fact checking the fact checkers

[Willie99]

Only a republican could look at this picture and still stick to their lie.

game, set, match

http://wclo.com/news/2009/apr/21/thu...ine-comes-end/

Tuesday, April 21, 2009


JANESVILLE — Exactly four months after General Motors ended sport utility vehicle production in Janesville, the automaker will shut down its medium-duty assembly line.



Only a libtard can look at the facts and source documents provided to them and still argue the plant completely stopped production in 2008 AND call the person telling the truth a liar.

Obviously, it's a genetic thing.

 

[Dave007inVegas]

I can only say that I believe DEAC shows signs of having masochistic tendencies.

 

[festeringZit]

[h=1]To Protect Hillary, Washington Post Fact-Checker Omits Two Key Benghazi Facts[/h] 180
4
328

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

by John Nolte30 Oct 2015331

Hillary Clinton arrives for Benghazi Testimony
FedNet

The Washington Post fact-check column has already been exposed as a fraud. With two glaring lies of omission in Glenn Kessler’s latest “fact-check” of Hillary Clinton’s now-proven lies surrounding Benghazi (where he awards Pinocchios — not to her but to
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)

79%​

!) fact-check editor Kessler again exposes himself as a left-wing partisan. Like the rest of the DC Media, even though the Gowdy Select Committee uncovered three smoking gun documents that prove Hillary Clinton told the truth about the Benghazi terror attack in private, while lying to the Benghazi families and the American people, Kessler is desperate to shut this fact down and punish anyone who dares speak the truth.
With his Pinnochios, Kessler accuses Rubio of lying by floating his own anti-science theory that suggests Hillary was a victim of the “fog of war.”
To backfill his provably false narrative, Kessler uses a “detailed” timeline of Hillary Clinton’s actions between September 11 and September 14 of 2012.
Oddly enough (not really), Kessler omits two key damning details in the September 11 part of his timeline. Here is what Kessler wants his readers to know….

Hillary Clinton’s statements
10:08 p.m., Sept. 11, press statement:
“I condemn in the strongest terms the attack on our mission in Benghazi today. As we work to secure our personnel and facilities, we have confirmed that one of our State Department officers was killed. We are heartbroken by this terrible loss. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and those who have suffered in this attack.
“Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind.”
11:12 p.m., Sept. 11, email to her daughter Chelsea Clinton:
“Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an al Qaeda-like group….very hard day and I fear more of the same.”
​

What Kessler doesn’t want his readers to know is what happened in the two hours just before Hillary made that 10:08 p.m. statement on September 11, where she blamed Benghazi on a YouTube video:

6:07 p.m. – “The State Department’s Operations Center sends an email to the White House, Pentagon, FBI and other government agencies that said Ansar al-Sharia has claimed credit for the attack on its Facebook and Twitter accounts.” — Source: FactCheck.org
8:00 p.m. – Via telephone, Clinton spoke with Libyan President Mohamed Magariaf. In a description of the conversation found in State Department email, she said:
We have asked for the Libyan government to provide additional security to the compound immediately as there is a gun battle ongoing, which I understand Ansar as Sharia [sic] is claiming responsibility for.
“Ansar al Sharia is al Qaeda’s affiliate on the Arabian Peninsula. So several hours into the attack, Mrs. Clinton already believed that al Qaeda was attacking U.S. facilities.” — Source: Wall Street Journal
​

Those FACTS prove that just prior to her 10:08 p.m. statement, where she falsely blamed the Benghazi terrorist attack on a YouTube vide video, Hillary Clinton was not only informed that an al Queda-affiliated group took responsibility for the attack, in private, that is what Hillary told others.
An hour after lying to the American people, again in private, Hillary told her family Benghazi was a terror attack. The next day, again in private, Hillary told the Egyptian Foreign Minister, “We know that the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film.”
Breitbart News awards Glenn Kessler 4 John Harwoods:

 

[Willie99]

Debating like a true liberal now. Taking a picture about one production line and pretending that applies to the entire plant, hoping to fool people not paying attention.

I posted links to the hometown newspaper, where the stories they printed back in 2009 support my position 100%, thus debunking DEAC's cute little picture.

Furthermore, Obama knew the plant was scheduled to close, as everyone did, when he went there and lied about his policies keeping the plant open another 100 years.

