Craig Newmark on Fact Checking
I enjoyed this item that Craig Newmark (the Craigslist guy) posted to his craigconnects.org site recently: Fact-checkers are mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore. I particularly liked it because it called my attention to the full version of Chris Wallace’s interview of Jon Stewart that happened a while back. Making this version particularly interesting is that it’s the full interview, with a dimming/brightening effect used to show which parts were edited out or included when the interview aired on Fox. (Not trying to suggest that there was anything particularly nefarious or dishonest in the editing process. I just think it’s an interesting layer on top of the already-interesting discussion.)
Anyway, here’s part one:
And here’s part two:
September 11th, 2012 at 11:07 am
Very interesting! I recall the interview and seeing it with the various cuts restored is really fascinating.
I might take some issue with the editing. Not that it is deceitful like the editing of “… you didn’t build that” (where the context clearly is referring to roads, bridges, teachers, cops, clean air water etc etc etc). But there are a few cuts that clearly help fox ‘make their case’. It’s inconvenient to include the qualifiers and context. Much as say Michael Moore makes his case (sometimes with a [ahem!] poetic exaggeration or two?)
Fox’News’ is telling a conservative story. Too bad it’s often a distorted/malinformed conservative fantasy instead of facts. Much of the rest of the media is dedicated to he said/she said journalism, where balance/controversy is the thing that brings in the eyeballs. The louder and more obnoxious the better. Facts be damned. Hence we get a campaign that is running on “we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers”
Have you heard about Paul Ryan’s mountain climbing exploits?
September 11th, 2012 at 2:22 pm
Yeah, though there I think he can make a stronger claim to truthiness, since his original statement didn’t say that he climbed 25 different “Fourteeners” (or whatever the number of claimed climbs was), but only that he’d made that many climbs. But watching the footage of Ryan talking to Norah O’Donnell on Face the Nation about the defense cuts he voted for, and his assertive bamboozlement about how he didn’t actually vote for them, was enough for me. Ryan may not be qualitatively different than the majority of politicians at the national level in terms of his willingness to lie, but he sure is making a run for the quantitative championship in terms of the way he’s willing to try to baldly “flat-out hussle” his listeners (Kevin Drum’s phrase).
September 12th, 2012 at 10:53 am
Couple quick things, about fourteeners, at least here in Colorado you can climb a couple in a day in places because one is separated from another by a ridge, so you don’t have to climb down and back up, others are fairly easy hikes or the trailhead is pretty far up the side of the mountain if you want to fudge. A friend and his brother climbed all (?) 42? 52? Whatever the number is in as many days and mountain biked between. They did it by using the above tricks giving them several days to bike from one location to another. Still quite a feat, I think they wrote a book about it. Glenn Dunmire, don’t remember his brothers name.
Second, Rosen was explaining the Ryan voted, didn’t vote issue the other day, I was driving and couldn’t quite keep up, but it sounds like there may be a convoluted train of thought that would justify Ryan’s statements. If I have time I’ll try and listen to it and see if is passes the Huh? Test.
It sounds like it may be a case of the nuances of the vote, a yes vote was used to delay what would eventually be a no vote, the yes vote keeping the issue alive for another day type of thing, but again, I couldn’t listen close enough and miss school children walking from busses. Now I know these pages are important, and I’m not that fond of kids but a choice had to be made. Somebody on the internet is WRONG!!! Or prison food, hmm.
September 12th, 2012 at 12:39 pm
Good call.