ThinkProgress’ resident Supreme Court alarmist says it’s not right that his garbage articles should be included in Facebook’s round-up of garbage articles.
Life is so unfair sometimes.
Justice Editor Ian Millhiser wrote a completely fake story this weekend titled, “Brett Kavanaugh said he would kill Roe v. Wade last week and almost no one noticed.”
The problem? Kavanaugh said no such thing about the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision legalizing abortion. One could certainly argue that he will do so should he be confirmed to the court, but no one can credibly claim that he said that.
Instead of quoting the Supreme Court nominee as saying the thing the article claimed he said, the author spends more than 600 words explaining why he thinks Kavanaugh has indicated as much. The only thing missing from Millhiser’s presentation is a dry erase board linking all of his theories together.
[Also read: Key senators mum on Kavanaugh vote after four days of hearings]
On Sept. 10, the conservative The Weekly Standard, a member of a consortium of media organizations that have partnered with Facebook to root out false news stories (and a sister publication of the Washington Examiner), rightly flagged ThinkProgress’ bogus Kavanaugh story.
“While ThinkProgress engages in an argument to suggest how Kavanaugh might vote in a Roe v. Wade redo, the article does not provide evidence that ‘Kavanaugh said he would kill Roe v. Wade,’” writes the The Weekly Standard’s Holmes Lybrand. “Has Brett Kavanaugh ‘stated he’d overturn #Roe’? No.”
That’s what we call a fair and simple fact-check. Millhiser and others on the Left thinks it’s “censorship.”
“Facebook’s idea of ‘fact-checking’: Censoring ThinkProgress because conservative site told them to,” the justice editor complained Tuesday, adding that it’s “a perfect example of how Facebook is catering to conservatives.”
Never mind that the original article was, you know, not true.
“The Weekly Standard brought its third-party ‘fact-checking’ power to bear against ThinkProgress on Monday, when the outlet determined a ThinkProgress story about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was ‘false,’ a category defined by Facebook to indicate ‘the primary claim(s) in this content are factually inaccurate,’” he complained.
He added, “The article in question, which this reporter wrote, pointed out that, when you read a statement Kavanaugh made during his confirmation hearing alongside a statement he made in a 2017, it becomes clear he is communicating that he opposes Roe v. Wade. Our article is factually accurate and The Weekly Standard’s allegation against us is wrong.”
Well, except for the part that Kavanaugh never “said” he’d kill “Roe.”
Millhiser continued, defending his article by saying the truth all depends on what your definition of the word “said” is.
“According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, the verb ‘say’ or ‘said’ can mean to ‘indicate,’ ‘show,’ or ‘communicate’ an idea. Our argument is that Kavanuagh indicated, showed, or communicated his intention to overrule Roe when he endorsed the Gluckberg test after saying that Gluckberg is inconsistent with Roe,” he wrote.
This is just too good.
ThinkProgress is a project of the left-wing Center for American Progress, which was founded by John Podesta, who served as President Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff and as Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chairman.
I can think of no better tribute to the legacy of CAP’s political patron saints than for ThinkProgress to go after a fair fact-check with an attack that includes an absurd parsing of the true definition of a word and allegations of a vast right-wing conspiracy. They do the Clintons proud.