Ryan right, libtards wrong.

DEAC slipping into Dafinch territory now, that's pretty pathetic.

Time to pick another fight DEAC, everything I said was correct.

damn, how pathetically wrong can they be?

 

[JudgeWapner]

I just assume anything said by any politician is complete bullshit. No need for a fact checker.

 

[festeringZit]

I just assume anything said by any politician is complete bullshit. No need for a fact checker.

Yep... agreed. That's why I'd like to see a non-career politician in there, like Trump or Carson.

 

[The Guesser]

In Modern Wingnut World, where 2+2 =5, even facts don't matter. That's why they constantly belittle actual fact checking sites like snopes and factcheck.org and the various newspaper fact checkers. Wingnuts can't handle facts, so they make up stuff. Boy do I miss DEAC. What a mass of mess he made of Wrong Way. Not that it's difficult.

 

[SheriffJoe]

In Modern Wingnut World, where 2+2 =5, even facts don't matter. That's why they constantly belittle actual fact checking sites like snopes and factcheck.org and the various newspaper fact checkers. Wingnuts can't handle facts, so they make up stuff. Boy do I miss DEAC. What a mass of mess he made of Wrong Way. Not that it's difficult.

Or maybe...

"fact check" sites are infested with leftists, like every other wing of the gaystream media.

 

[The Guesser]

Or maybe...

"fact check" sites are infested with leftists, like every other wing of the gaystream media.

Convenient excuse to avoid facts and truth. FACTS aren't left wing or right wing. But deniers of facts sure are.

 

[festeringZit]

Convenient excuse to avoid facts and truth. FACTS aren't left wing or right wing. But deniers of facts sure are.

Where did Joe post anything that even hinted that he was providing excuses to avoid facts and truth?

He was 100% correct, even the so-called fact-check sites have their biases, this is common knowledge.

 

[The Guesser]

Where did Joe post anything that even hinted that he was providing excuses to avoid facts and truth?

He was 100% correct, even the so-called fact-check sites have their biases, this is common knowledge.

Nope, he's 100% wrong. But the wingnut media constantly besmirches legit fact check sites like snopes and factcheck.org with these lies, so that wingnuts believe them, and thus dismiss unbiased facts and fact checking.

 

[SheriffJoe]

Convenient excuse to avoid facts and truth. FACTS aren't left wing or right wing. But deniers of facts sure are.

Actually, people who devote their lives to something as political as "fact checking" are obvious idealists/activists with their own agendas.

On the other hand, conservatives/libertarians aren't political or collectivists by nature, they just want to be left alone do to their own thing and away from the activists.

The problem with so many liberals is....they don't even realize they're liberal.

 

[festeringZit]

Nope, he's 100% wrong. But the wingnut media constantly besmirches legit fact check sites like snopes and factcheck.org with these lies, so that wingnuts believe them, and thus dismiss unbiased facts and fact checking.

It astounds me how utterly deluded you are.


In 2011, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman lamented that the proliferation of half-true statements and fallacious accusations during the 2012 presidential campaign had inaugurated an era of “post-truth politics.”
This era is particularly enabled by the features of our contemporary media-saturated political environment: the distrust of the mainstream media, the rise of alternative and slanted news outlets, and a 24-hour news cycle that emits data and soundbites at a velocity and volume that can overwhelm even the most omnivorous and scrupulous consumer.
But the very technology that enables the proliferation of misinformation should, theoretically, be able to combat it. Enter the fact-checking phenomenon.
[h=2]Three Fact Check Sources[/h]

The first major political fact-checker to arrive on the scene was FactCheck.org, which was launched in 2003 by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center. FactCheck.org’s dozen-member staff regularly updates its blog evaluating the claims of politicians, pundits, and advertisements by checking them against authoritative reports, studies, and other documented facts.

