Althouse: "The biggest Pinocchios of 2015."

December 14, 2015

"The biggest Pinocchios of 2015."

From the WaPo Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler.

19 comments:

Rick said...: It's revealing he's willing to argue against misleading statistics on child sex trafficking but not against misleading statistics on campus sexual assault.

He knows who has the power.; 12/14/15, 1:51 PM
mikee said...: Prediction before I go to read them: Republicans are liars, damned liars and sometimes even use statistics to lie. Democrats? Well, sometimes people don't understand their nuance.

I'll be back with my grading of this prediction after I read the article.; 12/14/15, 1:52 PM
Chuck said...: It is the biggest bullshit trend in a generation of journalism; this new gimmick of "Fact Check" columns. By all means check facts. Be accurate. Call out others' inaccuracies.

Just don't pretend that your column in the Washington Post or the St. Petersburg Times is any more accurate than a column posted at the Wall Street Journal or at Ann Althouse's blog.

And I have infinitely more trust in Professor Althouse's everyday writing than in Glen Kessler's writing.; 12/14/15, 1:52 PM
mikee said...: I just learned that the ONLY 4-Pinnochio thing Hillary said in 2015 was in regards to a dead issue, DOMA, reflecting well on her for switching to pro-gay-marriage when the political winds finally blew in that direction.

I am glad to know her lies about Benghazi to the families of the dead, in front of their coffins, were not 4-Pinnochio worthy. Or something.; 12/14/15, 1:56 PM
eric said...: Anyone who relies on fact checkers is being lazy.; 12/14/15, 2:00 PM
Sam L. said...: Should be awarded to Glenn hisownself. And the next biggest to the WaPo.; 12/14/15, 2:11 PM
Ken B said...: Biggest Pinnochio: "Washington Post, fact checker".; 12/14/15, 2:18 PM
Ken B said...: I have to admit though, Hands up, don't shoot is a great call by Kessler.; 12/14/15, 2:22 PM
Jaq said...: There was enough noise about global cooling in the '70s, even in the scientific literature, that remarking on it cannot be called one of the lies of the year. It had been cooling for decades.; 12/14/15, 2:37 PM
Virgil Hilts said...: Kessler: global freezing "was never a serious concern" 40 years ago.
Walter Cronkite: Kessler is full of crap! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4JX1S9YZBo

Kessler essentially repeats a WIKI entry that has been taken over by warming alarmists (way to do independent research Kessler). For a list of articles about global freezing from the period see -- http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/02/the-1970s-global-cooling-alarmism.html
If you read these articles and still give 4 Pinocchios to the idea that there was serious concern about global freezing 40 years ago, then as Cronkite said you're just full of crap.; 12/14/15, 2:40 PM
Virgil Hilts said...: Kessler giving Trump 4 Pinocchios re illegal immigrants committing more crimes than legal citizens. This is a controversial issue and lots of rigged studies on both sides of the debate, but there is a lot of statistical evidence (see link below) that Trump's statement was true and that the Washington Post and a lot of the other media outlets just picked the rigged study whose narrative they preferred and assumed everyone else relaying on different studies was 100% dead wrong. This is journalism? http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/07/illegal_aliens_murder_at_a_much_higher_rate_than_us_citizens_do.html; 12/14/15, 2:50 PM
TreeJoe said...: The fact he got Hands Up Don't Shoot in there is a major item. That's not a "oh hey a politician told a whopper" lie....that's a "This entire movement's mantra is premised upon a fairly obvious lie that no one in the movement sought to challenge, or accept when disproven"; 12/14/15, 3:08 PM
Chuck said...: Yeah, the notion that "Hands up, don't shoot" was one of the supposed lies of the year is nice, but I won't let that sway my view that the whole "fact check" enterprise is anything other than a mainstream media credibility-front operation.

A column is a column is a column. No matter what you call it. I call it BS.; 12/14/15, 4:22 PM
Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...: "The biggest Pinocchios of 2015" as selected, elucidated, and "reported" on by our own editorial staff....

To keep it simple, we have shortened the quotes in the headlines.

