Facts are stubborn things.
Washington Post columnist Meghan McArdle ripped the community of fact-checkers who have tried to hold former President Trump accountable during his political career, admitting they’ve ultimately failed to hamper his support and have hurt their own institutions.
The author, a staunch critic of Trump, accused those of trying to prevent the spread of Trump’s “disinformation” of being arrogant and mistaking their own opinion with objective fact. She even accused them of censorship. All of this, she wrote, has ultimately led to voters questioning them and other institutions more than they’ve ever questioned the former president.
“After eight years of all-out disinformation warfare, Trump’s approval ratings are holding up better than public trust in academia and journalism,” McArdle lamented.
The columnist began her piece by describing the idealized mission of the Trump era fact-checkers, saying they “devote themselves to checking the internet for bad facts and bad actors — and especially for the malevolent impulses of Trump.”
However, they didn’t save the world in her estimation. At best, they dinged Trump on some of his bragging and, at worst, they censored true facts in their thirst to correct him.
“Some of their efforts have been useful, including their fact-checking of Trump’s more frenetic flights of fancy,” she said, adding, “But the larger effort has been repeatedly marred when the disinformation experts have acted as censors, suppressing information that turned out to be true and spreading information that was false.”
McArdle provided some of the major examples of this suppression, examples that most of the media participated in at the behest of these fact-checkers.
“Recall when it was ‘misinformation’ to suggest the pandemic might have started in a Wuhan lab. Recollect how a bevy of putative experts assured us that Hunter Biden’s laptop was probably a ‘Russian information operation’ rather than … Hunter Biden’s laptop.”
She added a more recent one, stating, “If these memories have faded, remember that just a couple months ago, we were hearing that videos of President Joe Biden’s obvious decline were actually expert-certified ‘cheap fakes.’”
Related: Journalist Resigns After Being Exposed for Fake, AI-Generated Quotes
Good fact checkers must be ruthlessly objective and fair. They will, of course, have their own political beliefs, but they will have mastered the art of laying those aside and working solely from the evidence.
I doubt if there are many such people left in journalism these days. It doesn’t seem to be something they try to teach anymore.
Apparently the same in medicine. Just look what is done to the dissidents who don’t tow the jab line. The problem, of course, is when Public Health has an actual emergency or there is a vaccine out there that is actually is working, no one will believe it after what happened during the plandemic.
I’ve heard the doubts about vaccines caused by the lies around the unsafe and ineffective mRNA jabs has caused even pet owners to avoid vaccinating their dogs and cats against rabies!
“Good fact checkers must be ruthlessly objective and fair. They will, of course, have their own political beliefs, but they will have mastered the art of laying those aside and working solely from the evidence.”
Ahh….so they are about as common as unicorns, then. Got it.
They’re fairly common in the science community.
There aren’t any in “journalism” but you might find some in twitter community notes.
mastered the art of laying those aside and working solely from the evidence
Just like those scientists performing peer review on ENORMOUS RAT BALLS?
At some point you’re going to have to have a road-to-Damascus moment and stop pretending integrity exists in these fields.
Hey, enormous rat balls are this week’s special at Warren Kinsella’s favourite Chinese restaurant.
I never claimed the science community was perfect. Over1 million scientific articles are published every year, and they’re not all going to be gems. I only claim that it’s far better than any alternative.
This particular article has been retracted, which is more than I can say for the pseudo-scientific nonsense that gets pumped out on the internet every day by people with lots of agenda but little knowledge and no scruples.
Facts and “science” to Democrats are as malleable as yesterdays’ news.
Biden is as sharp as a tack.
Democrat nominee Harris isn’t worthy of funding.
Two weeks to flatten the curve.
Hilary is just wonderful.
Either way, McArdle and the WAPO can FO.
just the beginning folks. l do NOT want to be right about this but facing facts, seeking truth good bad or indifferent has helped me navigate life.
and the truth l see coming more and more of it, so get used to it, the ‘information age’ is now the ‘misinformation age’
all driven by technology of the 1s and 0s type.
meh. gave me a career and my own home, for me its all a modern Shakespeare play.
reminds me of the gigantic ‘The New Republic’ scandal. they even made a movie their golden boy was a FAKE. attending events that never happened or whatever.
https://www.washingtonian.com/2023/09/28/shattered-glass-an-oral-history-of-the-media-movie-cult-classic/
(psst, who in the hell would go to journalism school nowadays????)
That any of those outlets still exist is a testament to how little people care about the media. The gatekeepers didn’t care, because they wanted the stories to be true.
Jayson Blair, Dan Rather, Jack Kelly, Rick Bragg, Brian Williams, Sabrina Erdely and Stephen Glass to name a few.
And yet they still have careers
So what. I used to read Meghan and actually liked a lot of what was written. Then disappeared behind the paywall and now reminds me of a nagging fishwife.
The ludicrous Daniel Dale should not go unmentioned. He had a career, such as it was, with the Star, then he began specializing in fact-checking Trump. He failed to distinguish serious lies from Barnum-style braggadocio but did it ardently enough that he got hired by CNN to do it full-time. I hope he’s going to remain in the obscurity he seems to have found, but maybe not before he gets called out.
“The ludicrous Daniel Dale should not go unmentioned. ”
No, he should not. I watched with some amusement as he ‘fact checked’ the Trump/Biden debate by stating that Trump “lied or exaggerated” 27 times to Biden’s 15 times while completely failing to note Biden’s biggest whopper of all: the Charlottesville LIE about “very fine people”. The one so well-used by Biden that Snopes suddenly felt the need to ‘debunk’ it several years after the fact (and only one week before the debate, oddly enough).
Not much of a ‘fact checker’.
The media as an instution?? is so corrupt now, it is unwatchable, listenable or readable. I tried on Sunday for a moment, and listened Martha Raddatz on ABC. It was excreable. She gave Kamala Harris a tongue bath for 15 minutes. I can’t imagine they can be so deranged as to not realize that would turn off even Kamala sympathizers.
now? It’s been corrupt for a very long time, in 1807 someone referred to newspapers as “that polluted vehicle”, and the newer versions haven’t made it any better.
Actually Peter,Kamala has no supporters,the tongue bathing and propaganda from the media are to give the impression that “Real People support her”,so to make the push polls and coming election fraud seem plausible.
The line;
“No matter how much you think you hate the media,it is never enough”.
Is far too true.
All of them were leftist political hacks.. None of them were fact checkers.. To hear them LAMENTING on their lack of creditability is rich.. The MSM industry just cant go bankrupt fast enough for my liking.. They disgust me..
Heh, she is upset because the Fart Catchers failed to convince anyone.
Fact Checkers..Translates to Pretentious Lying Wankers.
People so self important,that they believe the average person needs “Their help” to sniff the BS.
When they are the producers of the lies and misinformation they claim to “correct”.
Same old Demon Rat Progressive scumbag nonsense.
They have proven that no lie is too low in the furtherance of their cause.
Now they moan and whinge about everyone treating them as liars..
Bottom line,truth will out.
Fact Checkers?
Needed by no one.
Demanded by Liars and cheats.
Remember the easy-listening band leader Frank Chacksfield? He should have called his band the Chacksfeckers.