[h=3] "The truth is made by people with their own biases, limitations, and subjective standards."[/h]​

In 2007, the Tampa Bay Times started its own fact-checking project: PolitiFact. Its staff harvests the statements of politicians, lobbyists, journalists, and pundits and assigns them a rating on the “Truth-O-Meter,” ranging from “True,” then through several degrees of veracity — all the way to “False” and “Pants on Fire.”Finally, The Washington Post made its Fact Checker permanent in 2011 after a temporary existence during the 2008 presidential election. Its operator, Glenn Kessler, doles out 0 to 4 Pinocchios to statements based on the degree of a claim’s factuality, completeness, and intended effect.
While these fact-checking outfits nobly strive to maintain a floor of objectivity in their work, it is important to remember that old Enlightenment figure Giambattista Vico’s verum factum principle: the truth is made — made by people with their own biases, limitations, and subjective standards.
So, how reliable are fact check sources? Let’s start with an illustrative and comparative example.
[h=2]Evaluating the President's Insurance Promise[/h]

PolitiFact’s Angie Holan awarded President Obama’s claim, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it” as 2013’s Lie of the Year. However, in 2008, Angie Holan rated that same claim as “True.” As Forbes’ Avik Roy points out in his chronicling of PolitiFact’s evolution on the veracity of this claim, Holan initially only cited sources that confirmed her conclusion and neglected more critical — and clairvoyant — voices.Though one may forgive this error somewhat given that Congress did not pass the Affordable Care Act (ACA) until March 2010, even thereafter, PolitiFact and The Washington Post’s Fact Checker were slow — if not reluctant — to reach their later, more accurate conclusions.
For instance, The Washington Post’s Kessler makes no mention of Obama’s untruth in a lengthy examination of facts and myths about the ACA in 2011, and not until October 2013 does he assign it 4 Pinocchios.
As for PolitiFact: even in late 2012, after an exhaustive summary of analyses from various government reports and assessments from think tanks, Louis Jacobson — in an article edited by Angie Holan — arrives at the following conclusion:

…Obama suggests that keeping the insurance you like is guaranteed.
In reality, Americans are not simply able to keep their insurance through thick and thin. […] We rate Obama’s claim Half True.
​

A year later, PolitiFact “evolved” and gave this exact same claim a “Pants on Fire” rating even though it was already long understood that some plans — even those that had been “grandfathered” in at the time of the ACA’s passage — were going to be cancelled because they did not comply with rules and regulations that the law imposes on insurers.
FactCheck.org, on the other hand (writing weeks before the bill was even passed), was correct in determining that while most people could keep their plans and doctors, the president “can’t make that promise to everyone.”
[h=2]Subjectivity, Bias, and Other Flaws[/h]

FactCheck.org’s reliability is due in part to its somewhat inconvenient yet also wise refusal to assign simple ratings along a continuous spectrum: it does not summarily declare statements “True” or “False,” but instead provides detailed analysis explaining their incorrectness or incompleteness and lets the reader reach his or her own conclusion.Critics from all sides have pointed out the bias and editorial nature of some of PolitiFact’s and Kessler’s purportedly objective verdicts.
For instance, PolitiFact chose the claim “Republicans voted to end Medicare” as 2011’s Lie of the Year and had given the assertion that Republicans wanted to “end Medicare as we know it” a “Pants on Fire” rating. Liberals pointed to features of Paul Ryan’s budget plan that would have drastically altered Medicare as evidence that there was some truth to the claim and thus it deserved a more sympathetic rating.
Conservatives have pointed to the abuse of the “Pants on Fire” label as a way to embarrass Republicans, a rating which began as a joke and is only to be reserved for claims that are both inaccurate and ridiculous, such as Joe Biden’s statement that President George W. Bush was “brain-dead.”
According to one time-bound study, PolitiFact rated 119 Republican and conservative claims as “Pants on Fire” compared to 13 from Democrats and liberals.

"The most appealing feature of some fact checking websites -- the simplified determination of a statement's truthfulness -- may also be their greatest weakness."Andrew Gripp, IVN contributor​

