WhatFinger


The Facts about Fact Checking Reveal

Presentation of the Fact-Checkers’ Results Can Distort the Truth As Much as Outright Lies



In the immediate aftermath of the speech by Vice-Presidential Candidate Ryan at the recent Republican National Convention, the point has been reached wherein pro-active “fact checkers” can come out with “corrections” even before the words being “corrected” come out of the mouths of the people being “corrected,” and can be cited immediately by hostile pseudo-liberal reporters and analysts even before the echoes of the “corrected” words have receded into history.
We have now reached a point where the pseudo-liberals who dominate the mainstream media have sunk so low that even they themselves realize that they can’t be trusted, so they have resorted – actually stooped -- to falsely claiming that “fact checkers” have declared wholesale “demonstrable” errors. The problem is that there are many demonstrable weaknesses with rushing to misjudgment based on this misleading approach. First and foremost, fact checkers are often quite nuanced and fair, often explaining to what extent a fact is true and to what extent it is not. Life is not always black and white, despite what the race-baiting pseudo liberals may say and do. Unfortunately, the fact checkers cited by the misleading lynching liberals that dominate the mainstream media are not necessarily being quoted accurately or in context, but through the distorted and poisoned transformations of many members of the mainstream media. And many of these “talking heads” seem to consist of minds that are closed to fair debate of the issues, not to mention eyes and ears closed to seeing and hearing the truth with all its nuances. All too many pseudo-liberal reporters and analysts in the mainstream media have proven themselves to be totally discredited and unwilling to present and analyze facts objectively.

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It is known that evidence can be manipulated to the point where co-authors from the Wharton School of Business and Berkeley published their findings a year or so ago that “flexibility in data collection, analysis, and reporting dramatically increases actual false-positive rates” so that “In many cases, a researcher is more likely to falsely find evidence that an effect exists than to correctly find evidence that it does not” (False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant,” by Simmons, Nelson, & Simonsohn, in Psychological Science, 2011). If this can be done by eggheads in academia and clinicians in the field, imagine how much more susceptible to manipulation the “facts” are when presented by the intellectually dishonest pseudo-liberals that dominate the mainstream media, and especially by the many members of the mainstream media who do not even make a pretense of being objective in their political reporting. Once pseudo-liberal reporters and analysts present tampered and fabricated evaluations of facts as supposedly analyzed by fact checkers, they tend to be incapable of reacting to rebuttals of those tampered and fabricated evaluations of these facts, rebuttals presented by people with a far deeper understanding of the context of the “facts” than the “fact checkers” who may have raced to superficial conclusions in seconds, if not minutes, without significant research, let alone adequate research, to beat out the competing other “fact checkers.” Even if the pseudo-liberal members of the media, reporting on the fact checkers, were to pay attention to the rebuttals – which they often do not – they would then have to go back to the original “fact checkers” to ascertain whether the rebuttals hold up. Not only do most of the pseudo-liberal reporters and analysts fail to do so, but even were they to do so, they would be asking the “fact checkers” to ascertain whether they were incorrect, so how objective are “fact checkers” likely to be, even if they don’t have a checkered past, when asked to check on their own “facts” and conclude that they may be wrong? Even if fact checkers may be correct in a literal sense in their claims that the issuers of the statements being analyzed were incorrect, the thrust of the statements under analysis may indeed be correct when presented in context, which the “fact checkers” often do not do and are not necessarily even able to do, with their limited knowledge of ALL the facts, which are sometimes known best – or only by – the issuers of the statements being analyzed. Most outrageously, many of the reporters and “analysts” in the mainstream media report alleged errors as outright lies rather than, at worst, inadvertent errors or even slips of the tongue. People are entitled to different interpretations of the same facts; however, for the pseudo-“liberals” to accuse people of lying just because their interpretations differ, or they don’t express themselves clearly or precisely or they exaggerate or try to be funny is not a laughing matter. Accusing people who did not intentionally mislead as lying – and as being guilty of a pattern of lies -- is the greatest lie of all, and may even be the only lie to emerge from the analysis.

