Comments, observations and thoughts from two bloggers on applied statistics, higher education and epidemiology. Joseph is an associate professor. Mark is a professional statistician and former math teacher.
Thursday, August 22, 2024
"Being with you today was truly amazing." sounds like courtin' talk to me
Distorted headline stories were so last Thursday. The hot new trend with the cool kids today is seeing who can come up with the most ludicrous fact check from the DNC.
There’s a notable insistence—common to all major media fact checkers, it seems—that Trump was MERELY MUSING about the potential utility of bleach injections from the WH briefing room on national television during a time of profound crisis, and this cannot be construed as advice.
"Fact-checking"
operations have become nit-pick/both-sides parodies of themselves. Time
to disband. Just write about what's true and not. https://t.co/cM3Fp3co3T
This kind of "fact-checking" is an artifact of the collision between Trump's politics of lying and elite media's business-model-driven bothsidesism. The two things are obviously categorically different. But the need to jam them into one model creates nonsense like this.
CNN's Daniel Dale was probably the only journalist on the fact-checking
beat who is likely to come out of this week with his reputation
enhanced.
Here's how you do a "fact check" when one party is steeped in lies and the other is not: "There were few false or misleading claims on the second night of the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday." Thank you @ddale8! https://t.co/y89FQeRniE
— Dan Froomkin (PressWatchers.org) (@froomkin) August 21, 2024
— Dan Froomkin (PressWatchers.org) (@froomkin) August 21, 2024
One of the best takes came from Judd Legum, available in either tweet thread or post form.
1. Fact-checking is important but the problem with the modern fact-checking industrial complex is that fact-checking is not viewed simply as a mechanism to scrutinize false claims but has a vehicle to demonstrate a media outlet's "objectivity" and proof it treats "both sides"…
But the Washington Post and other major media outlets do not view
fact-checking only as a vehicle to scrutinize false claims. They also
view it as an opportunity to demonstrate that they are unbiased and
treat both sides — Republicans and Democrats — equally. This is where
the trouble starts.
Last night, President Joe Biden and
many other speakers addressed the Democratic National Convention (DNC).
Without a doubt, Biden and other Democrats said some misleading things.
For example, Biden claimed that he was "removing every lead pipe from
schools and homes so every child can drink clean water." Biden did
secure $15 billion for that task through the Inflation Reduction Act,
but removing all lead pipes will likely cost a total of $45 billion.
But,
from a factual standpoint, there is no comparison between Trump and
Biden's speeches. Trump is completely unmoored from the facts. Biden
gets things wrong but much less frequently than Trump.
Nevertheless,
the fact-checking industry has attempted to prove its objectivity by
producing similar pieces for the Democratic and Republican National
Conventions. This requires some sleight of hand. Kessler's fact check on
the night Trump spoke to the RNC was limited exclusively to Trump.
Other noted fabulists on the agenda, including Tucker Carlson, Franklin Graham, Alina Habba, and Eric Trump, were ignored. Kessler's fact check of Biden's speech to the DNC included all other speakers on Monday evening.
Even
so, Kessler was required to stretch the concept of fact-checking to
absurdity — sometimes mangling facts himself — to fill out his fact
check for the first night of the DNC. For example, former Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton's claim that Vice President Kamala Harris "won’t
be sending love letters to dictators." As Kessler notes, Clinton was
referring to 2018 comments by Trump claiming that he "fell in love" with
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un through letters. "We fell in love,
okay?" Trump said. "No, really, he wrote me beautiful letters, and
they’re great letters. We fell in love.” Kessler, however, dings
Clinton. He says that "[t]here is no evidence that Trump sent such
letters" and "Clinton is making a bit of a leap to suggest that Trump
has written 'love letters' to dictators." According to Kessler, "[w]e do
not know what Trump wrote to Kim — or other dictators, for that
matter."
Kessler's fact-check is not only pedantic, it is
false. Bob Woodward, the legendary Washington Post reporter who still
holds the title of "associate editor" at the paper, reported on 27
letters exchanged between Trump and Kim in his book "Rage" — including letters sent from Trump to Kim.
"Like you, I have no doubt that a great result will be accomplished
between our two countries, and that the only two leaders who can do it
are you and me," Trump wrote to Kim on December 28, 2018. On June 30,
2019, Trump told Kim in a letter that "[b]eing with you today was truly
amazing." Trump included a copy of the front page of the New York Times,
which featured images of Trump with Kim, adding, "[t]hese images are
great memories for me and capture the unique friendship that you and I
have developed."
...
There were additional fact-checks in the Washington Post's live blog of the DNC. It included this analysis from national reporter Amy Gardner:
But Gardner's own logic, Biden's assertion is absolutely true. Trump has said he will accept the results if it is a "fair and legal and good election."
And, as Gardner notes, he also has said that Democrats can only beat
him by cheating. Therefore, if he loses, Trump will not accept the
result, just as Biden said.
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