The Washington Post’s Kessler likewise blends objectivity and opinion, in part due to his admission that, “We are interested only in verifiable facts, though on occasion we may examine the roots of political rhetoric.”For instance, in 2012, he researched the accusation made in a pro-Romney ad that Obama had not visited Israel since becoming president. Though entirely true, Kessler gave the claim 2 Pinocchios because he disagreed with the insinuation that President Obama had been uniquely unfriendly to Israel compared to his predecessors.
Thus, the most appealing feature of some fact checking websites — the simplified determination of a statement’s truthfulness — may also be their greatest weakness. Such ratings, whether on a “Truth-O-Meter” or the “Pinocchio scale,” needlessly inject subjectivity into what are otherwise objective analyses.
Furthermore, Kessler’s one-man fact-checking operation is prone to missing contradictory information. For instance, when Herman Cain claimed that terrorists had crossed the Mexican border during a Republican debate, Kessler mistakenly called that a canard, having overlooked ample and reliable evidence that terrorists have indeed come to the U.S. through Mexico.
Relatedly, fact checkers are not immune to confirmation bias; that is, citing sources that support their favored conclusion. Holan’s positive evaluation of the president’s insurance promise in 2008 is one example. Also, critics can point to other examples of fact checkers relying on establishment or self-proclaimed expert opinion to defend the conventional wisdom or to falsify controversial statements.
[h=2]Conclusion[/h]

In 1920, the great American writer Walter Lippmann asserted, “There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies,” which brings us to the real importance of fact check sources.Their strength lies in the creation of databases, many of them easily searchable, of statements and promises made by influential and powerful people. Such readily available resources are a prerequisite for journalistic and political accountability. By compiling so many statements and bringing outside and authoritative sources to bear on them, fact check sources — despite their imperfections — can aid us in preventing the threatening entrenchment of a “post-truth” political environment.


http://ivn.us/2014/07/11/how-reliable-are-fact-check-sources/


[h=1]IVN’s Mission[/h]The mission of IVN.us is to raise the level of civil discourse to a place where solutions are more persuasive than talking points, and participation is not conditioned on your party affiliation.
IVN is committed to the belief that democracy functions best when the most people participate. Today’s political climate discourages such a participatory democracy. This is evidenced by the fact that current congressional approval rating is just over 10%. Trust in the news media is under 40%. And, most importantly, voters are fleeing the parties in record numbers, with 40% of Americans self-identified as independent voters.
These voters tend to vote less frequently and have less of a voice than their partisan counterparts because both our electoral process and our media outlets have divided the population along partisan lines; those who don’t fit within the lines get left out.
The purpose of IVN.us is to provide unfiltered political news and policy analysis across the political spectrum. Unlike traditional media outlets and elsewhere in the “blogosphere” where the diversity of viewpoints is often reduced into partisan circles, IVN actively encourages writers and readers of differing political tendencies to engage in a constructive dialogue.

 

[The Guesser]

Actually, people who devote their lives to something as political as "fact checking" are obvious idealists/activists with their own agendas.

On the other hand, conservatives/libertarians aren't political or collectivists by nature, they just want to be left alone do to their own thing and away from the activists.

The problem with so many liberals is....they don't even realize they're liberal.

The large majority of snopes fact checking has nothing to do with Politics. They are people who care about facts and accuracy, that are not political.

 

[SheriffJoe]

The large majority of snopes fact checking has nothing to do with Politics. They are people who care about facts and accuracy, that are not political.

Guesser, c'mon...are you really so naive to believe there is some "totally objective unbiased truth" out there?

And if there is, what on Earth would make you think websites like 'snopes' have the resources to verify it one way or the other?

If a person is writing a "fact check" article, it's a person with an OPINION.

 

[The Guesser]

Guesser, c'mon...are you really so naive to believe there is some "totally objective unbiased truth" out there?

And if there is, what on Earth would make you think websites like 'snopes' have the resources to verify it one way or the other?

If a person is writing a "fact check" article, it's a person with an OPINION.

There are people that only care about facts, truth and accuracy. I know that's hard to believe for someone as ideological and cares as little about the truth as you.

 

[LENBO]

There are people that only care about facts, truth and accuracy. I know that's hard to believe for someone as ideological and cares as little about the truth as you.

And the sites you reference do far from that.
Left wing leaning trash.

 

[festeringZit]

There are people that only care about facts, truth and accuracy. I know that's hard to believe for someone as ideological and cares as little about the truth as you.

Oh the irony.

 

[Acebb]

You have to love how rolling cars of an assembly line in February 2009 means the plant was closed in December 2008 in liberal land.

This DEAC poster is actually dumber than guesser.

 

[The Guesser]

And the sites you reference do far from that.
Left wing leaning trash.

Nope, they're not. But those trying, and in your case succeeding to convince you they are, are in fact, right leaning trash sites that can't handle unbiased truth.