CNN Issues Perhaps the Dumbest Factcheck Ever!

Wow. CNN senior justice correspondent Evan Perez appeared on last night’s episode of Wolf Blitzer’s “The Situation Room” and attempted to refute President Trump’s assessment of Harvard as a “cesspool of leftist thinking.” (Harvard is, in fact, a cesspool of leftist thinking.) Perez thought he had definitive proof that the representation was false.

“Now, what [the Trump administration] is asking for, Wolf, is for Harvard not only to comply with what they say are anti-Semitic, control of anti-Semitic issues on campus, but they want bigger changes. They want to oversee hiring and admissions standards. They want to make sure that conservative views are being represented on campus.”

Here comes Perez’s brilliant argument: wait for it….

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Factcheck Ethics: It Is High Time We Decide Factcheckers Are So Biased and Stupid That They Should Be Ignored

A social media jokester used AI to create the “painting” on the left, and implied on “X” that it was an eerie premonition of the Trump administration, writing “This 1721 painting by Deitz Nuützen predicted the Trump-Elon-RFK McDonalds dinner.”

How dumb and gullible would someone have to be not to instantly realize that this was a gag? If the whole thing weren’t enough, there’s the name of the artist, “Deitz Nuützen,” as in “Deez Nutz,” web slang for testicles. Never mind, though. The Axis media is so wary of anything that might enhance the image of Trump and his team that even an obvious silly joke had to be factchecked.

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The New York Times Unveils (and Retracts) An Early Contender For ‘Headline of the Year’

This is wonderful in so, so many ways

The headline went up on the Times website around 3:30 pm yesterday as a follow-up to this story, and, if I had seen it, be assured that I would have posted on it then. I would have seen it too, if I hung out on Twitter/”X” all day, which is apparently what amazing numbers of supposedly busy people do.

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Notes on “Misinformation”

Note #1: See the chart above? Gee, what a surprise. Researchers found that the “factchecking” business is overwhelmingly biased toward progressives, Democrats, and the whole Axis agenda. I suppose research was needed to prove the obvious; so many people denied this because they were a) gullible, b) stupid, or c) lying. Yes, the study is from Harvard, but I think you can trust the rotting university this time.

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“Now THIS Is Gaslighting…Or Outright Lying…Or Senility…” Follow-Up: Biden Was So Dishonest, CNN Felt Compelled To Practice Real Journalism

In yesterday’s post titled “Now THIS Is Gaslighting…Or Outright Lying…Or Senility…,” Ethics Alarms discussed the now common phenomenon of Democrats, especially Joe Biden, dealing with the unpleasant reality of what their incompetence and corruption has wrought by simply asserting that the opposite of that reality is true. That post was focused only on Biden’s outrageous claims that Americans were better off financially after nearly three years of “Bidenomics,” and, even more absurdly, that the “knew it.”

But I did not read the whole speech. With few exceptions, like this one…

…I don’t waste time listening or reading what President Biden says unless another source points me to a particular selection: after all, I have a sock drawer to maintain. Moreover, I have known for decades that Biden lies, plagiarizes, says whatever his pea-brain thinks is useful at the time, and since he started leaking brain cells and IQ points, I also know at any moment he is liable to announce that he is Marie of Rumania. As it turns out, Biden’s claims about the financial fortunes of Americans was just the tip of a rather large metaphorical ice berg, and CNN, now trying to regain its squandered credibility and reputation after dumping the worst of its biased hacks (Brian Stelter, Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon), though far from all of them, could not resist a genuine “factcheck.”

