Posted on 08/29/2012 7:16:25 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
“We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers,” says Neil Newhouse, a Romney pollster.
A half dozen fact-checking organizations and websites have refuted Romney’s claims that Obama removed the work requirement from the welfare law and will cut Medicare benefits by $216 billion.
Last Sunday’s New York Times even reported on its front page that Romney has been “falsely charging” President Obama with removing the work requirement. Those are strong words from the venerable Times. Yet Romney is still making the false charge. Ads containing it continue to be aired.
Presumably the Romney campaign continues its false claims because they’re effective. But this raises a more basic question: How can they remain effective when they’ve been so overwhelmingly discredited by the media?
The answer is the Republican Party has developed three means of bypassing the mainstream media and its fact-checkers.
The first is by repeating big lies so often in TV spots – financed by a mountain of campaign money – that the public can no longer recall (if it ever knew) that the mainstream media and its fact-checkers have found them to be lies.
The second is by discrediting the mainstream media – asserting it’s run by “liberal elites” that can’t be trusted to tell the truth. “I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans,” Newt Gingrich charged at a Republican debate last January, in what’s become a standard GOP attack line.
The third is by using its own misinformation outlets – led by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and his yell-radio imitators, book publisher Regnery, and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, along with a right-wing blogosphere – to spread the lies, or at least spread doubt about what’s true.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
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The interesting part is the fact that fact-checking requires supposedly entire “organizations”, sort of like global warming is a “unanimous consensus” of all “legitimate scientists”.
Hey, Bob, stand up. Oh, you are.
I am sick of the Liberals calling everybody who disagrees with them, “liars.”
RATs by definition are liars, IMO.
The most transparent administration EVER! would like to direct you away from
checking official government documents when seeking information.
Stand up Robert....... stand up for what you believe!!
Oops, sorry, I forgot. You suffer from the Yassar Arafat syndrome
Need any further proof that in a second Obama term the Libs intend to shut down talk radio and close down websites like FR?
They always tip their hand on what they plan to do when liberal academics start chattering about it a few years in advance.
Typical RAT/weasel reaction.
Anybody ever notice how the RATS always accuse their opponents of dastardly things that they themselves have been doing for decades? The biggest liar in the country is Bam, his Pinochio nose would stretch from NY to CA.
Thanks Turbo!
Liberal fact-checking: I know a guy who knows a guy who heard someone say......
Oh, wait; I think I hear the Secret Service coming down the hall now.
Too bad they totally ignored the people who have called for Mitt & Ann Romney's murders, the same people who have been telling lies about every Republican, Conservative, and Tea Partier for years.
Double standard, people. Robert B. Reich is trumpeted, while we are shouted down.
Imagine Parental defense after have provided loaded guns to each of their kids:
“Hey! I didn’t shoot those people!”
The crucial point about “objective” journalists is that, explicitly or implicitly, they do claim to be objective. What’s wrong with that? Nothing, if they know it to be true. Anyone can try to be objective; you simply scrutinize your own desires and interests - and openly make the case that your opinions are valid notwithstanding any extent to which where you stand is congenial to where you sit.
Anyone can try to be objective, and that is a laudable thing to work towards - but it is inherently impossible to know that you actually are objective. It would only be possible to know that you were objective if you didn’t have any interests or desires of your own. But that is true of no living person.
Journalists go into that profession “to make a difference” - which means, journalists want to be influential. Knowing that they cannot be influential if they don’t have a job, journalists promote the business of journalism by promoting the importance of the wire services. And they promote the importance of the wire services by promoting the idea that there are reports which are too new for you to have yet heard about, and which are important for you to hear.
Hurricane Isaac is a case in point. Democrats and journalists rejoice in the fact that there is a hurricane, a legitimate news story if usually an overhyped one, distracting from the coverage of the Republican National Convention. Certainly there is a certain predictability to the Republican Convention, but there is a concomitant timelessness in the Republican message. It is a serious subject. But although each hurricane is different, Isaac too has a certain predictability as well. Reporters standing out in the wind and rain, cars and houses flooded, you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Isaac hits New Orleans, it’s interesting to see what happens when the $14 billion of post-Katrina flood protection works are tested. But we know that electric power gets knocked out, and some people will be inconveniences or even imperiled. Fundamentally, what is to be learned from these reports that will be remembered a year later? What immediate action is to be taken by the public outside the immediate area of the storm??
On November 6, we the people will go to the polls and either choose to commission a new leadership which purports to plan to freely cede credit to individuals and corporate entities for the consequences of their actions, or choose to retain an administration which purports to do the things which corporations and individuals have historically been credited with. It really is about “you didn’t” - or did - “build that.” If the people have not, by majority of those who will actually vote in the swing states, already decided whether “you did” or “you didn’t,” then journalism has a role to play in providing the full case for each of those propositions. One report more or less about Hurricane Isaac will not matter to the history of the country, but public understanding that individual businessmen making detailed local decisions are the sine qua non of the sort of prosperity that Americans take for granted unless the government interferes with the moderating effect of price variations on the actions of the public. With price signals, I understand that I can either have a house or a Ferrari. Without price signals, I might assume that I am entitled to both.
A public spirited reporter would promote that discussion; a self-interested reporter (“fact checker”) would promote himself by emphasizing the less-predictable (in detail, at least) reports of Hurricane Isaac.
The only man alive who can tell more lies in 60 seconds is Reich’s pal Paul Begala.
The Dems here are in a tizzy because a couple of the zingers Ryan threw were stretches and the dems are all calling them lies in an outrage. I wont go into them here.
The funny thing is they never complain when Obama makes up stuff about Romney: like killing that Bain employee, or taxing the middle class, or claiming that Romney cheated on his taxes.
They dont have any problem with that, if they know about it at all.
I’m waiting for Obama to blame Romney for Hurricane Issac Hayes : )
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