We need a systemic approach to dealing with lies and untruths of the people who weild power. If you make it partisan, the liar/politican will just block you out, and so will their followers.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jul/...
http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2016/jun/20/do...
There are numerous studies that also show significant selection bias, that is they cherry-pick statements they fact-check.
Politifact itself makes no attempt to evaluate and correct for their own bias. The newspaper that runs it is liberal leaning, and has endorsed Hillary Clinton.
Because of the fact that Politifact tries to appear unbiased, their apparent bias is even more disappointing. Truly neutral fact-checking is something that would be very desirable. Perhaps the only way this will ever happen is by some sort of aggregation of left- and right-leaning “fact-checking.” Sort of like metacritic.
The following is a direct quote from The Nation interview linked in the very same Politifact article:
> Do you know what real African-American youth unemployment is? It’s over 50 percent.
The fact is both Trump and Sanders were factually wrong. Their usage of the term “unemployment” was at best misleading.
Politifact is however willing to massage Sen. Sander’s statement to make it only “mostly true,” instead of false, which is a clear example of bias.
There are numerous examples of Politifact asserting editorial control in this manner, skewing the results on the Mostly-True–Mostly-False range of the “truthometer.”
I like multiple-award-winning journalist Clare Sambrook's idea of investigative comment:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/anthony-barnett/cla...
And stating that Trump made those statements is true, saying that others also make idiotic statements does not change that.
Focus on the topic is also the defining characteristic of a good article.
That question can't be answered. What do you think the topic of this piece was? The title was "President-Elect Trump". The piece was not about "let's talk about Trump as the future president". Rather, it was about, "things are going to get frighteningly bad under Trump".
Staying on topic and selective blindness are very different things. The latter was on bold display here, and is a defining characteristic of a hit piece.
I've seen a lot of critique for Clinton on Last Week Tonight, but even if I hadn't, why would that in any way affect their Trump coverage (if still factual)?
But speaking of politifact [1] [2]:
Is it somehow disingenuous to report on Trumps blatant lies? I find it wholly unsurprising that all politicians lie more than "regular people", but I find it supremely horrifying the amount of Trumps lies that are swallowed whole to the extent that Hillary is the one portrayed as "crooked" when comparing these statistics.
[1] http://www.politifact.com/personalities/hillary-clinton/
It does, here.
> which by your statement would seem like we are of opposite convictions.
I have no idea what you mean.
> without leaving anything out, and I have yet to see anything hinting otherwise.
I don't share your belief. Haven't you seen his hit-piece on third-party candidates? You had two big candidates with little or no integrity, and yet, he paints the third party candidates as not even worthy of consideration because they said one or to silly things, or were unaware of some details.
> why would that in any way affect their Trump coverage (if still factual)?
Would you react the same way about an anti-Hillary piece magnifying her every flaw, when her opponents are just as (or more) flawed? I'd not bat an eyelid if such things were coming out of party propaganda mouthpieces. I feel very differently about it coming out of HBO.
> Is it somehow disingenuous to report on Trumps blatant lies?
Not even remotely close to what I wrote.
> when comparing these statistics
The statistics are garbage. There is no science there. Politifact has some value in that they do some legwork to find primary sources. Readers can read those sources and come to their own conclusions. Think of Politifact like Wikipedia: you can find a good number of primary sources linked from there. But like Wikipedia, they are not the final authority on these matters. Politifact's choice of topics to investigate are not representative of a person, and their verdicts are often whimsical.
I have. And I happened to agree. This could've been THE year for third party candidates, had they not been complete dullards. There was basically an open door. And I disagree with you about "both" third party candidates only saying one or two things wrong. They were fundamentally inequipped to respond to basic political issues.
> Would you react the same way about an anti-Hillary piece magnifying her every flaw, when her opponents are just as (or more) flawed? I'd not bat an eyelid if such things were coming out of party propaganda mouthpieces. I feel very differently about it coming out of HBO.
If it was true, yes. Where we seem to disagree is that you believe that Hillary is worse than Donald. That seems to be the horrifying root to this entire election.
