Jim Treacher notes what many conservative observers have long known; that thing the leftymedia and lefty “alt” media refer to as “fact-checking” is really no more than Democrat narrative-buffing.
“Politifact”, it seems, is less interested in “facts” than in “upholding the Democrat side of the story“.
Matthew Hoy writes:
In 2009, Judicial Watch made a big splash when they revealed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been using military aircraft to travel to and from her home district in California to the tune of millions of taxpayer dollars.
The spendthrift nature of the Democrat-controlled Congress was a key election issue in 2010 and Speaker Pelosi’s extravagance was Exhibit A. In response, Rep. John Boehner promised that if the GOP took control of the House and he was elected speaker, he would fly commercial to and from his district. After Republicans won, he reiterated his pledge.
Which brings us to March 23, 2012 and this update at self-appointed watchdog Politifact. Reporter Molly Moorhead referenced documents from the House and the Congressional Research Service and came up with absolutely no evidence that Boehner has been asking for or receiving military transport to and/or from his district.
Going by the old theory that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, Moorhead and her bosses at Politifact, decided that this merited an “In The Works” label…
“In The Works.” You’d think it would be either “True” or “False,” but that’s just because you don’t know any better.
Treacher’s conclusion:
I like PolitiFact’s style: “We can’t prove you’re lying, Speaker Boehner. In fact, there’s absolutely no proof of our suspicion whatsoever. Nice try!”
Moral of the story: Any time a Media or Democrat (ptr) figure calls themselves a “fact checker”, assume they’re a narrative-buffer until proven otherwise.
If you go to the politifact website you can see that they are in the business of trying to turn matters of opinion into matters of fact, using a strong liberal bias when they do so.
For example, Obama recently decided to give work permits to certain illegal aliens. There are a lot of ways you can approach doing a “fact check” to this action. You could examine whether Obama has the constitutional authority to do this, as he claims, or you could examine whether the action was or was not an abrogation of Obama’s sworn duty to faithfully execute the laws of the U.S.. The politifact people instead decided to see whether or not it was a grant of amnesty using the Black’s Law Dictionary definition of amnesty, and then say that anyone who called it amnesty was factually wrong.
It’s akin to Bill Clinton telling Hillary that it’s factually incorrect to refer to him as an adulterer, since his affair with Lewinsky wasn’t really adultery, according to the law.
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