Forty-six percent of Americans believe major news organizations fabricate stories about President Trump, according to a recent Politico/Morning Consult poll.
The president cited this survey recently, quoting its findings almost verbatim this weekend in a tweet that read, “It is finally sinking through. 46% OF PEOPLE BELIEVE MAJOR NATIONAL NEWS ORGS FABRICATE STORIES ABOUT ME. FAKE NEWS, even worse! Lost cred.”
Yet, the political fact-checker PolitiFact somehow rated the president’s tweet as only “half true.”
Now, no one’s going to accuse Trump of being a stickler for accuracy. But how can the president accurately repeat a survey’s findings and still get a less-than-perfect grade from a fact-checker? How can someone write “Trump accurately cited the poll results” and still give him a “half true” rating?
The fact-checking site explains its ruling: “Trump said that 46 percent of people think news organizations fabricate stories about him. Trump accurately cited a recent poll result. The experts we reached said while the survey method is flawed, the problems aren’t big enough to invalidate its approximate findings.”
It added, “They cautioned against putting much weight on the exact number, which is generally in line with the country’s partisan divide. However, the survey tends to skew Republican and its results run counter to other recent polls showing that about half the public trusts the media to be fairly reliable, and as one poll found, more reliable than Trump.”
Lastly, “given the softness of the number,” and the fact that similar surveys give a slightly different impression, the president’s tweet is only “half true,” PolitiFact concluded.
The problem with this rating is that the president said a true thing. That is, he personally wasn’t advancing something that was false or deserving of a less-than-perfect rating. All he did was repeat the findings of a survey. If PolitiFact wants to fact-check anyone, then fact-check Politico/Morning Consult.
Giving the president a barely passing grade for doing nothing more than repeating a survey’s finding feels a bit disingenuous. It certainly does nothing to advance the cause of fact-checking and keeping all details and information in order.
It only muddies the waters, which is the exact opposite of what a fact-checker is supposed to do. This perhaps helps explain why the 46 percent feel as they do.
