PolitiFact

Some Politicians Bear False Witness More than Others

The Republican Party likes to identify itself as the party of moral values. You know, the people who endorse and follow the ten commandments. Telling the truth used to be an expectation of Christians because of the commandment in Exodus 20:6, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour”. Although there are reasons to be skeptical of the local JS Politifact franchise which displayed occasions of hair-spliting and sloppy research during the Walker recall efforts , the Tampa National Politifact does provide an insight into the information and data that politicians use and cherry-pick when they make their statements. With that in mind I am sharing this summary of the Politifact assessments of the four candidates running for President and Vice President in 2012.

Over at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Politifact, Scott Walker's many lies and distortions are often chronicled and properly rated along the feature's untrue scale. Nevertheless, the newspaper apparently can't help but to try to bend over backwards to make their double-endorsee for governor look as good as possible.

In the increasingly strange world of daily newspaper journalism, where editors and publishers serve on local chambers of commerce and pen right-wing blogs while dissing their staffs for signing recall petitions, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is setting the standard for strangeness.

The recall petition flap didn't affect the Journal Sentinel as it did a half dozen other newspapers around the state. Moreover, the J-S has won several Pulitzer Prizes in recent years for feature and investigative reporting. However, the Milwaukee newspaper's editorial page has veered sharply rightward politically in recent years. And the news department doesn't, in some respects, seem very far behind.

We're thinking mainly of the Journal Sentinel's can't-see-the-forest-for-the-trees feature called Politifact, which rates politician statements as shades of true or false, but which too often chooses to inspect rather unimportant snippets of rhetorical navel lint. At some point soon, should this trend continue, the column will rule on whether it was accurate for some public official to call Wisconsin "America's Dairyland."

Let's cut to the chase. Lieberman writes:

The fact is Republicans by supporting Ryan’s voucher plan did essentially vote to end Medicare.

.PolitiFact Wisconsin takes a double hit today, with a Shepherd Express article by your truly, and another piece from Erik Gunn at Milwaukee Magazine's website.

Regular Xoff readers know I'm a frequent critic of PolitiFact, but I tried to be more thoughtful and not just blast away as usual. See what you think.

And, yes, the Shepherd fact checked my piece before it ran.

Author Douglass Cater apparently was the first to suggest that journalism is "the first rough draft of history." Well, that may have been true when he said it in the 1940s and it may have remained true up until about a decade ago. Now, however, journalism at best is only the second draft. Increasingly, the first rough draft of history is now crafted by bloggers.

This change, like all technological and cultural change, has tasked professional journalism as it strives to adapt to new competition from the Internet, just as it was challenged by television. On the one hand, mainstream news media belittle blogging as unprofessional and sloppy. Some of it is. On the other hand, professional reporters mine blogs all the time to fill their own news columns. Further, mainstream news outlets -- print and broadcast -- are aggressively pursuing their own blogs.

Incredible.

That means unbelievable.

The Journal Sentinel's PolitiFact, which prides itself on putting things "into context" -- which is how it justifies its frequently warped conclusions -- says Rep. Fat Jim Sensenbrenner's (Isn't that what the F stands for? See photo) claim that US corporations pay the highest tax rate in the world -- 35% -- is true.

No mention of the fact that the Government Accountability Office says that two-thirds of US corporations pay no federal income tax at all.  Zero.  Zip. Zilch. Nada.

In fact, PolitiFact Ohio (it's a franchise operation) checked a claim by Rep. Marcia Fudge that some of the biggest corporations pay NO taxes. Her statement rated true.

The Journal Sentinel's PolitiFact has been on a roll recently, ruling on claims made by Republlicans and conservative groups during the recall election campaigns. 

The latest one, today, finds the right-wing Club for Growth made false claims against Democrats in a TV spot it ran -- starting on June 14!

The teaser for the finding, which involves a claim that Dems spent $5-million on a scoreboard for the Bucks, says the claim is "an air ball -- or perhaps an error ball."

Cute, but, those campaigns are over.  Calling a foul after the final horn has sounded and the teams have left the court and gone home doesn't accomplish much.

Once again, we rule PolitiFact Totally Irrelevant.