarrassingly little interest in addressing his lies. But more neutral outlets have regularly failed, too. On the last full day of Trump’s first presidency in 2021, I wrote, “Too often, coverage of flagrantly dishonest Trump speeches still mentioned the dishonesty in passing or not at all. Too often, coverage still quoted the president’s lies without explaining that they were wrong.” More than five years later, these problems persist.
There are various reasons for that, including reflexive adherence to old habits, a Trump-driven deluge of breaking news and the diminished number of employed reporters. (CNN is one of very few outlets that has a full-time political fact-checker.)
So Dale is reminding us that this isn't his first scolding of the "MSM." Feel free to giggle that the liberal media outlets are described as "more neutral." There are fewer "fact checkers," since the Washington Post closed Glenn Kessler's Trump-obsessed shop.
CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter used Dale for the headline for his Monday "Reliable Sources" email:
The media ‘doesn’t handle Trump’s lying well enough’
As usual, the lefties insist that a "mainstream" story on a Trump speech should sound something like this: "President Trump unleashed another torrent of lies again today at his speech on the economy..." Every story needs that Acosta-stan flourish.
Stelter summarized: "He knows some people shrug off Trump’s lies by saying 'they all lie,' but 'we are witnessing a rare, very possibly once-in-a-lifetime political liar.'”
It's completely fair to call out the president if he says something like "food prices and almost every other item are rapidly going down," as he claimed at the midterm convention. But Dale's spin here underlines that these "all-time liar" claims are going to be discounted if you devote any substantial time to fact-checking Trump's opponents.
PS: One rare non-Trump fact check in August came rushing to defend Abdul el-Sayed:
How Tim Scott and a Republican attack ad misleadingly snipped key context from El-Sayed’s ‘dangerous’ speech
