Check out the most recent Last Week tonight. Features clips of President Elect Trump making almost identical comments. In March he claimed a man who rushed the stage at one of his rallies had ties to ISIS. When confronted with the fact that the source he'd linked to was a hoax, his response was, "What do I know about it? All I know is it was on the internet." [1]
Then there was an interview with Bill O'Reilly:
Bill: "You tweeted out that whites killed by blacks - these are statistics you picked up from somewhere - at a rate of 81%. That's totally wrong; whites killed by blacks at a rate of 15%."
Trump: "Hey Bill. Am I going to check every statistic? I've got millions of people... you know what? Fine. But this came out of radio shows and everything else."
Anyway, worth watching the whole show. It's funny, in a painful way.
This extreme partisanship is one of the reasons I'm wary of John Oliver. For example, Politifact, despite its biases or subjectivity, has documented examples of practically every major politian making untrue statements. Including the current POTUS.
We need a systemic approach to dealing with lies and untruths of the people who weild power. If you make it partisan, the liar/politican will just block you out, and so will their followers.
There are numerous studies that also show significant selection bias, that is they cherry-pick statements they fact-check.
Politifact itself makes no attempt to evaluate and correct for their own bias. The newspaper that runs it is liberal leaning, and has endorsed Hillary Clinton.
Because of the fact that Politifact tries to appear unbiased, their apparent bias is even more disappointing. Truly neutral fact-checking is something that would be very desirable. Perhaps the only way this will ever happen is by some sort of aggregation of left- and right-leaning “fact-checking.” Sort of like metacritic.
Those are different claims. Bernie specifies that he's talking about youths who only had a high school degree or dropped out. Further, Bernie's campaign replied to Politifact's questions and pointed them to a specific source. Trump made a completely different claim (about all African-American youths), and then ignored Politifact's questions. Trump's claim is wrong, and Bernie's is coming from a slightly weird source but has reasonable support. Further, Trump's campaign refuses to provide support...so of course they're not going to have as favorable a response... they don't even claim to have support for their statement.
The quotation in the article is cherry-picked to make Sanders look good. With little research you can see he’s been repeating this claim non-stop without any such disclaimers.
The following is a direct quote from The Nation interview linked in the very same Politifact article:
> Do you know what real African-American youth unemployment is? It’s over 50 percent.
The fact is both Trump and Sanders were factually wrong. Their usage of the term “unemployment” was at best misleading.
Politifact is however willing to massage Sen. Sander’s statement to make it only “mostly true,” instead of false, which is a clear example of bias.
There are numerous examples of Politifact asserting editorial control in this manner, skewing the results on the Mostly-True–Mostly-False range of the “truthometer.”
To be fair to John Oliver, in the episode he points out stuff from both sides, calling out how many fact news articles are left-leaning. He also points out his own show's bias and mentions Politifact in his episode. To be fair also to John Oliver, Bill Oreilly calling out Trump for not checking facts is amazing, and Trump saying he has no time to check facts is even more amazingly scary.
While I agree that exposing untruths (and reporting facts) is important, I welcome obvious partisanship. I believe that all journalists and news organisations have biases, but feel they ought to conceal them. Having an opinion doesn't prevent anyone from telling the truth. All news reporting is selective, even if it is somehow unbiased.
I like multiple-award-winning journalist Clare Sambrook's idea of investigative comment:
I agree with you that reporting selective truths can still be a very strong form of bias. However, Oliver is completely open about the fact that he's entirely biased. It's clearly editorial. (And also clearly a comedy, not a serious news program.) I could still see an argument that the bias is unfair, but in my opinion far more insidious are organizations like Breitbart (and I'm sure some left-leaning ones as well) that use this selective truth-telling to serve their biases while making an effort to appear unbiased.
These are pretty much the defining characteristics of a hit piece. I do not enjoy such things, and I do not recommend such things, for reasons I have already given. Many people think that they are being educated (while being entertained) by such programs. In reality, they develop a very distorted view of politics and of reality. If the media keeps at it, the next two candidates will be no different from Clinton and Trump. Who am I kidding? This is what will happen.
> So if you don't go into off topic material, it is a hit piece?
That question can't be answered. What do you think the topic of this piece was? The title was "President-Elect Trump". The piece was not about "let's talk about Trump as the future president". Rather, it was about, "things are going to get frighteningly bad under Trump".
