Washington Post Does ‘Not Have Plans’ for Biden Fact-Checking Database Like The One for Trump
“While we do not have plans to launch a Biden database at this time, we will continue to dig into the accuracy of statements by political figures of all party affiliations,” WaPo told Daily Caller last week.
Along with changes in what party controls the White House will come changes in how the mainstream media operates.
One such way we’re going to see the media shift gears in the Biden-Harris administration is in how they conduct fact checks. The Washington Post and CNN were two media outlets whose teams monitored President Trump’s claims 24-7 over the last four years, in contrast to the scant attention they gave to Democrats including the 20+ who ran for president in 2019-2020.
WaPo confirmed to the Daily Caller last week that, unlike how they kept a dedicated database of Trump’s claims for four years, they “do not have plans” for a Biden database “at this time”:
Trump’s departure also equals an end to having a false claims project for the current president, as The Post said it does “not have plans to launch a Biden database at this time.” Trump’s database began a month after he became president, The Post’s director of communications Shani George told the Caller.
“The database of Trump claims was started a month after Trump became president as a way to not overwhelm our fact-checking enterprise, where the core mission is to explain complex policy issues,” George said. “While we do not have plans to launch a Biden database at this time, we will continue to dig into the accuracy of statements by political figures of all party affiliations.”
Fox News did a segment on the Washington Post’s statement that there would be no Biden fact-checking database, which greatly triggered CNN’s resident media hall monitor Brian Stelter, who rushed to defend the paper:
This Fox News banner is objectively wrong, embarrassing every person who appears on screen. WaPo never said it has no "plans" to start fact checking Biden. The Post IS fact checking Biden, obviously! So where did this lie come from? (1/3) pic.twitter.com/zowbb4P4E1
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) January 22, 2021
Stelter was so eager to white knight for the WaPo that he told a whopper of his own, stating that Biden “doesn’t lie like Trump” and therefore no Biden claims database would be needed:
Fox doesn’t have a public-facing fact-checker ?♂️ but WaPo does. Trump was so wrong for so long that the Post created a database to keep track. There are “no plans” for a Biden database since he doesn’t lie like Trump. But they’re still fact-checking (2/3)https://t.co/DzBNsM38tJ
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) January 22, 2021
In another tweet, he reiterated his false claim that there would be “no need” for a Biden database:
On Fox, no need for a database (which is a good thing!) was twisted into a lie. It’s part of a bogus story Fox is telling about the “media” being in the tank for Biden. It’s a 24/7 media bashing narrative based on short clips, stray tweets and distortions like this one ??(3/3)
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) January 22, 2021
Newsbusters’ executive editor Tim Graham provided the necessary translation for what the Washington Post’s plan was in a later tweet:
It should say "WaPo Has No Plan to Count Biden's Lies"…It plans to politely agree with Biden's press aides that his statements are within a normal range of rhetorical nuance. https://t.co/4EmAHU87NU
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) January 24, 2021
The news that the Post is not planning on keeping a running database for Biden’s claims came just a week after their lead fact-checker Glenn Kessler told CNN in a segment comparing Biden and Trump that he “assume[s] the Biden presidency will be a lot like the Obama presidency, and that they will be responsive, and will be able to quickly back up what they’re saying”:
GLENN KESSLER: Well, in the case of the Biden-Harris transition team, we asked — we identified five factual statements he made. You know, interesting claims that we wanted to know if they — what was the basis for this. Within 15 minutes, we received citations to those factual statements and they all checked out.
Generally, the Trump White House almost never responded to our queries, because, of course, a lot of what the president said could not be defended or explained in terms of where he got these so- called facts. I assume the Biden — you know, I did five years of Obama, and I assume the Biden presidency will be a lot like the Obama presidency, and that they will be responsive, and will be able to quickly back up what they’re saying. And occasionally, the president will go off- kilter, particularly when he’s, you know, speaking extemporaneously and not following something that previously — has previously been fact-checked.
Watch:
Kessler’s and the Post’s position on keeping track of fact-checking Biden dovetails with how CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale has approached “fact-checking” Biden in the past. For example, here’s how he treated Biden’s lies during one of last year’s presidential debates:
Remember, when their guy lies, it's "imperfect from a fact check perspective." A preview of the hard-hitting journalism you'll get under a Biden administration. https://t.co/81n37Wptzf
— Kyle Mann, boop/bop/beep (@The_Kyle_Mann) October 23, 2020
“Biden made some false claims, some claims misleading or lacking context, but we just got a firehose, an avalanche, a bombardment” of falsehoods from President Trump during last night’s debate, @ddale8 says. https://t.co/8aJr6IWgPM pic.twitter.com/i4Ux7Jz1JP
— New Day (@NewDay) October 23, 2020
There was also this hot take from Dale during his network’s drive-in Biden town hall last September, where Dale bizarrely claimed that Biden was “implicitly fact checking Trump by…uttering many consecutive coherent sentences”:
Biden is implicitly fact checking Trump by…uttering many consecutive coherent sentences, which Trump has repeatedly said Biden cannot do. https://t.co/LzS2Bx7ioq
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 18, 2020
And then you have journalism professors like the NYU’s Jay Rosen, who give the green light to treating favored and unfavored politicians differently on fact-checking:
Again, it's not that hard to maintain a sense of proportion. Biden made some false claims. Trump was a serial liar.