Plus, it further obfuscates the context of the quote, already foreshortened (circumcised? brutalized?) for the headline.; 12/14/15, 5:20 PM
Achilles said...: Trump is 3 of the top 5, and every one of Trumps "lies" has been followed by an embarrassing comedown by the media. Including Kessler who is still sticking to the Muslim's weren't partying on 9/11 line.

And people wonder why Trump is winning.; 12/14/15, 5:48 PM
jr565 said...: Only one by Obama? Really?
Still, they did put hands up, don't shoot So its not all that bad.
Take that, Black Lives Matter agitators. You interrupted peoples brunches and blocked traffic for a lie. You are liars. You are lighting the match to the country over a lie.; 12/14/15, 9:41 PM
The Godfather said...: a) "Fact checking" would be a useful service that an independent press could provide. Unfortunately, there isn't one, and it doesn't.

b) The biggest lie of 2015 is the college "rape epidemic" and "rape culture". Kessler didn't mention it.

c) The next biggest lie of 2015 is also on-campus: The racism/white privilege lie. That seems likely to overtake the rape epidemic lie in 2016.

d) Isn't Hillary! still entitled to recognition for her Benghazi lies ("what difference, at this point, does it make?"; "we'll get the movie maker who was responsible for your son's death"? "No, I never said those things").

e) With respect to Tromp's remarks about celebrating Muslims in NJ, I think it's clear that he was exaggerating, and perhaps (to give him the benefit of the doubt, to which he is probably not entitled) misremembering what he saw on TV 14 years ago, but to call this one of the biggest Pinocchios of the year is as much an exaggeration as Tromp's statement.

f) I hate to say it, but Hillary!'s claim that DOMA was enacted to forestall an anti-gay marriage Constitutional amendment is the way I remember it. This was part of the Bill Clinton "triangulation" strategy, and consistent with don't-ask-don't-tell. There wasn't any realistic prospect that an anti-gay marriage amendment would actually be adopted (so if that's what Kessler means he's technically correct), but (Bill) Clinton didn't want to waste his political capital on a (in his view) minor issue.

g) I've always been interested in science, and I remember well the concern expressed by some in the 1970's that we might be entering a new ice age. What I recall were not merely "speculative journalism", but it is true that the 1970's media did not push the "new ice age" threat to the extent that, in more recent years, the media has pushed the catastrophic climate change threat. But if Huckabee's point was that "science" has often been wrong about climate, so we should be cautious about adopting excessive policies to change climate, then he was more right than Kessler.

h) I assume that Kessler has found instances in which Obama has said that the US is a "great" or "exceptional" country, so Rudy Giuliani was wrong to say otherwise. This is somewhat like saying of a loose women that there are instances in which she's said No. Compare Obama to almost any president you can think of (that I can think of, anyway), and he demonstrates less patrioticism.; 12/14/15, 9:55 PM
Chuck said...: Achilles;

I just saw the video replay of the Trump "thousands in Jersey City celebrating" comment. Bill O'Reilly (an annoying blowhard himself) had Glen Kessler on his program to talk about these stories.

Trump's statement is incredible. He said he saw "thousands and thousands" of people in Jersey City cheering. He's tried to clarify, right? The presumption is that he saw something on television, right? And the best proof of Trump's story is apparently a Washington Post story that police in Jersey City or Paterson detained a handful of people who were having a tailgate-style party on a rooftop, watching the ground zero scene from across the Hudson (it was, you'll recall a gorgeous warm early fall day, weather-wise).

That's it. Trumpsters haven't come up with any of the video that Trump supposedly saw. There must be some video, if Trump saw it. If it had been broadcast in metropolitan New York on 9/11/01, video would exist. We'd have seen it. We'd know it. Trump would be doing a victory lap. It. Didn't. Happen.

So yeah; while I don't much care about Glen Kessler or his paper, I do think that Trump is plainly wrong. Literally and in spirit. Trump is wrong. Again, trusting his gut and his faulty/fabricated memory was a bad idea. There were never "thousands and thousands" (which I will estimate as 2,000, okay?) of people of any race, creed, color or religion "celebrating" in any single location that day.; 12/14/15, 11:09 PM
F said...: Chuck: I take it you mean "any single +US+ location that day?; 12/15/15, 11:33 AM