Staying on topic and selective blindness are very different things. The latter was on bold display here, and is a defining characteristic of a hit piece.
I don't think anyone is unaware of his partisanship. But partisanship is only relevant if it affects reporting, which by your statement would seem like we are of opposite convictions. I believe both the old Daily Show (and likely the new one as well, but I never watch it) and Last Week Tonight work really hard to put everything they report/joke about in a relevant context without leaving anything out, and I have yet to see anything hinting otherwise.
I've seen a lot of critique for Clinton on Last Week Tonight, but even if I hadn't, why would that in any way affect their Trump coverage (if still factual)?
But speaking of politifact [1] [2]:
Is it somehow disingenuous to report on Trumps blatant lies? I find it wholly unsurprising that all politicians lie more than "regular people", but I find it supremely horrifying the amount of Trumps lies that are swallowed whole to the extent that Hillary is the one portrayed as "crooked" when comparing these statistics.
> But partisanship is only relevant if it affects reporting,
It does, here.
> which by your statement would seem like we are of opposite convictions.
I have no idea what you mean.
> without leaving anything out, and I have yet to see anything hinting otherwise.
I don't share your belief. Haven't you seen his hit-piece on third-party candidates? You had two big candidates with little or no integrity, and yet, he paints the third party candidates as not even worthy of consideration because they said one or to silly things, or were unaware of some details.
> why would that in any way affect their Trump coverage (if still factual)?
Would you react the same way about an anti-Hillary piece magnifying her every flaw, when her opponents are just as (or more) flawed? I'd not bat an eyelid if such things were coming out of party propaganda mouthpieces. I feel very differently about it coming out of HBO.
> Is it somehow disingenuous to report on Trumps blatant lies?
Not even remotely close to what I wrote.
> when comparing these statistics
The statistics are garbage. There is no science there. Politifact has some value in that they do some legwork to find primary sources. Readers can read those sources and come to their own conclusions. Think of Politifact like Wikipedia: you can find a good number of primary sources linked from there. But like Wikipedia, they are not the final authority on these matters. Politifact's choice of topics to investigate are not representative of a person, and their verdicts are often whimsical.
> I don't share your belief. Haven't you seen his hit-piece on third-party candidates? You had two big candidates with little or no integrity, and yet, he paints the third party candidates as not even worthy of consideration because they said one or to silly things, or were unaware of some details.
I have. And I happened to agree. This could've been THE year for third party candidates, had they not been complete dullards. There was basically an open door. And I disagree with you about "both" third party candidates only saying one or two things wrong. They were fundamentally inequipped to respond to basic political issues.
> Would you react the same way about an anti-Hillary piece magnifying her every flaw, when her opponents are just as (or more) flawed? I'd not bat an eyelid if such things were coming out of party propaganda mouthpieces. I feel very differently about it coming out of HBO.
If it was true, yes. Where we seem to disagree is that you believe that Hillary is worse than Donald. That seems to be the horrifying root to this entire election.
> The statistics are garbage. There is no science there. Politifact has some value in that they do some legwork to find primary sources. Readers can read those sources and come to their own conclusions. Think of Politifact like Wikipedia: you can find a good number of primary sources linked from there. But like Wikipedia, they are not the final authority on these matters. Politifact's choice of topics to investigate are not representative of a person, and their verdicts are often whimsical.
Wikipedia isn't as biased as you'd like to think. [1]
Even if they were dullards, I'd prefer them to people who have shown tendencies to destroy countries. I think I saw this joke on 4chan: if Gary Johnson does not know where Aleppo is, that's one less place for him to bomb.
> Wehre we seem to disagree is that you believe that Hillary is worse than Donald.
Well, one of them is an egomaniac, talks garbage, has misbehaved with people, and has run shady charities and a university. The other one has received millions of dollars from banks and foreign powers, and has demonstrated that she will say exactly what her audience wants to hear. Not only has she threatened to up the ante against Syria, she has shown she can deliver, in Libya. I think the worst-case difference we are looking at here is a history of misdemeanor and fraud vs a history of fraud and felony. I prefer (peaceful) dullards to these.
> Wikipedia isn't as biased as you'd like to think.