Perfection may sound like an unreasonable standard, but it's not. An outstanding candidate can get through a debate without making a claim the checkers will flag. https://t.co/lE0Z4NMG7N
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) October 23, 2020
The public should be able to rely on fact-checkers to analyze claims and call them down the line. But they can’t, because this is what fact-checkers have become.
It won’t get any better, either, because the left-leaning audiences they cater to are fine with living in an alternative reality where everything their guy says is “imperfect” but okay while everything the other guy says is a blatant lie and part of some devious plot to deceive the American people.
Respect for fact-checkers at this point is at an all-time low. And they have no one to blame for that but themselves.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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Comments
WP cannot afford to fact check the Biden-Ho Harris crime syndicate, virtually everything they say and do not say promotes a lie.
Because Slo Joe is a regular George Washington and cannot tell a lie.
Please, he doesn’t say anything that’s Not a lie, but the Democrat’s Propaganda Ministry will never ever call him on it anyway.
Of course they don’t.
But then, we don’t have any plans to pay attention to this garbage that personifies the weird, treasonous Jeff Bezos.
WaPo of speak truth to facts fame. Demos-cracy is aborted in darkness, behind a wall, at the Twilight Fringe.
This speaks volumes, doesn’t it.
Since Biden won’t be using any facts at all, I can see why the Washington Compost wouldn’t want to tackle this.
“The public should be able to rely on fact-checkers to analyze claims and call them down the line. But they can’t, because this is what fact-checkers have become.”
I distinctly remember the moment in 1972 when I was watching “Silent Running” in a theatre in Boston, the scene where Bruce Dern is watching a debate on TV while “fact checkers” ran subtitles challenging half the statements the debaters were making, and thinking, “yeah, there’s no way this technology could ever be misused.”
This just in from the WaPoo: “Democrat” is not a “political affiliation.”
One has to make allowances for the fact that Biden probably actually cannot tell lies. A falsehood only becomes a lie if the person telling it is aware of it being false, which in turn requires awareness.
We also need to consider that an analysis of the Bezos Morning “lie counter” shows that it only registers
• truths the left doesn’t agree with;
• “inaccuracies,” for example, if Trump claimed, accurately that there were 200 guests at a party, and the guests didn’t arrive and leave at the same time, the fact-checker would pronounce the claim (at best) “misleading” because at some point between the beginning of the party (defined as when the first guest arrives) and its end (when the last guest leaves) there were fewer than 200 guests;
• falsehoods concerning important political questions, except those told by a Democrat.
Bezos Post is rather uncharacteristically frank by announcing their plan to let Biden lie under the cover of their darkness…
“Bezos Post is rather uncharacteristically frank by announcing their plan to let Biden lie under the cover of their darkness….”
Q: Who the hell reads that treasonous rat Bezos’s leftist rag?
A: Mittens Romney and McConnell.
Kill the GOP and you make the WA Compost irrelevant to our lives.
Bezos Pravda is just protecting their man. Biden has a hard earned reputation acquired over his 47 year career of being a serial liar himself, but he’s telling the lies that Bezos Pravda themselves endorse and extol. Big difference with Orange Man Bad….. who continuously spoke out against Bezos Pravda orthodoxy.
I suspect they do have a personal operation set up to check everything Biden says. But, instead of inventing lies to be attributed to him and distort what he says to infuriate the public, there will be lies and distortions to cover his screw-ups, hide his policies, and make him appear acceptable and presidential. The press will work as hard to present a fake Biden to the public as they did to invent a fake Trump.
Pretty sure that their will be plenty of fact checking going on. Mostly from normal Citizens via social media and polls.
The key is to generate enough ‘buzz’ to get the MSM into a position to wilfully ignore it or be forced to report.
Not an optimistic scenario for.holding the MSM accountable for doing their job as journalists: investigate and report facts. As opposed to reading off ‘leaks’ and talking points simply handed to them for ideological purposes.
The Washington Post, where “Democracy dies in daylight with biased and dishonest new reporting”.
Well what do you expect, Trump made so many false statements that a database and full time fact checking was a requirement to actually keep up with his fabrications. The article seems to miss the subtle point that thus far the Biden administration can actually support the claims it makes on a semi regular basis as opposed to Trump who just couldnt. The idea that Biden is a liar in comparative terms with Trump just doesnt work.
The Left is allowed to lie and no one else is allowed to offer actual facts, different perspective, or other opinions.