The American Spectator

Presswatch

Fact-Check Follies

By James Taranto from the December 2008-January 2009 issue

"In Lebanon," John McCain declared in his second debate with Barack Obama, "I stood up to President Reagan, my hero, and said, if we send Marines in there, how can we possibly beneficially affect this situation? And said we shouldn't. Unfortunately, almost 300 brave young Marines were killed."

The finest minds in American journalism set out to check McCain's claim and discovered it to be true.

The finest minds in American journalism set out to check McCain's claim and discovered it to be false.

Seriously. Here is CNN explaining why McCain's statement was true:

The U.S. Multinational Force operated in Beirut, Lebanon, from August 24, 1982, to March 30, 1984, as part of an international peacekeeping operation in the war-torn country.

McCain was a freshman member of the House of Representatives in September 1983 when it approved legislation "that would invoke the War Powers Act in Lebanon and authorize the deployment of American Marines in the Beirut area for an additional 18 months," the New York Times reported.

The resolution had the backing of House leaders of both parties and President Reagan, and it passed by a vote of 270 to 161, the Times report said. But McCain "argued that his military training led him to oppose the continued deployment of troops in Lebanon," the Times reported.

But here is how ABC concluded it was false:

This is an issue that came up in the first presidential debate, as well. And in both cases, McCain exaggerates his position. Marines were already in Lebanon when McCain arrived on Capitol Hill in 1983, and his vote was to prevent invoking the War Powers Act to extend the Marines already deployed. McCain did vote against that, but as he did in the first debate, McCain is wrong to imply that he opposed sending the Marines to Lebanon.

This was the year in which "fact checking" of political ads and statements became a full-blown journalistic fad, practiced by TV networks like CNN and ABC, newspapers like the Washington Post and USA Today, and even dedicated websites like FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.com (the latter a joint venture of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly).

The "fact check" format is opinion journalism or criticism masquerading as straight news. The object is not merely to report facts but to render a judgment--or a "verdict," as CNN calls it. The Washington Post's Fact Checker blog ends each assessment with between one and four "Pinocchios," just like movie reviewers giving out stars.

Like movie reviewing, the "fact check" is a highly subjective process. If a politician makes a statement that is flatly false, it does not need to be "fact checked." The facts themselves are sufficient. "Fact checks" end up dealing in murkier areas of context and emphasis, making it very easy for the journalist to make up standards as he goes along, applying them more rigorously to the candidate he disfavors (which usually means the Republican).

McCain's Lebanon statement, about which ABC and CNN reached opposite conclusions, is a prime illustration. Both networks agreed on the underlying fact, namely that McCain voted against what CNN called the "continued deployment" in Lebanon. ABC had a niggle--that the vote was not on the initial deployment, which occurred before McCain took his seat in the House. ABC did not mention that when Reagan deployed the Marines in August 1982, he did so on his own authority. Congress's 1983 vote on "continued deployment" was the first time lawmakers weighed in on the subject. (Neither network seems to have made an effort to determine if candidate McCain took a position on the deployment in 1982.)

To this writer, it appears that ABC was going out of its way to make McCain look bad. The timing of McCain's vote vis-à-vis the deployment was not essential to the points he was trying to make at the debate, namely that he does not always favor military action and has not always sided with presidents of his own party.

HERE IS ANOTHER EXAMPLE, one in which the criticism of the McCain campaign had a stronger basis. On October 6, USA Today published a "reality check" of a McCain ad whose script ran as follows:

Letter to the Editor