No one could follow
this year’s campaign without understanding that the media formerly known as
mainstream (sorry, Prince) have jettisoned any
pretense of neutrality, or even of journalistic integrity, in their
desperation to preserve the status quo by electing Hillary Clinton president.
Fair enough. We know where they stand.
One of the last
vestiges of liberal media’s pretense to authority is its legion of “fact
checkers.” “Fact checkers” like PolitiFact, the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler
and others purport to rule judiciously on claims made by candidates of both
parties. In fact, as those who pay attention have long known, “fact checking,” in pretty much all cases, is just liberal
activism under another name.
All of which is
preface to this: Rasmussen
Reports finds that voters are no longer fooled, if they ever were, by
newspapers’ fact checkers:
A
new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that just
29% of all Likely U.S. Voters trust media fact-checking of candidates’ comments.
Sixty-two percent (62%) believe instead that news organizations skew the facts
to help candidates they support. …
Eighty-eight
percent (88%) of voters who support Trump in the presidential race believe news
organizations skew the facts, while most Clinton backers (59%) trust media
fact-checking. Among the supporters of Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party
candidate Jill Stein, sizable majorities also don’t trust media fact-checking.
It stands to reason
that a slim majority of Democrats trust media fact-checkers. Why not trust those
who are in the business of agreeing with you? What could be more
objective than that?
A college friend of
mine once said, “Objective is what I think. Subjective is what you think.” That
sums up the fact-checker mentality very well, and after all these years, no
one–not even the Democrats who purport to trust the fact-checkers–is fooled.
Breitbart.com is a sort-of-conservative news source, while the New York Times
is a massively liberal news source. Neither is impartial or has any inherent
authority. Which one is more reliable is a case-by-case, day-by-day evaluation
that is left up to the reader, and as to which there will be nothing like
consensus.
If just about
everyone now understands this, it is a good thing.
