Fact-check follies
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Oof. The best score media gets from its consumers in this survey is on “covering the most important stories of the day,” and only four in ten believe media outlets do a good job at it. At 41/36, it’s also the only task on which they get an overall positive rating. Only 35% believe they report news accurately, and a majority believe they fail at managing or correcting misinformation (25/51).
On a related note: what are media fact-checkers doing right now to “serve as a watchdog” over Joe Biden? Biden has been spewing demagoguery and misinformation about the oil industry for the better part of two weeks, which I have extensively covered. What are the big media fact-checkers covering during the same time? Er …
- FactCheck.org: Weather-related cattle deaths in Kansas, an attack ad on John Fetterman over climate policy, social-media claims about arrhythmia and COVID-19, and Trump’s electoral-fraud claims from 2020
- Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact: A half-true rating on Biden’s entirely false statement that inflation is higher in “every other major industrial country in the world,” which they get to by rewording Biden’s claim to “advanced economies have inflation that’s higher than normal.” No mention at all of Biden’s claims about the oil industry, but at least PolitiFact is also covering the cattle deaths in Kansas.
- Associated Press: The only mention made of Biden at all is a debunking of a manipulated image showing Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson supposedly wearing an anti-Trump T-shirt.
- Washington Post: Nothing, but in fairness Glenn Kessler has been traveling for the past week. It appears that Kessler is now solely doing Pinocchio assignment there, so we’ll see when he gets back.
- CNN: Today’s headline at “Facts First” is “10 Trump election lies his own officials called false,” which aren’t exactly news. CNN does fact check a couple of economic claims from Biden, including that the US has “the fastest-growing economy in the world” (false), but after that the most recent Biden fact check was from mid-May on his ridiculous claim that there was no COVID-19 vaccine available when he took office. They have nothing at all on Biden’s claims about refiners, ExxonMobil, or why gas prices have accelerated since nearly the beginning of his presidency.
Small wonder, then, that hardly anyone trusts the media to cover current elected officials or to correct misinformation coming from them. The most amazing result from this survey is the fact that the journalists think they’re doing so well, even when their own customers have made it clear how little trust they have in their reporting and their editorial policies.
They like to pretend that Biden's lies don't exist. Bias does that to the media. Their credibility is as lows as Biden's
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