It was like shooting fish in a barrel. Biden said, “I was able to cut the federal debt by $1.7 trillion over the first two years.” That’s pure fiction. CNN pointed out, correctly, that the national debt has increased by more than $5.7 trillion during Biden’s presidency so far. Now, it is theoretically possible that this addled fool doesn’t know the difference between the deficit and the debt, but that’s material misrepresentation, because reducing the debt means that the U.S. actually owes less money, while reducing the deficit only means that the debt has increased less than it has recently because the government is spending more than it is taking in. CNN wasn’t through debunking this piece of fiction:

It’s worth noting, as we have before, that Biden’s Friday comments would be missing key context even if he had not inaccurately replaced the word “deficit” with “debt.” It’s highly questionable how much credit Biden himself deserves for the decline in the deficit in 2021 and 2022. Independent analysts say it occurred largely because emergency Covid-19 relief spending from fiscal 2020 expired as scheduled – and that Biden’s own new laws and executive actions have significantly added to current and projected future deficits. In addition, the 2023 deficit is widely expected to be higher than the 2022 deficit.

And CNN wasn’t done.

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It’s Come To This: Desperation To Discredit Any “Facts” That Don’t Bolster Biden’s Image

Once again, we have a real story that looks like a Babylon Bee satire.

Earlier this week, viral video provoked forgettable jokes because it appeared to show something icky falling onto U.S. President Joe Biden’s shoulder as he was speaking at an event in Iowa. Naturally, the assumption was that the gunk was bird droppings, since that’s what such episodes usually entail. (It’s happened to me!) Obviously having a bird poop on you isn’t a reason for shame, but the two most partisan and unreliable U.S. “factcheckers” felt that it essential, as the loyal, progressive patriots that they are, to debunk the notion that Joe Biden had been forced to live through a recreation of the scene from “High Anxiety,” Mel Brooks’ Hitchcock spoof.

Here’s Snopes:

On April 12, 2022, a video went viral on social media that supposedly showed bird poop falling onto U.S. President Joe Biden’s shoulder as he was speaking at an event in Iowa. We examined that video and photographs from the event, and collected statements from White House officials and journalists. Here’s what we learned: What landed on Biden’s lapel was more likely a corn byproduct than bird poop. We examined photographs from Reuters, The Associated Press, and Getty Images to get a closer look at this corn/bird poop. Upon closer examination, the “bird poop” appears to be somewhat yellowish in color (like corn) and looks more like dust (i.e., from corn processing) than a liquid (i.e., bird poop).

Of course, absent chemical analysis, the Snopes conclusion is still opinion, not “fact.” But them most “factchecks” are opinions. Continue reading

Ethics Alarms Factcheck: Facebook Admitted Factchecks Aren’t Factchecks

Confusion4

Verdict: TRUE!

“Factchecks” became ubiquitous in the media with a vengeance after Donald Trump was elected, though they had been around for a while. This is how Trump ended up with a database of the 30,000 “lies” he had told: a majority of those were defined as such by partisan “factcheck” sites like Snopes, Politifact and The Washington Post’s service headed by poor Glenn Kessler. The exercise was always dishonest and deceptive to the core. I am proud to say that long before Trump was President, during the Bush II administration, I was at a conference that featured the head of FactCheck.org, the best of the factcheckers, but still, as the saying goes, the best of a bad lot, and after her speech I questioned her about a recent verdict by her service that was obviously pure opinion and tainted with progressive bias. She became immediately defensive, and then lapsed into huminahumina double talk. I nailed her, and she knew it.

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Why American Presidents Need A Fair News Media To Be Competent, And More Evidence That They Won’t Get One Anytime Soon, If Ever…

fakenews

It’s my own fault. I’ve written so many essays here since 2009 about the disgraceful descent of the news media into partisan propaganda that I can’t find the relevant post I was looking for on my own blog. That would be the one during the Obama administration in which I pointed out that being assured that no reporters and virtually no pundits would have the guts or integrity to criticize Obama’s performance as President had made him lazy, arrogant, and reckless. If you know anything you do will be extolled whether it deserves praise of not, and any mistakes and blunders will be covered up or spun, why be careful, especially if you’re an arrogant narcissistic like Barack? The same principle operated on President Trump, but in reverse (I honestly don’t recall if I noted this, but I noticed it). If a President is certain that whatever he does will be attacked by the news media, there is no reason for him to consider the press in his policy considerations. Summary: bad journalism makes bad Presidents.

