factcheck.org is biased to the right.

[AX10]

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2772

This shows the difference between the way the media treated the SwiftBoatVeterans ads
and NARAL's ads against John Roberts.

A different standard

Contrary to its willingness to pass judgment on NARAL’s ad, Fact-Check cautiously avoided venturing any opinion about the Swift Boat ads. In its analysis of the August 4, 2004 ad (8/6/04), FactCheck cited a great deal of evidence that contradicted the ad’s claims—including the official Naval records and testimony from sailors who actually served on Kerry’s boat, as well as conflicting previous testimony from some Swift Boat Vets themselves. After noting these contradictions, FactCheck’s conclusion was nevertheless explicitly ambivalent: “At this point, 35 years later and half a world away, we see no way to resolve which of these versions of reality is closer to the truth.”

When discussing the Swift Boat ads on NPR (8/9/04), FactCheck’s Jackson cautiously called the Swift Boat Vets and the Kerry versions of the medals “two different views of reality,” rebuking a caller who termed the allegations lies by saying, “We can’t call these lies.” Of course, if Jackson believed that one couldn’t call one side of this debate a lie, then he should have labeled as false the Swift Boat ad’s claim (repeated four times) that Kerry’s view was a “lie”—something he refused to do.

On CNN, after the group’s second ad aired, Soledad O’Brien (8/25/04) asked Jackson if the ad was “based on the facts over the top”—and Jackson’s response, once again, was equivocal: “Different people are going to come to different opinions on that when they look at the full record—which you can’t do in four minutes, obviously.”

Jackson could, of course, have said the same thing about NARAL’s ad—substituting “30 seconds” for “four minutes.” Taking that position would have meant holding an attack on a Republican Supreme Court nominee to the same standard as an attack on a Democratic presidential candidate—something which, for whatever reason, FactCheck seemed disinclined to do. The group that media analysts pointed to as the North Star of accuracy turned out to be a spinning weather vane. And in the absence of a left-wing media echo chamber to take up its cause, the NARAL ad—and its criticisms of Roberts—became a striking casualty of an unbalanced media playing field.


...and again, this is why we need our own media.

[FreedomAngel82]

1. Remember Cheney cited them in his debate in 2004

[AX10]

2. yes.

[skids]

3. That's what I call "pulling a cheney."

And every time someone uses ".com" for a site that isn't a ".com" I kid them about pulling a Cheney.

Although the OP may be right, the bias is less than most places, and by the time people got to the real factcheck.org site rather than the snaked factcheck.com host, factcheck had an anti-cheney article up.

Ah yes, fun times those were, back when we though America had enough democracy left in it to cut this administration short.