Depends of the topic, I guess. Politifact is biased, and my recommenation for using both resources is the same.
According to the FBI, in single-victim, single-offender homicides in 2015, 3,167 white people were slain and 500 of those murders were committed by black/African-American people. In the same year, 2,664 black/African-American people were slain and 229 of those murders were committed by white people.
Simple division: 15.8% of whites who were murdered were killed by blacks/African-Americans while only 8.6% of blacks who were murdered were killed by whites. The percentage of whites-killed-by-blacks is about 83.7% higher than vice versa.
So maybe O'Reilly may have garbled his delivery of this factoid?
You're probably right that that's the original source of the messed up "fact", but what Trump originally tweeted was an image, now removed, with these contents according to politifact[1]:
"Blacks killed by whites -- 2%"
"Blacks killed by police -- 1%"
"Whites killed by police -- 3%"
"Whites killed by whites -- 16%"
"Whites killed by blacks -- 81%"
"Blacks killed by blacks -- 97%’
And yet while fake news is prevalent on Facebook, I think the big lesson we all should have learned this election cycle is that mainstream media peddles fake news as well. We learned most major media outlets were in the pocket of the HRC campaign from the beginning of the primaries onward. Major media outlets would happily broadcast an empty podium where Trump was waiting to speak for hours during the primaries during primetime while other candidates were giving passionate speeches to a room of cameras which were turned off. News anchors and pundits were essentially stenographers for the HRC campaign team. The news media televised 'debates' in which one candidate was leaked the questions early. On facebook you get fake news from your little bubble of friends, but if you turn on the news on TV or open the New York Times or Washington Post you get fake news as well, news curated by a tiny group of elites who have their own bias -- generally liberal, but first and foremost in favor of continuing the status quo, which is responsible for their positions of respect and power. I'm more likely to get a facebook post from a different viewpoint that I am reading/watching corporate media. I have mainstream liberal and conservative, pro-trump, pro-sanders, pro-johnson, and pro-stein Facebook friends. The media lied constantly this cycle, sometimes blatantly, sometimes not so much, and much more important than the statement of actual facts is curating the facts and subjects you choose to cover -- they shape the zeitgeist. If you run a hundred pieces called "Does Trump support the KKK?" it doesn't really matter that the answer to that question is factually "no". http://fair.org/home/washington-post-ran-16-negative-stories...
John Oliver split from doing opinionated, issue-oriented informational pieces with plenty of research to hackish hit pieces near the end of the cycle. Look at what he said about third parties: instead of bringing thoughtful attention to an often-dismissed issue, his sole purpose was to destroy support for third party candidates without regard for fairness, honesty, or truth and it was pretty clear to anyone who'd actually looked at them honestly before watching it.
If you ask any Sanders supporter (or Trump supporter I'd imagine) what they learned this cycle, it's that corporate media is not honest, not objective, and not to be trusted or even given the benefit of the doubt. Even NPR lied through their teeth.
I agree fake news on facebook is bad. But I'm not sure fake news from other sources is better. I don't know what the solution is.
Your rude and dismissive tone aside, you are incorrect.
The difference is not significant. Reporting the news /is/ what the news becomes. A slant like the kind I'm discussing is exactly a lie: taking a story, and instead of telling it, saying what you want.
And I'm also talking about explicit lies: the Oliver hit piece on third parties contains some, and if you want to look for explicit lies from MSM they are easy to come by. For example consider the Nevada Democratic primary "chair-throwing" incident, reported as such by every pundit and agency in the media although objective fact is that no chairs were ever thrown. The reports of the incident devoid of context are actually even worse here than misstating the actual fact (why were people angry? crickets), but the lie is still there. Retractions were offered days later in fine print by ombudsmen and ignored by journalists (at the same organizations) presenting the actual story.
Then there was an interview with Bill O'Reilly: Bill: "You tweeted out that whites killed by blacks - these are statistics you picked up from somewhere - at a rate of 81%. That's totally wrong; whites killed by blacks at a rate of 15%."
Trump: "Hey Bill. Am I going to check every statistic? I've got millions of people... you know what? Fine. But this came out of radio shows and everything else."
Anyway, worth watching the whole show. It's funny, in a painful way.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rSDUsMwakI#t=14m45s [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rSDUsMwakI#t=15m20s