Checking the Checkers: Clinton vs Trump speeches
The AP (Administration's Press) did a couple of comedy pieces, playing a DNC water carrier, poorly disguised as fact checking. (WaPo, PBS, ABC, Yahoo, and a few other places ran these pieces, so they own that bias as well).
The idea appears to have been to cherry pick the worst 11 things Trump said, and play pedantics to make them look worse, while ignoring 57 things he said that were correct facts. Then compared that to the 11 best things Hillary said (with a few sacrifices to look objective), then excusing most of them, while ignoring 60 things they could have criticized her on, if they were measuring her by the same yardstick as Trump. Michael Moore couldn't have done it better.
The article's below summarize each of the two speeches and "FactChecks" to show not only how they use selection bias, standards bias, and other techniques within each "fact check" -- but also how massively obvious the bias is when you compare them side-by-side. (Assuming you believe that both side's politicians lie equally).
NOTE: Personally, I think the left lies more. Not because of any moral superiority on the right wing, but just because the right is held more accountable by the left wing media. So they normally are bullied into behaving better, while the left is excused, or the biased of the editors/fact checkers misses the lies in the first place. And that's generous (less cynical) -- the alternative is that they're liars and misleading the public on purpose.
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Donald Trump [1] |
Hillary Clinton [2] |
Checking the Checkers: Trump SpeechMain article: Checking the Checkers: Trump Speech
The AP (Administration's Press) did a comedy piece, playing a DNC water carrier, poorly disguised as fact checking. It's embarrassingly bad journalism, and really just an op-ed piece by a Clinton supporter. If you look at the actual facts, Trump was materially correct in all of them. But since saying that, wouldn't fit the meme, they picked nits, changed topics, filled it with fluff or side topics, or had a wonky standard that will never apply the same way to Hillary. |
Checking the Checkers: Clinton SpeechMain article: Checking the Checkers: Clinton Speech
The AP carried the DNC's water when "fact checking" the Trump speech, basically twisting 11 true (or mostly true) things into looking like he was lying, then ignoring 43 other true facts, to keep their ratios down: Checking the Checkers: Clinton vs Trump speeches So of course you expect they'd treat Hillary Clinton the same way, and measure her by the same yardstick? Don't be absurd. The AP doesn't stand for the Administration's Press for nothing. They are to Journalism what Michael Moore was to Documentary Film Making: slovenly, hypocrtical, obnoxious propagandists. ABC news, Yahoo and a few others ran the AP piece, which means they agree (or were too lazy to vet the material before publishing). |
References
- ↑ Trump Fact Check:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/ap-fact-check-donald-trumps-rnc-speech/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2016/06/22/true-fact-checking-a-single-donald-trump-speech-required-10-ap-writers/ - ↑ Clinton Fact Check:
https://apnews.com/1692b0fc00ea48199aa630e33183f572/ap-fact-check-trumps-misreading-iran-deal
Original ABC link and Yahoo News versions were both removed or broke.