Several commentators are finally waking up to this phenomenon now, as they try to find some other than Joe Biden to blame for Joe Biden’s incompetence. I have now read several pieces opining that the President was certain that the press would have his back no matter what happened in Afghanistan.

That was really foolish on Biden’s part (but then…Biden) for two reasons. First, he is not nearly as popular as Obama, and nobody was going to call a reporter “racist” for criticizing him. Second, and more importantly, journalists destroyed their influence and credibility during their four year campaign of fake news and glorified rumors to bring down Donald Trump. Most of the public doesn’t trust the mainstream media—good!—because it is untrustworthy. The days when it could cover a President’s botches effectively have passed.

One would think that this would spur the news media to be more careful about the lies they present to the public as truth, and one would be tragically wrong. Two recent examples from last week demonstrate that no “Oh-oh, we better start practicing honest journalism!” alarms are ringing yet.

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WHAT? Snopes Has Had An Unethical Culture All These Years??

What a surprise.

You know, I hate to resort to mockery, sarcasm and “I told you so” on an ethics blog, but sometimes nothing else will do. Snopes fooled me for a while: in 2010, I described the fact-checking site as doing “a superb job tracking down and clarifying web hoaxes, rumors and other misinformation.”As late as early 2016 I was relying on Scopes, and then it began to dawn on me that, like most factchecking sites (Factcheck.com is better than the rest), Snopes miraculously only saw false stories when they either impugned conservatives, or were non-political, like the three-breasted woman. 2016 saw Snopes joining the mainstream news media in shilling for Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, and the jig was up. After tracing many examples Snopes partisanship, I kissed the site off with this post, marking it as an Unethical Website Of The Month (July, 2016).

I wonder if I should contact all the furious commenters defending Snopes on that post and ask them their thoughts on today’s revelations.

A BuzzFeed News investigation found that David Mikkelson, the site’s co-founder and chief executive, authored and published dozens of articles plagiarized from other news outlets. His objective, we are told, was ” to scoop up web traffic.” Gee, you mean pandering to progressives and Democrats, doing regular hit-jobs on Republicans and issuing biased and dishonest “factchecks” with clickbait titles wasn’t enough? Fascinating.

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Mid-Day Ethics Interruptions, 6/4/2021: After the First Item, You May Not Want To Read Any More…

Screamfest

1. When ethics alarms were never installed...The question here is not whether this was unethical. Of course it was. The question is how such an episode could happen anywhere in this country. Eight high school football coaches at McKinley Senior High School in Canton, Ohio have been placed on paid leave after apparently forcing a 17-year-old player, a Hebrew Israelite whose faith forbids the consumption of pork, to eat a pepperoni pizza in front of the team as punishment for skipping a practice. The family is suing the school district for violating the student’s First Amendment rights.

The head football coach, Marcus Wattley, allegedly told the boy that if he didn’t eat the pizza, his team mates would be punished. I don’t comprehend this. How can someone live in the U.S. and think forcing a child to violate his faith is anything but abuse? How does someone like Wattley get hired by a public school and entrusted with the welfare of children? Why would any high school have eight assistant football coaches?

If the facts are confirmed in an investigation, more than the coaches should be fired and, one hopes, prosecuted. The principal and other administrators should also be canned. [Pointer: JutGory]

2. Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias…The dozens of ways the mainstream media warps the news and manipulates public opinion becomes oppressive once you are sensitized to it. The headline in the Times two days ago, for example, was “GOP Challenges Teaching of Racism’s Scope.” That headline presumes as fact that “Critical Race Theory” and the “1619 Project” fairly and accurately convey “racism’s scope.” “GOP Challenges What It Calls Anti-White, Anti-America Indoctrination In the Schools” would be a neutral headline. Later in the same article, the news story refers to President Trump’s “racist comments, ” which is just a continuation of a narrative build on a media-fueled Big Lie. President Trump made many insensitive, provocative and politically incorrect comments. None were “racist.”

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