US and the World

Fact-checking the debate, but. . .

Attacks Misleading And Out of Context (washingtonpost.com)

I welcome this kind of fact-checking article - and there are a lot of these out there. BUT I have two questions:

1. Why wasn't this done at the start of the campaign - you know, in April, May, June, July, August and September? These guys have been telling whoppers all along - and Bush, by far, has been telling the biggest ones. The press should have hammered them both into some semblance of integrity long ago - all they had to do was read factcheck.org.

2. Watch what they do next. Ten-to-one the candidates go out on the campaign trail today and tomorrow and next week and make the same damned statements and over and over again they will be reported without any of today's fact-checking.

If the candidates won't act responsibly, the press must.

My only quibble with these types of articles is that frequently the authors feel they have to treat the candidates equally - not fairly - but equally. It's like devoting equal space on your front page to one guy who committed murder and another who got a parking ticket. Equal ? Yes - but ludicrously unfair.

That's why this Washington Post article starts out:

Facts took a holiday in last night's final presidential debate, with both President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry attacking each other with misleading or out-of-context assertions . . .

Hey - some statements were lies, some were misleading, some were just stupid mistakes, and some were out-of-context. Which is the greater crime? To intentional deceive? To take something out of context? To lie? To make an honest mistake? These various things seem to get treated equally - and they arenot equal.

Finally, someone should call Bush on his childish name calling. This is not kindergarten recess. It is a presidential debate. Trying to tag a label of your opponent demeans the process and the presidency. But then, I think George Bush demeans the presidency.