Fact-checking fact-checkers

It is a time-honored tradition that during campaign season, politicians will defend themselves by claiming that “since I took office” such-and-such has happened or attack their opponents by arguing that “since so-and-so took office” this has happened, but when Florida Sen. Marco Rubio tried that tactic against President Biden and his inflation record, PolitiFact slapped him with a “half-true”…

While USA Today fact-checking boss Eric Litke says fact-checkers should be "obsessed with fairness," our latest NewsBusters study of PolitiFact demonstrates a significant partisan aggression against Republican politicians.

A NewsBusters analysis of the first three months of this year's PolitiFact articles that evaluated a named politician or public official with a “Truth-O-Meter” ruling reveals that the site fact-checks Republicans more often than Democrats and is much harsher in its opinions of the GOP side.

It is April 1 which means the news consumer must be extra aware for hijinks, tomfoolery, and other assortments of fake news. While some may have great fun with tales of pitchers who can throw 168 mile an hour fastballs while wearing a hiking boot on one foot and being barefoot on the other, the fact-checkers that are part of Facebook’s anti-disinformation campaign may beg to differ.

The professional fact-checking industry has run into problems with The Babylon Bee before and some have responded better than others. Some outlets, like Snopes and USA Today, have a “satire” label. For PolitiFact, on the other hand, a satirical joke about Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is no laughing matter as it rated a Wednesday…

Joe Biden obviously misspoke on Tuesday when he implied he went over Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge commuting by train or by bar. Because obviously, there were no train tracks over the Key Bridge. The facts mangled here are in Biden's sentence. But the Biden guardians at PolitiFact somehow pretended that Biden wasn't in the wrong. He was wronged. 

As state legislatures across the country deal with the ramifications of the gender ideology’s movement to redefine gender and differentiate it from sex, PolitiFact’s resident “LGBTQ issues” staff writer Grace Abels warned on Friday that those opposed to this redefinition are persuing bills that will “lead to discrimination.”

It was always asinine for President Joe Biden’s administration to claim that they “nearly” added 15 million jobs since the pandemic, and it apparently stank so much that even leftist fact-checker Snopes didn’t let it pass the smell test.

Professional fact-checkers love to add context to their articles to argue why the claim made by whoever they are checking is more complicated than the claimant is suggesting. This can also be evidence of double standards.

The Babylon Bee lives rent-free in the minds of too many journalists.

GOP Senate hopeful Eric Hovde has run afoul of the nitpickers at PolitiFact for correctly stating Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin's record on the national debt. The Thursday fact-check from Hope Karnopp defended Baldwin by claiming his statistics are unfair because the economy is larger than it has been historically and Baldwin is “just one vote in Congress.”

Reading the “fact checkers” in the press sometimes triggers memories of the comic-book hero Plastic Man, who could contort into all sorts of shapes. Take the Associated Press, and immigration reporter Elliot Spagat in San Diego.

It is a commonly accepted axiom that in politics the buck stops with the president or, if you like, his cabinet, but for PolitiFact applying this standard to the border and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is “false.” At the same time, PolitiFact will go to great lengths to insist that gender is something completely different from sex.

Never call PolitiFact an “independent fact-checker.” They are every bit as liberal and biased as their fans in the liberal media. Recently, they announced they had published their 1000^th “fact check” of Donald Trump.