Here’s the First Law of Factcheckers: “Never make a public statement that shows you haven’t checked the facts.”
Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post’s longtime factchecker, broke that law today, and spectacularly.
After former President Trump chided Biden for not opening the schools by saying in his CPAC speech today,
“America’s children must get back in the classroom, and they must get back now. Joe Biden’s anti-science approach sold out America’s children to the teacher’s unions.”
Kessler, who is actually called “The Factchecker” by his paper, tweeted,
January 28? That would be Joe Biden, Ace.
The significance of this lazy, Twitter-driven botch is that Kessler is eager and inclined to find fault with what Donald Trump says or does, and primed to protect Democrats, like Joe Biden. But we knew that, did we not?
Bias makes you stupid; Twitter makes you stupid. Bias and Twitter make you incredibly stupid.
Why should anyone trust Kessler’s objectivity and professionalism after this?
Ethics Alarms 
Jack wrote:
Why should anyone trust Kessler’s objectivity and professionalism after this?
“After this?” Seriously? You make it sound like this has never happened before to Kessler. Here’s just one of many.
You even had a post entitled “Manipulated: “The Fact Checker’s” Top Ten Lies Of 2013.”
I think “after this” is a tiny bit …er… redundant.
You have special Glenn Authority on this, I know.
As you know, I find signature significance in such things. Kessler, in his professional ethics, has frequently been biased and incompetent, as well as dishonest, hence the “but we knew that” line. But this gaffe let’s us see under the hood.
He’s just a smug hack with terrible judgment. It dropped him several notches on my ranking scale, and he couldn’t afford to drop at all.
Heh. That special authority I could do without, Kessler gives us Glenns a bad name. 🙂
When I was in school, my first Glenn was an obnoxious 6th grade classmate who matured into a longtime friend. He’s still the only person with that name whom I have met and spent much time with.
Ugh. Well, alas, I can’t make up for that!
The thing is, Trump has pushed for schools to reopen since at least August. You can’t accuse him of not wanting that, it’s simply not true, at all. His last press Secretary even made a comment months and months ago that was all over the news. “The science is clear” about schools being safe to reopen. Pure silliness on his part. He should be fired for incompetence over that one. Trump was very consistent about wanting schools to reopen as well.
I deleted Twitter a few months ago. Has he revised it yet?
On a related note, here’s another one for your Snopes-is-dead-to-me files:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/coca-cola-training-less-white/
It’s in the same category as others you’ve pointed out–the title of the article is directly refuted by the rating, which is, of course, “Mixture,” which translated from Snopesese is “it’s totally true but damaging to my political tribe.”
The title and the claim that Snopes is verifying say that Coca Cola’s diversity training told people to be less white. That’s true… but wait!! There’s no evidence it was MANDATORY, so we can rate this claim as partially false!!
I really cannot see how anyone can look at Snopes and see an impartial fact checker, but I’m no longer surprised by much these days.