Stenography and accountability
A laudable attempt to fact-check the politicians on TV
Stenography and accountability
Dick Polman, Inquirer National Political Columnist
Kudos to ABC News for a great idea. Its Sunday morning chat show has hired some astute fact-checkers who will determine, week by week, whether the guest politicians are telling the truth or lying like Pinocchio.
The Washington press corps has long been restrained by its own "objectivity" standards, which too often allow politicians to dissemble without fear of being corrected. Under these traditional rules, journalists are simply supposed to report what is said, and leave it up to the readers and viewers to determine truth or falsity. Politicians have long appreciated this tradition, which has often reduced journalists to the status of stenographers - switching off their brains, out of concern that truth-squadding might be criticized as "bias."
Fortunately, the people at ABC's This Week have decided that the old rules are not sufficient, that true "objectivity" requires holding the politicians accountable by proactively comparing their words to the empirical record. Which is why they've tapped PolitiFact.com, a Pulitzer Prizewinning website based at The St. Peterburg Times, to scour the Sunday remarks for evidence of BS.
Seven hours after the show this past Sunday, the website concluded that Defense Secretary Robert Gates had uttered a half-truth about nuclear policy under George W. Bush, and that GOP Senator John Kyl had told the truth when he said that then-Senator Barack Obama once tried to filibuster a Bush high court nominee. All told, it was a quiet debut for the online watchdogs, who will undoubtedly have meatier fare in the months ahead.
This development is long overdue, given the plethora of unchallenged verbal bamboozlement, especially on the Sunday shows. To cite just one recent example: South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, the Republican who famously said last year that breaking Obama on health care would be his "Waterloo," appeared on the ABC show this past January and insisted, "I did not want this to be the president's Waterloo" - and the host, Terry Moran, didn't challenge him.
On occasions too numerous to mention, back when the Bush administration was selling the Iraq war, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld would show up on Meet the Press and spin like tops, and not even Tim Russert could slow them down. And the print reporters were typically no better. During the summer of '06, Rumsfeld told a Senate commitee that, with respect to Iraq, "I've never painted a rosy picture...and you'd have a dickens of a time trying to find instances when I've been excessively optimistic" - yet even though this assertion was a lie easily refutable via 30 seconds on Google (among many examples, here's Rumsfeld, April 2003: "It could last six days, six weeks, I doubt six months"), The New York Times and Washington Post didn't even report his false assertion, much less challenge it. AP and the NBC Nightly News reported the assertion, but didn't challenge it.
We're not just talking about Republicans, of course. Bamboozlement has always been a bipartisan practice. I well remember an episode in September 2007, when Hillary Clinton was running for president. She was trying to fend off the embarrassing news that one of her major fundraising guys, businessman Norman Hsu, had been jailed as a felon. She had been forced to refund $850,000 to 260 donors - the largest chunk of money ever returned by a candidate - and she was asked on Meet the Press whether this scandal had undercut her bid to be the candidate of change.
She told Russert: "Well, I’m very much in favor of public financing, which is the only way to really change a lot of the problems that we have in our campaign finance system. You know, as soon as my campaign found out what I and dozens of other campaigns did not know, that he was a fugitive from justice, we took action. And out of an abundance of caution, we did return any contribution that we could in any way, no matter how indirect, link to him. And I believe that we’ve done what we needed to do based on the information as soon as it came to our attention....We have got to solve this (problem of big money in politics). It is not good for our political system. It is certainly not the way that most people I know who run for office and want to try to do something good for their constituents and their country want to be spending all of their time. And we’ve got to figure out how we’re going to address it, and there has to be a way that public financing becomes the law of the land."
Russert, who was famously tough on his guests, failed on this occasion to challenge the Clinton assertions that contradicted empirical fact. She had actually responded to the Hsu scandal with all the speed of a turtle trundling through molasses, and she was slow to return the Hsu money (if you're really interested, I said so at the time); more importantly, contrary to her claim on the show that she was "very much in favor of public financing," the truth was that as senator she had never expended time or energy on that issue, and that, indeed, she was the first-ever Democratic presidential candidate to skip the public financing rules and privatize her primary campaign. Yet Russert didn't bring up any of that.
Not to rattle on about ancient history, but this is why more fact-checking is essential, and why the ABC News experiment is so worthy. In defense of journalists, it's often difficult to challenge a whopper in real time, if only because it's nearly impossible to prepare in advance for every conceivable whopper. Still, when I think of the traditional objectivity standard, I harken back to the time when it was most egregiously abused, during the '50s heyday of red-baiting Senator Joe McCarthy.
On slow news days, reporters would bug McCarthy for news, and he would happily oblige, by claiming that he had just uncovered 60 or 80 or 100 or whatever number of communists in the State Department or in the Army or wherever. The reporters would write up the latest charge as objective news, simply because a prominent senator had said it. Finally, as a lot of innocents' careers were bring wrecked, and some were being driven to suicide, a New York Times editorial sought to defend the traditional objectivity standard: "It is difficult, if not impossible, to ignore charges by Senator McCarthy...The remedy lies with the reader."
Actually, no. As the ABC News' hiring decision rightly demonstrates, the remedy lies with the journalists.
