Tag: media

Fact-Checkers Hammering Biden and Cuomo? No.

CNN host Brian Stelter asked a big question on his Sunday show. “What’s the future of fact-checking now that Trump is out of office?” He proclaimed it was “fraught with complexity, and allegations of bias and shouts of false equivalence.”

This is not complex. In 2016, a Rasmussen poll found that only 29 percent of the public trusted the media’s “fact-checking” of presidential candidates. There’s not just “allegations” of bias but easy and daily confirmation of bias.

Stelter tried to insist — on behalf of his network — that the fact-checking focus is now on President Joe Biden. CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale explained, “(I)t’s basically more like a smattering of falsehood than the daily avalanche we got from Trump, but he’s not perfect.” Dale has tried to demonstrate that he’s checking Biden, issuing an online report on 40 of Biden’s statements from his first month in office.

But there’s a catch. Dale’s becoming less visible. Mediaite noted on Feb. 20 that this CNN fact-checker was featured on air or mentioned by name on average more than once every other day since June 2019. But exposure dipped noticeably after the election, and “since President Joe Biden’s inauguration … Dale has only appeared on the network once. And that appearance, last Friday, was to fact-check Donald Trump’s lawyers.” Dale showed up with Stelter just three days after the Mediaite piece was published.

Stelter also interviewed PolitiFact editor-in-chief Angie Drobnic Holan. Is PolitiFact obsessed with fact-checking Biden? No.

In the first four weeks after Biden took the oath, PolitiFact issued two Biden fact-checks — two! Last week, it fact-checked three of Biden’s statements from the CNN town hall, since that was apparently a little too prominent to ignore. It added one more on Feb. 22. That’s six fact-checks of the president so far.

Let’s compare that to fact-checks defending Biden. In the same time frame, PolitiFact issued 19 fact-checks of Biden’s critics, and all but one of them were proclaimed “Mostly False,” “False” or “Pants on Fire.” (There was one “Half True”). There’s apparently no such thing as a “True” Biden critique.

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‘Anti-Racist’ Washingtonian Mag Editor Mocked Blacks And Hispanics.

Daniella Byck, a so-called “anti-racist” journalist and editor at the influential Washingtonian magazine has repeatedly authored tweets mocking and deriding black people and black culture, The National Pulse can reveal.

Byck, who joined the outlet in 2018, made comments regarding “Africa and the size of a black man’s lips.”

The recent graduate has listed her “dream job” as “crisis communications,” though it is unclear who would hire her for such a role given her own communication history.

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Editor’s note: Anti-racist people are like male feminists. Beware. They are always creepers.

Politico’s Defense News, Brought to You by Northrop Grumman

Since its inception 14 years ago, Politico has risen to become an internet news giant. Now employing over 700 people and reaching 50 million people per month, the website and newspaper has become one of the most trusted sources of information on political issues in the United States. Key to this is its range of influential newsletters, which reach millions every day.

And yet the organization has entered into a number of very troubling partnerships that could potentially undermine the credibility and independence of its reporting. Both its defense and space newsletters, which keep readers informed and up to date on those topics, come sponsored by giant military and aerospace contractor Northrop Grumman.

To its credit, Politico is upfront about their partnership, with those sections bearing an advertisement label stating “presented by Northrop Grumman.” The question is whether readers can truly trust the outlet to accurately report and scrutinize those areas that are so critical to its chief sponsor. Does taking Northrop Grumman’s money make Politico less likely to call out the Pentagon’s enormous and bloated military budget, war crimes committed overseas, or the gross wastage of public funds?

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