Taranto writes about The ‘Fact Checking’ Fad It’s opinion journalism thinly disguised as straight reporting.
A look at the original AP “fact check” shows that it is based on numbers from . . . the Associated Press! The AP admits that “tracking civilian deaths is a difficult task,” but it takes its own numbers as definitive, although it apparently makes no effort to deal with the questions we raised in the preceding paragraph.
In any case, the AP’s dubious numbers are hardly relevant to the truth of the McCain ad’s assertion about what Obama said. And why is it necessary for USA Today to have an opinion on the latter point anyway? Why not just report what the McCain ad said, report what Obama said, and let the reader make up his own mind?
Somehow these reportorial “checks” almost always seem to come out in Obama’s favor. Is that because he is the more honest candidate, or because he is the candidate reporters find more attractive? Here’s an example that strongly suggests the latter, again from the Associated Press:
Corsi’s book claims the Illinois senator is a dangerous, radical candidate for president and includes innuendoes and false rumors–that he was raised a Muslim and attended a radical black church.
Obama is a Christian who attended Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, and his campaign picks apart the book’s claims on the Web site FightTheSmears.com.
It is a “false rumor” that Trinity United is a “radical black church”? It’s hard to see how anyone could believe this even as a matter of opinion, but for the AP to present it as fact makes a mockery of journalism.
Associated Press can’t seem to realize that a pastor who rails against the “US of KKK” and hollers out, “G-d damn America” is indeed a radical. Just as they don’t bother to list Biden’s big lie, and his 22 other lies.
While we’re on the subject of Jeremiah Wright, it comes down again to character:
Last April Noam Scheiber answered the question, “Why’d Obama Join Trinity in the First Place?”
Obama’s decision to join Trinity was probably the opposite of cynical. Trinity was the place where, despite the potential pitfalls–and he must have noticed them early on–Obama felt most true to himself.
Is that who America wants in the White House?
But back to the subject of fact-checking, Gerard VanderLeun writes about fact-checking and the worst president the US had had. Carter surely must fervently hope Obama wins, since an Obama administration will make us look back fondly at the Carter years.
