MRC Leads New Battle Against Liberal Media with New Project: ‘Fact-Checking the Fact-Checkers’

Not only are the liberal media biased but so are the so-called “fact-check” groups they use. Under the guise of “neutral” analysis, “fact-check” outlets such as PolitiFact.com and Snopes.com regularly spin their critiques and cherry-picked facts to push a leftist agenda. They act as echo chambers for the liberal media.

To set the record straight, the MRC launched its new “Fact-Checking the Fact-Checkers” project in March. This new campaign will give the public the truth about these alleged “fact-checkers.”

Commenting on the new project, MRC President Brent Bozell said, “In an era of ‘fake news’ and inaccurate reporting, it is important now more than ever that the fact-checkers themselves are exposed for their biases.”

“The MRC routinely finds instances when fact-checkers bend the truth or disproportionately target conservatives,” he said. “We are assigning our own rating to their judgments and will expose the worst offenders.”

“Americans deserve the truth,” said Bozell. “There must be accountability across the board, and that includes these alleged arbiters of fact and fiction.”

Some of the fact-checkers the MRC will monitor include PolitiFact.com, FactCheck.org, Snopes.com, Washington Post Fact Checker, AP Fact Check and CNN Fact Check. Analyses of the claims of these fact-checkers will be posted on the MRC’s popular NewsBusters website. Each claim will receive a rating, such as “The Real Deal,” “Deeply Distorted,” or “Fully Fake.”

The NewsBusters team in the MRC’s News Analysis Division works nearly around the clock documenting, exposing, and neutralizing liberal media bias. With more than 30 years of research available in its digital library, NewsBusters analysts can easily access facts, quotes, and other data to confirm of refute claims made by the news media and their so-called “fact checkers.” If you want the real facts, NewsBusters is the source. (From L to R) Rich Noyes, Ken Oliver, Mike Ciandella, Tim Graham, Kristine Marsh, Brent Baker, Geoffrey Dickens, Kyle Drennen, Nicholas Fondacaro, Scott Whitlock, and Curtis Houck.

Here’s an example. The MRC looked at PolitiFact’s claims about Hillary Clinton’s post-campaign book, What Happened. PolitiFact, not surprisingly, agreed with the New York Times’s assessment that Clinton was “fundamentally honest,” and then showed how at least 51% of her claims in the book were “basically accurate.”

However, PolitiFact admitted that it doesn’t “check every statement a politician makes, so any comparison is problematic.”

“As usual, PolitiFact was very selective and helpful in picking out claims from the book,” noted NewsBusters Executive Editor Tim Graham. “They skipped over Hillary suggesting the media favored Trump, for example.”

PolitiFact stayed away from troubling assertions in the book and instead “fact-checked” such banal Clinton statements as, “Fewer Americans are moving than ever before. True”; “I did better with white women than Obama in 2012. True, but less than Obama in 2008 and her husband in 1996”; and, “Hot sauce boosts the immune system.”
PolitiFact conveniently ignored Clinton’s absurd claim, among many others, that, following the Kathy Griffin controversy people sold Trump-holding-Hillary’s-severed-head souvenirs at the GOP convention. It never happened.

NewsBusters gave the PolitiFact review a rating of “Fully Fake.” To learn more about “Fact-Checking the Fact-Checkers,” visit www.newsbusters.org/fctfc.

Bits & Pieces

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