OPINION:
The so-called “fact-checkers” in the mainstream media had a field day during the Trump administration, with the Washington Post tallying 30,573 misleading claims over the last four years.
No job was too small for the fact-checkers at CNN, the Washington Post, PolitiFact or Snopes. They dinged former President Trump for saying he had “tremendous African American support,” and that living in coronavirus locked down states was like being “in a prison.”
Now we’re in the Biden administration, these same fact-checkers have all but vanished or have been twisting themselves in knots to cover for President Joe Biden’s many misstatements and job-killing executive orders.
During President Biden’s CNN town hall last week he said there was no coronavirus vaccine when he came into office. This is clearly untrue, as Mr. Biden himself received his first shot in December. Yet, instead of fact-checking him on the statement, the Post’s Glenn Kessler ran cover.
“It was a verbal stumble, a typical Biden gaffe,” Mr. Kessler tweeted in defense of President Biden. “Ex Trump officials should especially cool the outrage meter, as it just looks silly.”
Mr. Kessler to the rescue.
CNN’s fact-checker Daniel Dale was a regular fixture on the network over the last four years, but he’s gone missing during the Biden administration, so much so, Mediaite ran the headline: “Whatever happened to Daniel Dale? CNN Fact-Checker has disappeared from air post-Trump.”
Mediaite noted since Mr. Dale joined CNN in June 2019, he either appeared or was mentioned on the network more than once every other day, but since President Biden’s inauguration he’s appeared on the network only once – and that was to fact check former president Trump.
How convenient.
PolitiFact, whose fact-checks are used by Facebook to flag false news and misinformation, has been working hard to justify President Biden’s executive actions.
It determined President Biden’s killing of the Keystone XL pipeline “probably won’t boost oil prices for Americans,” leaning heavily on a set of assumptions to explain their conclusion, like Canadian producers absorbing the added costs of transporting the oil by rail.
Canadian producers have not agreed to do this. It was an assumption made by PolitiFact to seek the conclusion they preferred – that oil prices won’t be raised. By rating “oil prices will rise,” mostly false, Facebook could then use that rating to censor or suspend accounts saying anything otherwise. This is how “journalism” and big tech work together to run crisis communications on behalf of the Biden administration.
Snopes admits “President Joe Biden has been a lightning rod for rumors and misinformation. The team at Snopes fact-checks the claims.”
So rather than fact-checking President Biden’s statements, it seems Snopes new mission is to combat right-wing criticism of the current President.
And indeed, it’s taken its role seriously – protecting the public from online memes like fact-checking “Was Jill Biden Joe Biden’s Babysitter?”
Answer: False. “The story of how U.S. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden met is a relatively simple one: They were set up on a blind date by the president’s brother in March 1975. On social media, however, some users claim that the pair had a more sordid history.”
Thanks Snopes, for your hard-hitting journalism.
It’s not as though President Biden doesn’t lie – he’s a politician after all.
So far, President Biden has incorrectly attributed Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick’s death on an angry mob of Trump supporters (there is no evidence of this, his mother said he passed away because of a stroke), Biden’s Vice President Kamala Harris has said their administration had to start from scratch on coronavirus vaccine distribution (when they came into office 1 million vaccines were being administered per day), and then President-elect Biden said he would pass $2,000 stimulus checks for every American family ($1,400 is included in his coronavirus stimulus).
There’s a lot to fact-check President Biden on. But that’s not the job of these fact-checkers.
Acting like attack dogs during the Trump administration, they’ve now become lapdogs during the Biden administration. Media bias in action.
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