Phil Checchia, my problem with the affirmative action assertion is that it's based on an idea of unearned privilege. I find it applies only to liberals – Obama here, the Kennedys for years. This assumption doesn’t apply to conservatives. The Kennedys were indeed children of privilege but no more so than George W Bush. He was terrible at expressing himself – with or without a teleprompter. He joked about his own lack of effort in college. Do you think he would have ever gotten through the interview process for grad school if he weren’t the same type of New England Brahmin that the Kennedys were? His business dealings were rescued by the family name. I’m not aghast that the charge is leveled. It’s a troubling assumption for almost all black liberals ( I didn’t find that assumption for Clarence Thomas or Michael Steele) BTW,My understanding is that Obama’s IQ is slightly higher than GWB – something that’s irrelevant.— JimR- Phil, I totally agree with you that every president should be able to name his favorite baseball player. Clearly that is a critical part of the qualifications required to be the leader of the free world. I am sure GWB could have done it in a flash.— Yersinia Pestis
- JimR, the difference is that nobody ever asserted that George W Bush was brilliant. However, the media is always talking about the intelligence of Obama. One even asserted that he had the highest IQ of anyone ever elected as president. This with nothing to back it up since he will not release his transcripts or any of his college writings. Even Michele's thesis paper is off limits. Why? Recall in the 2004 election how both Bush and Kerry released their transcripts? Recall in the 2008 election how so much was made of McCain's grades at Annapolis, which was derived from his transcripts? Yet Obama refuses to allow his to be released, as if he is hiding something. Of course, the media just allows it to be so, all the while extolling on his high degree of intelligence. Good thing they are not biased.— tom - wilmington, de
- Yersenia, GWB talks all the time about how he traded Sammy Sosa. Obama touts himself a White Sox fan, calls their old park "Cominsky" field, and could not name a single player. Even my daughters who do not follow baseball have heard of Ryan Howard. He is a WS fan in name only, since it was convenient politically.— tom - wilmington, de
- Tom, in what way is any of that even remotely relevant to being qualified to be President?— Yersinia Pestis
Comment removed.- Unfortunately I would have to disagree with Tom on Obama being qualified to be Pres. The Constitution sets the stand on who is qualified. So even if you believe Michele Obama's statement in 2008 that his home country is Kenya. I would still say he is a citizen and qualified to be Pres. Now for the assertion that he is an affirmative action Pres. I would have to agree with that. How else did the most inexperienced Demo candidate win. If everything else had been the same except Obama was white Hillary would have become Pres. Obama just out affirmative actioned Hillary for the Presidency. Of course if Hillary had been a white man she would not have won either. Most likely Biden or Richardson would have won Democratic nomination.— Mike Welbourn
- ***When it comes to major issues confronting the nation, 48% of voters now say the average Tea Party member is closer to their views than Obama is. Forty-four percent (44%) hold the opposite view and believe the president’s views are closer to their own. Fifty-two percent (52%) believe the average member of the Tea Party movement has a better understanding of the issues facing America today than the average member of Congress.*** http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections2/election_2012/election_2012_barack_obama_42_ron_paul_41— NEPhilly
- I don't think ABC is taking the fact checking far enough. I would like each politician who is caught in a lie receive an electrical shock.If they still continue to lie, then after the third shock, they lose their medical coverage and on the next lie, they lose their pension and on their sixth lie they are removed from office.— USA#1
- Phil: Sick of others complaining about blacks?— p-diddy
- Anybody's open for criticism, but let's get the facts straight. Obama was editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cu* laude (these censors!). Joe Kennedy Jr. was killed in action in WWII and was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross. JFK saw combat in WWII. It's not like they were rich kids who pounded beers all day.— p-diddy
- Mike Welbourn: By that standard, any time a white person votes for a white candidate that is also "affirmative action". Funny how being black is now cast by some as being some sort of great advantage to becoming president - even though it had never happened in 200+ years.— p-diddy
- PP-did: If enough people voted for a candidate to make them win just because they were white then yes. But I don't think that has happened, yet. Maybe just because almost all candidates have been white. But, I would say enough blacks and whites voted for Obama over Hillary just because he was black. At least my brother-in-law (a black conservative) said almost all of the blacks he knows including his mother voted for Obama just because he was black and it would be historic to have a black pres. Do you really think Obama could have beaten Hillary if he was white? Now be truthful if you did voted for Obama. Would you have done it if he was white or would you have gone for somebody with more experience?— Mike Welbourn
- Mike Welbourn: Blacks are a minority. If Obama didn't win the majority of whites, he wouldn't be president. And yeah, I do think McCain got a lot of votes because he was white in this past election. You can't pretend that race doesn't matter to white people, but matters to black people. There was a lot of excitement about Obama even when he was an Illinois state senator. He had a reputation for being intelligent, articulate, organized and energetic, combined with great interpersonal skills. Alan Keyes ran for president, and he got nowhere. Same goes for Jesse Jackson. But somehow because Obama won, you chalk it up to "affirmative action", or reverse racism. Also, you can't discount 200+ years of white presidents. That speaks louder than any argument for reverse racism. Obviously being black hasn't helped a person's presidential ambitions.— p-diddy
- By the way, no I would not have voted for Hillary in the primary even if Obama hadn't run. I don't like Hillary's position on the Iraq war. I didn't vote for her during her 2nd senatorial run in New York either. But if she had won the primary, I would've voted for her instead of McCain.— p-diddy
Cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's top political reporters, and lauded by the ABC News political website as "one of the finest political journalists of his generation," Dick Polman is a national political columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is on the full-time faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as "writer in residence." Dick has been a frequent guest on C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC. He covered the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential campaigns.
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