> The statistics are garbage. There is no science there. Politifact has some value in that they do some legwork to find primary sources. Readers can read those sources and come to their own conclusions. Think of Politifact like Wikipedia: you can find a good number of primary sources linked from there. But like Wikipedia, they are not the final authority on these matters. Politifact's choice of topics to investigate are not representative of a person, and their verdicts are often whimsical.
Wikipedia isn't as biased as you'd like to think. [1]
[1] http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/15-023_e044cf...
Even if they were dullards, I'd prefer them to people who have shown tendencies to destroy countries. I think I saw this joke on 4chan: if Gary Johnson does not know where Aleppo is, that's one less place for him to bomb.
> Wehre we seem to disagree is that you believe that Hillary is worse than Donald.
Well, one of them is an egomaniac, talks garbage, has misbehaved with people, and has run shady charities and a university. The other one has received millions of dollars from banks and foreign powers, and has demonstrated that she will say exactly what her audience wants to hear. Not only has she threatened to up the ante against Syria, she has shown she can deliver, in Libya. I think the worst-case difference we are looking at here is a history of misdemeanor and fraud vs a history of fraud and felony. I prefer (peaceful) dullards to these.
> Wikipedia isn't as biased as you'd like to think.
Depends of the topic, I guess. Politifact is biased, and my recommenation for using both resources is the same.
"Race, Ethnicity, and Sex of Victim by Race, Ethnicity, and Sex of Offender, 2015"
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
According to the FBI, in single-victim, single-offender homicides in 2015, 3,167 white people were slain and 500 of those murders were committed by black/African-American people. In the same year, 2,664 black/African-American people were slain and 229 of those murders were committed by white people.
Simple division: 15.8% of whites who were murdered were killed by blacks/African-Americans while only 8.6% of blacks who were murdered were killed by whites. The percentage of whites-killed-by-blacks is about 83.7% higher than vice versa.
So maybe O'Reilly may have garbled his delivery of this factoid?
"Blacks killed by whites -- 2%"
"Blacks killed by police -- 1%"
"Whites killed by police -- 3%"
"Whites killed by whites -- 16%"
"Whites killed by blacks -- 81%"
"Blacks killed by blacks -- 97%’
Edit: I'm sure there are screenshots of the initial image so you don't have to rely on politifact.. here, this includes the image and a transcript of the O'Reilly interview: http://www.factcheck.org/2015/11/trump-retweets-bogus-crime-...
John Oliver split from doing opinionated, issue-oriented informational pieces with plenty of research to hackish hit pieces near the end of the cycle. Look at what he said about third parties: instead of bringing thoughtful attention to an often-dismissed issue, his sole purpose was to destroy support for third party candidates without regard for fairness, honesty, or truth and it was pretty clear to anyone who'd actually looked at them honestly before watching it.
If you ask any Sanders supporter (or Trump supporter I'd imagine) what they learned this cycle, it's that corporate media is not honest, not objective, and not to be trusted or even given the benefit of the doubt. Even NPR lied through their teeth.
I agree fake news on facebook is bad. But I'm not sure fake news from other sources is better. I don't know what the solution is.
The difference is not significant. Reporting the news /is/ what the news becomes. A slant like the kind I'm discussing is exactly a lie: taking a story, and instead of telling it, saying what you want.
And I'm also talking about explicit lies: the Oliver hit piece on third parties contains some, and if you want to look for explicit lies from MSM they are easy to come by. For example consider the Nevada Democratic primary "chair-throwing" incident, reported as such by every pundit and agency in the media although objective fact is that no chairs were ever thrown. The reports of the incident devoid of context are actually even worse here than misstating the actual fact (why were people angry? crickets), but the lie is still there. Retractions were offered days later in fine print by ombudsmen and ignored by journalists (at the same organizations) presenting the actual story.
Then there was an interview with Bill O'Reilly: Bill: "You tweeted out that whites killed by blacks - these are statistics you picked up from somewhere - at a rate of 81%. That's totally wrong; whites killed by blacks at a rate of 15%."
Trump: "Hey Bill. Am I going to check every statistic? I've got millions of people... you know what? Fine. But this came out of radio shows and everything else."
Anyway, worth watching the whole show. It's funny, in a painful way.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rSDUsMwakI#t=14m45s [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rSDUsMwakI#t=15m20s