It really is about time that people stopped using fact checking sites as a proxy for honesty. The Dope is supposed to be better than that. A conservative using such shoddy methodology to prove the relative honesty of his candidate would be flayed mercilessly.
Really? Prove the inaccuracy.
The Washington Post, Politifact and FactCheck.org all provide detailed explanations and sources for their fact checking.
What does Alex Jones provide?
What methodology do you prefer for checking facts to use of fact-checking sites?
In what manner would they be flayed? I mean it would be fair to say such a cite doesn’t capture everything, eg her secretive nature makes people think her dishonest despite not found in factchecking. Any failure to follow through on promises doesn’t get shown either. Nor a criminal/civil court past. But it’s not meaningless that she doesn’t usually distort in her public statements.
Actually, it does.Obama’s Promise Meter.
I’m going to assume they will do the same for the next President.
Clinton’s top 10 campaign promises.
I would also like some more detail. A sophisticated Oriental “Thousand Cuts” approach, or the straightforward Roose “Kibbles 'n Bits” Bolton method.
I was aware but that is still a different set of numbers than the number of Pinocchios. I wasn’t speaking specifically of Clinton as I have no idea if she has that kind of ranking from her time in the Senate.
I also forgot the example of shady/unpopular business dealings. Romney didn’t need to lie or break a law for people to think him less trustworthy over his corporate raiding.
Their fact checking is excellent. They do not claim to measure the overall honesty of candidates.
He’s definitely rocking the blue collar notion of what “rich” means. I wonder if he even realizes that rich people with taste decorate their homes completely differently and have presumably been rolling their eyes at him for years.
If the fact checking is excellent, how does that not measure the candidates honesty?
Or do you count any lie, big or small, as the same?
That’s precisely the problem. In order to use their data the way he’s using it you have to treat all statements as of equal importance. And ignore the fact that fact checkers don’t analyze all statements, but only statements that pique their interest. Finally, not all of those are lies. That’s why it’s called “fact checking” and not “truth checking”. They only give their “Pants on fire” rating when they are pretty sure the candidate should have known better.
But I don’t think Politifact would agree that Mitch McConnell is the most honest man in politics, with zero Pants on Fire ratings. I don’t think any reasonable person who has followed McConnell’s career would say that about him.
Facts aren’t truth?
There’s apparently a leak dump somewhere, more about the DNC than Clinton specifically, but she does show up with some reported personal opinions?
This isn’t hard. Facts are truth. Getting facts wrong is not always, or even usually, a lie. That’s why Straight Dope’s motto is “fighting ignorance”, not “fighting lies”.
There are many untruths: people not knowing what they are talking about, people being full of shit, people being stupid, smart people having brainfarts, misremembering facts or getting them crossed up with other facts. The information age is a wonderful thing, but one downside is that it’s conditioned us to believe that every argument can be settled in 3 seconds with a Google search.
Hey, for our next trick, let’s list the Ten Commandments and detail which candidates have broken more of them than other candidates. Then we can take those figures and decide which candidates are more and less moral. If we can measure truth with stats, then it follows that we can measure morality as well. and while we’re at it, we can measure which candidate is more attractive, which one has better health, and which one is more mentally stable. Then we’ll determine which candidate is smarter by their raw IQ scores, or perhaps their college transcripts.
The first time, yes. When you’ve been repeatedly corrected and you continue to say it, it’s a lie. Doubly so if you refuse to verify or you reject the correction out of hand.
If you make it up, it’s a lie.
“As democracy is perfected, the office of President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” - H.L. Mencken
If it meant that Oddjob would become the personal assassin for the President of the United States, hell, I might just vote for Trump, too!
“Next time you’re in New York, get a hotel room overlooking Times Square. Open up the Gideons Bible, look out the window, and cross off the Ten Commandments as you see them being violated.” - David Letterman
And Politifact doesn’t really measure that, and to the extent they do it’s only through their “Pants on fire” rating, which would imply that Mitch McConnell is one of the most honest men in politics.
He’s only 10 for 28 on True/Mostly True so he’s a liar like the rest of them.
He no doubt deals more in policy positions and opinions than fact based statements.
I’m getting a 502 on Politifact so I can’t look at what he was checked on.
Okay, gonna have to stop you right there, because while yes, there is a difference between this and the next example, there’s also a substantial difference between this and a lie like this:
Statement: 42% of the country is out of work and wants to be working
Reality: The real number is closer to 5-10%
It’s the difference between an exaggeration and a flat-out fabrication. “Unemployment is slightly worse than they’re telling you” vs. “Unemployment isn’t just a little worse, it’s an outright menace that’s going to murder us all!” is quite a substantial difference.
“The NFL sent me a letter complaining about the debates!”
“The debates are rigged up against sports games to minimize my impact!”
“I saw thousands of Muslims celebrating on 9/11!”
I could continue, but really, all I have to do is link to this page, you can read for yourself. Not only are Trump’s lies quite regularly absurd fabrications, they’re often absurd fabrications that can be checked instantly by anyone with an interest in reality or for whom other parties involved would have good reason and ability to debunk.
Not only that, but they differ from Clinton’s lies in another substantial way: they are about policy. Not a single lie you mentioned there says anything about Clinton’s policies, what she plans to do as president, or how she will react to any given situation. Trump lies about that constantly. And not just little lies of exaggerations; significant, substantial lies about policies that fundamentally would not work working, or being able to pay for things in a way you just can’t do, or how his tax plan would affect him personally.
If you’re upset about Clinton’s lies, you should be incensed by Trump’s. Or does the fact that his lying is constantly about shit that matters somehow make it better?
Also, looking over your list, several issues are from decades ago, a few of them are thoroughly ambiguous, and none of them say anything about policy. Opponents of Trump don’t have to reach back to 1995 to find something he maybe lied about. We can just turn on the news and see him lying in real time.