Paul Ryan at the recent Republican convention

In the case of Paul Ryan at the recent Republican convention, right on the spot, fact checkers claimed an immediate “gotcha” moment when referring to Ryan’s statement that Obama, as a candidate in 2008, said that he believed at that time that a plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, would be there for another 100 years “if our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to re-tool and make this transition.” The plant was closed in less than a year. Liberal commentators were bursting with glee as they reported that the factory closed in December of 2008, while President Bush was still in power. Yet they refused to apologize upon immediately being apprised from the convention floor, on the spot, with facts presented by Governor Walker of Wisconsin in an interview moments after Ryan’s speech, in rebuttal, as summarized below. (Walker and Ryan both represent Wisconsin and both are far more familiar with the facts than are the fact checkers or the national reporters). The very next day, Conn Carroll issued a 6-part rebuttal in the Washington Examiner, yet virtually nobody in the mainstream media referred to any of the 6 parts of that rebuttal. Most notably, the plant was NOT shut down in December of 2008 as smugly and triumphantly proclaimed by the pseudo-liberal reporters and analysts; rather, it only PARTLY shut down in 2008; medium-duty trucks continued to be produced in that plant until April of 2009, well after Obama had begun serving his term of office. The plant remains on “stand by basis,” without benefit of any of the support and re-tooling that candidate Obama had led the plant’s employees and their dependents to expect, the support of which was supposed to keep the plant open for the next 100 years. Actually, this same candidate Obama (now our president as well, who continues to spend far more time this year raising money for his personal campaign, let alone actually campaigning, than raising the incomes of our citizens and attending cabinet meetings for the benefit of the country) continues to do all in his power to reduce the power in and of America in terms of its natural resources that could make this country self-sufficient in energy and close to fully employed in the job market. Another alleged “lie” that Ryan made was that Standard and Poor downgraded the U.S. credit rating for the first time, on Obama’s watch. This is true. Ask any fact checker. What most of the “fact checkers” did was reveal their anti-moderate agenda (to put it mildly) by volunteering the allegation that the REASON for the downgrade – which was not the fact to be checked -- was the Republicans’ failure to agree to increase the debt ceiling. But what the pseudo-liberal reporters and analysts failed to disclose was that the debt ceiling was raised because of the perceived political gridlock in Congress AND because Obama’s policies increased the deficit by trillions of dollars and necessitated the request for raising the debt ceiling. Had Obama responsibly handled the economy in a bi-partisan way as proposed by the Republicans or even as done by President Clinton, there would have been no comparable deficit; no comparable gridlock; and no need to raise the debt ceiling, so there would have been no downgrade of the U.S. credit rating for the first time in history. The very day after Ryan’s speech was delivered, Philip Klein published a rebuttal in the Washington Examiner to each of the primary allegations made against Ryan. There is a convincing response to each of the allegations, but even if any individual fails to be convinced in every instance, it is clear that most of the mainstream pseudo-liberal reporters and commentators continued to distort what Ryan had said and even what many of the fact checkers had written. For example, pseudo-liberal reporters and analysts pointed out that Ryan had voted against a plan that could have saved the day, but they failed to point out that Ryan had voted against the plan because, like so many other pieces of legislation, the bill in question incorporated other features that would have undermined the whole viability of our economy, according to Ryan and most other Republicans, which is why he voted against it. Yet the press presents this vote as a sign of hypocrisy, when it was the press that was being hypocritical in referring to this vote as if Ryan had lied, while even the fact checkers did not accuse him of lying. Ryan’s inclusion of the Medicare budget cuts in his proposed budget did not indicate a hypocritical endorsement; rather, a simple reference to a reality. Mainstream pseudo-liberal reporters and commentators claim that Obama’s Medicare cuts won’t affect benefits, and cite the official Medicare actuary, but they fail to quote another statement of the Medicare actuary that, under Obamacare, “Medicare prices for hospital, skilled nursing facility, home health, hospice, ambulatory surgical center, diagnostic laboratory, and many other services would be less than half of their level under the prior law.” Though seniors would retain their identical benefits on paper, fewer medical providers will accept Medicare, so that as a practical matter there will be no practical way – or any other way – for them to retain the same access to treatment – ANY treatment! The bottom line: A fact checker is only as good as the facts at his or her disposal which are not necessarily adequate to check facts instantly without adequate research, so that a fact checker may not even base his or her analysis and report on the most comprehensive and accurate set of facts in context. No matter what the fact checker may conclude, accurately or not, the truth is likely to be distorted by the forked tongue of the typical mainstream pseudo-liberal reporter or analyst, while being spoon-fed and thrust down the gullet of a gullible public.


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Aaron I. Reichel, Esq. -- Bio and Archives

Aaron Reichel is a New York attorney whose writings have been widely published and republished, some in the U.S. Congressional Record. His most notable book remains Fahrenheit 9-12 – Rebuttal to Fahrenheit 9/11.

 


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