OPINION:
It’s curious when all media fact-checks go against one candidate – including mistakes the fact-checkers make – while the other candidate is permitted to lie with nary a word of dissatisfaction from journalists. It’s not surprising that this is happening in the presidential race at the expense of former President Donald Trump and to the benefit of Vice President Kamala Harris. But the brazenness is a little astonishing.
In what could be the only debate of the election, ABC News moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis performed live fact checks of Mr. Trump no fewer than five times last week.
Ms. Harris was not fact-checked at all, despite unleashing several howlers.
She made the false accusation that Mr. Trump said there were “fine people on both sides” in the unrest involving white supremacists in Charlottesville in 2017, when in fact he specifically condemned the hate groups. Though the truth was that he’d been talking about the disagreement over historical statues, the moderators did not fact-check Ms. Harris.
Ms. Harris falsely accused Mr. Trump of having predicted a violent “bloodbath” if he were to lose the election. However, it was clear that he’d been talking about economic calamity in the automobile industry if he did not win the White House.
Still, there was no fact check.
Ms. Harris did not, as she claimed in the debate, renounce her opposition to fracking as President Biden’s running mate in 2020. Fracking is a process of extracting oil and natural gas from the ground. It’s also vital to battleground state Pennsylvania’s economy, which is why she’s lying about her opposition now.
And yet, still, no fact check.
She also denied ever wanting to confiscate legally owned firearms, despite her clear declaration that she supported mandatory gun buybacks (otherwise known as confiscation) when she was running for the Democratic nomination for president in 2019.
Hey, what do you know? No fact check.
At another point in the debate, Mr. Trump brought up stories emanating from Springfield, Ohio, where residents are dealing with strains on local resources caused by 20,000 Haitian migrants who have settled in the town, which had a population of about 58,000 before the influx. Some locals say the migrants have been hunting ducks and geese in public parks and abducting pets to eat them.
Mr. Muir pronounced the story false because the Springfield city manager currently says he’s seen no evidence of the claims. However, the conservative publication The Federalist has posted audio from an August 911 call and the related police report, which described complaints that migrants were harvesting the park geese.
On that point, the attorney general of Ohio, Dave Yost, asked in a post on X, “Why does the media find a carefully worded City Hall press release better evidence?”
But even if the stories are never proven, it doesn’t mean that the town’s struggles with the migrants cease to exist. The problems are still there – problems born when the Biden-Harris administration granted Temporary Protected Status to the Haitians. But by knocking down the story about the animals, the moderators also tried to prevent any discussion of the larger issue of illegal immigration.
As many observers have said, the debate truly was 3-on-1: Ms. Harris and the two moderators against Mr. Trump.
In a different case involving a story about the debate, overzealous scrutiny of Mr. Trump tripped up Time magazine. It caused them to issue one of the greatest corrections in history: “The original version of this story mischaracterized as false Donald Trump’s statement accusing Kamala Harris of supporting ’transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison.’”
As a presidential candidate in 2019, Ms. Harris filled out a questionnaire saying she supported taxpayer-funded gender transition treatment for detained immigrants.
Just two days earlier, CNN had reported the blockbuster story that Ms. Harris had supported taxpayer-funded gender transition surgery for detained illegal aliens, and it made a big splash. It went viral online and created a scene on the cable network where anchor Erin Burnett was visibly shocked after learning the facts from investigative reporter Andy Kaczynski.
Nonetheless, when Mr. Trump mentioned this fact, Time judged it too crazy to be true and labeled it false without checking because Mr. Trump was the one who’d said it.
No doubt, journalistic fact-checks are not objectionable and even serve a good purpose if done honestly and fairly. But when they’re used as political weapons to harm candidates the media despise or help ones they favor, they lose their credibility, and people stop believing them.
And with good reason.
This is the state of journalism today, and it should be embarrassing to its practitioners. But the fact is that they’re doing all of it on purpose and with malicious intent.
• Tim Murtaugh serves as a senior advisor to the Donald J. Trump for President campaign.
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