https://newrepublic.com/article/156039/political-fact-checkers-distort-truth Alex Pareene is a straight journo (i.e., you can count on him to lead you toward truth and not away from it.) But he's very left and very anti-corporate media. This article is an account of how fact checkers are really biased. He documents, for example, Glenn Kessler investigating a Bernie Sanders claim about wealth concentration, confirming that Bernie is telling the truth, but then adds his own editorial comment about how it's misleading because poor people have very little wealth. As if that disproves Bernie's point, rather than proving it! Pareene also points out a case in which Kessler said a Cory Booker claim about gun violence was true but "facile." The problem with the article is that he doesn't compare that centrist bias against the left to see if there's a similar centrist bias against the right.
Well he is defending lefty politicians from fact checkers, so I doubt he would be interested in what the fact checkers have to say about the right. Here is a politico article on the difficulties on fact checking Democrat candidates vs fact checking Trump. Trump lies a lot and lies in a big way, so when fact checkers nitpick a democrat is it because they want to balance out the fact check on Trump? should they just let small mistakes/lies go? Many Democrats obviously say they should not be so nitpicking.
I ran out of time to edit my post above, so I will add here (when work gets in the way of your big soccer posing). So the Sanders complains about is that he did not lie, and they are correct. What the post said is that Sanders could have picked 3 names out of a hat with old people that own their own home and have no large debts and he would have been correct, the post is cherry picking the Sanders cherry picking.
Maybe we're making some progress. Yahoo! covered the allegation that Democrats are mourning the dead Iranian general more than their own Gold Star soldiers with the headline, "Republicans Spread False Claim About Democrats," followed by the lead "Republicans Spread Lie That Democrats 'Mourn' Dead General." You can't be more direct (and accurate) than that. And the plural is correct, because Comrade Kevin McCarthy joined that Georgia Senator in making that accusation.
Congressman, and one probably a bit put out that the Governor didn't appoint him to take over the retiring Isakson's seat. Nevertheless, still a douchebag.
This reminds me of when Biden demolished Ryan when Paulie was talking about the debt/deficit as something they tripped upon. Unfortunately Biden didn’t include the media for their role in allowing the effects of catastrophic republican policies to be treated as unforeseeable accidents happening by divine design. This may be the NYT’s most pathetic, mewling use of the passive voice ever. pic.twitter.com/CzFWeUqVS1— Dan Froomkin (PressWatchers.org) (@froomkin) January 13, 2020
This reminds me of when Biden demolished Ryan when Paulie was talking about the debt/deficit as something they tripped upon. Unfortunately Biden didn’t include the media for their role in allowing the effects of catastrophic republican policies to be treated as unforeseeable accidents happening by divine design. This may be the NYT’s most pathetic, mewling use of the passive voice ever. pic.twitter.com/CzFWeUqVS1— Dan Froomkin (PressWatchers.org) (@froomkin) January 13, 2020
Chris Cillizza showing why he's hated by people that understand how journalism works: The fact that you still are gainfully employed in journalism is the definition of overlooking white male mediocrity.— Amy Siskind 🏳️🌈 (@Amy_Siskind) January 14, 2020 1217130445956997122 is not a valid tweet id
you write about all this like it’s an amusing celebrity cat fight, but I hope you stop posing as a political reporter. He's just doing his job. Because way too much corporate media is invested in the celebrity cat-fight narratives that shape too much coverage of American politics. That such shitty reporting is so lucrative for him isn't necessarily his fault. That he's a shitty reporter is, of course, but not that he gets paid so well for being one.
Now that I'm reading about the Dem Debate, it seems like CNN and Blitzer made it into a right-wing loaded question show, with such inanities as asking why Dems want other countries to get nuclear weapons. And that's a good reason not to watch 2 or 3 hours where for the most part, nothing happens. https://www.rollingstone.com/politi...-register-democratic-debate-questions-937912/ Among the evening’s most asinine queries was one that was ostensibly not from a moderator at all, but from Iowa Democratic voters asked by CNN to share “their most pressing questions.” Only one of those questions was actually asked Tuesday, and it came from “Edward” in Des Moines. “Des Moines is an insurance town. What happens to all the insurance industry — the health-insurance industry here if there is Medicare for All? What happens to all the jobs and the livelihoods of the people that live in insurance towns like Des Moines?” Edward wrote. Later, the moderators dropped the pretense and asked simply: “Sen. Sanders, your campaign proposals would double federal spending over the next decade, an unprecedented level of spending not seen since World War II. How would you keep your plans from bankrupting the country?” Why do you democrats hate the troops and our freedoms? Oh @CNN, this question framing is interesting.😒😳🤬#DemocraticDebate pic.twitter.com/xzg1qNhnx3— Nina Turner (@ninaturner) January 15, 2020
The fact that he is shitty at his job is his fault. The fact that he geta paid be CNN is their and his fault.
Dropped the pretense? Who is the idiot who wrote this crap? That is a legitimate question and probably the best one that was asked of Sanders all evening. And of course, he failed to answer it in a satisfactory manner. And no, countries technically don't go bankrupt, but their safety nets do. Ask the Argentines, or the Greeks, what happens when you promise more than you can deliver.
I think there is a problem with expectations. I believe the mainstream media in general, including most fact checkers, tend to be more left than the average American, and more sympathetic to democrats than to republicans. It seems to me that they have higher expectations of the left than they do of the right, and that sometimes can result in them being more critical of the left, in what they see as a fair attempt to be unbiased. I think there is a double standard, because the checkers expect Trump to lie as a matter of course, and as they mostly presume the democrats to be better, they still hold the democrats to a higher standard. I think if we look at history, we see that pattern. During the Cold War, nobody expected the Soviet Union to tell the truth. So if Pravda announced that "Comrade Brezhnev has a cold", it was already presumed that he was probably in intensive care, and they were behaving as expected, so no big deal. On the other hand, it was expected that if, say, president Carter or Reagan was sick, the US media would tell the truth about it, and any coverup would be seen as a serious breach of trust to the people. So yeah, there was a double standard, because the Americans were presumed to be better. I remember when I was studying the works of Thucydides about the Peloponnesian war, I saw the same pattern. The writer was Athenian, and it seemed to me that he was trying remarkably hard (especially considering his era) to be neutral, and yet as an Athenian he had his biases. So, to me he seemed to be harsher on Athens than on Sparta, because he expected Athens to be better than Sparta. I think that is one reason why some of the spot-checkers seem to be harsher on democrats than on republicans, and especially Trumpists.
I also like to avoid watching things and then going to websites where they tell me what to think. It makes it so much easier.
In my book, Bernie doesn't owe anybody any answers until Donald Trump, or somebody in his administration, addresses this promise - I've been waiting to hear more about that plan.
I'm still waiting for a moderator to ask a Republican how they'll pay for these, or future, wars without (continuing to) bankrupting our country. I'm waiting for them to ask why they share the same beliefs as Al Qeda as they're supported by Saudia Arabia and they support the Kingsom heavily. Similar questions Bernie had to field. Seems only fair.
This. Healthcare already eats 18% of our economy and a lot of that money goes directly from taxpayers to insurance companies. Changing the route, making the money flow through government seems to be a better solution, and while technically doubling government spending, the expenditures would remain about the same. Faking concern about all that money going to public coffers, while ignoring how much of it goes to companies’ profits and CEOs is hypocritical. And doing it while Trump’s tax cuts increased the deficit to a nice trillion is the definition of conservative media bias.
I hear you, but that may not be realistic, not if an honest Dem answer is used against a Dem candidate while Trump is not held accountable for an answer, because he never gave one. I mean this is a campaign, the point is to win