There was a collective eye roll in right-leaning circles earlier this year after Facebook announced it would team up with third-party fact-checkers to combat the rise of fake news.
There is a good reason for the exasperated reaction: Certain fact-checking sites are themselves none too reliable when it comes to discerning fact from fiction.
Consider the following “Pants on Fire” rating published this month by PolitiFact in which President-elect Trump is given a flunking grade for stating something that was reported by multiple news outlets.
Here are the facts:
U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the FBI, have determined that Russian hackers stole private emails from Democratic National Committee staffers and from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta.
Those emails were then leaked online during the election by the hacking group WikiLeaks.
This is where it gets interesting. The Obama administration was reportedly aware of the hackings, and they acknowledged as much during the election.
However, according to multiple sources, the president intentionally kept away from making a big issue out of the hackings because he didn’t want it to interfere with the election. Plus, these sources said, Obama’s team was confident Clinton would win, and they didn’t want her to inherit a cyberwar with Russia.
NBC News, citing multiple high-level government officials, reported:
The Obama administration didn’t respond more forcefully to Russian hacking before the presidential election because they didn’t want to appear to be interfering in the election and they thought that Hillary Clinton was going to win and a potential cyber war with Russia wasn’t worth it.
CNN reported the same details:
For months, Obama administration officials have debated how to respond to Russian hacks they believed were intended to undermine the US elections. But they kept arriving at reasons not to respond publicly.
In addition to a fear of sparking a wider cyber-conflict and an attempt to save talks with Russia over Syria, the administration did not want to give Donald Trump reason to cry foul following what they were certain would be a Hillary Clinton victory.
It wasn’t until this Thursday, weeks after the Nov. 8 election, that the White House announced retaliatory measures against Russia for “malicious cyber activity and harassment.”
This is where we get to Trump.
On Dec. 15, the president-elect said, “If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House wait so long to act? Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?”
For this, Trump is given a “Pants on Fire” rating?
This is how PolitiFact explained its ruling:
“About a month before the Nov. 8 election, the Obama administration accused Russia of interfering in the U.S. elections, directing the release of emails “from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations,” they wrote. “This didn’t happen under the radar. Trump was confronted with it at the final presidential debate.”
“For a ridiculously wrong statement, we rate it Pants on Fire!” they added.
You have got to be kidding me.
It’s probably worth noting at this time that PolitiFact is the same organization that awarded Obama the “Lie of the Year” in 2013 for his infamous “If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it” line – after it had already given the president “Half True” ratings in 2009 and 2012 for saying that exact phrase.
Now is also a good time to direct your attention to Current Affairs’ Nathan Robinson’s in-depth criticism of fact-checkers.
We’ll say it again and again until we’re blue in the face: Media’s best hope to defeat fake news is to re-establish its own credibility, which is the exact opposite of what this decidedly unfair “Pants on Fire” ruling does.
