If it gets to the point where we can’t trust the fact checkers, then we are truly lost. A step was taken in that direction today when PolitiFact challenged a comment made by Kamala Harris to Axios’ Mike Allen.
VP Kamala Harris to #AxiosOnHBO: "There was no national strategy or plan for vaccinations, we were leaving it to the states and local leaders to try and figure it out." https://t.co/J74aERHPnW
— Axios (@axios) February 15, 2021
Here is what the response was.
You are all trash. Here is Fauci's interview with Maddow. Fix your politificat lie. pic.twitter.com/Kon36WfKAV
— Lynn V (@lynnv378) February 15, 2021
The dispute seems to be about the word “national” and apparently PolitiFact is arguing that Trump’s “national” strategy was to let the states decide what to do. Huh? Then what would “no national” strategy be? Letting the states decide, right? You see the obvious confusion here.
Okay so Trump's "national strategy" for vaccine distribution was to let the states figure it out.
Got it.
— Main Street Muse (@MainStreetMuse) February 15, 2021
In all fairness, I will say that even the best of us gets it wrong on occasion. I’ve had to print retractions on three stories, twice because the reporter I was citing got a key fact wrong and printed a retraction and so I had to follow suit, and the third time I followed a story at Talking Points Memo and Snopes said that the photograph I presented as real (of Trump’s 4th of July celebration) was of a different event. In all cases, I was not happy to find out things were reported wrongly in the first place and I played follow the leader, but I printed the correction. The only important thing is that you get the truth out there. PolitiFact needs to print a correction, or explain its tortured logic here, because it’s not evident to the rest of us.
PolitiFact. Not going to argue with those folks. But maybe a “do better”. Much better.
If they have any integrity, they need to clear this up and not just leave it as is.
Just went to Politifact’s website and I can’t seem to find anything about the issue. I did a specific search for “Kamala Harris” and the page loaded displaying a number of fact-checks and a number of articles, none of which referred to Harris’s claim on that page. I then clicked on the fact-check number (516) to presumably see a list of those 516 fact checks and the page I got had NOTHING about Kamala Harris (at least, not in the claim title or the description) and it only showed about 5 pieces. So, I then clicked on a link to COVID articles and fact-checks and, surprise, Harris’s claim about Trump’s (lack of) plan wasn’t there either (even going to a second page of listings, nothing about Harris and the listings went back into mid-January).
So, I’m wondering if Politifact has temporarily scrubbed its check until they can update with a correction or if the fact check has disappeared completely? What’s funny is I seem to recall reading something about that a few days ago and I thought it registered as “half-true” with the check noting Trump’s “national” plan was to let the states handle it all.
So they’re back in this mode, huh? Trying to find falsehoods on the part of Democrats by twisting their words and giving them long-shot interpretations, just so they’re not accused of always going after Republicans. Remember when they cited President Obama’s “You can keep your doctor” as “lie of the year’ when it was really more of a hope or speculation which may or may not have been true, depending on your insurance carrier?
To be fair, Obama definitely phrased it not as a speculation, but as an assertion. He was accurately expressing how the ACA would work. However, many employers chose to not participate in the ACA, many employers changed their group insurer, forcing employees to change plans and doctors. From the point of view of public experience, a significant number of people were therefore not able to keep their plan or doctor. Since all this happened after ACA took effect, people glommed onto a false correlation. People do this all the time. It was not Obama’s fault or mistake, except he did not add “unless your employer choose to not participate in ACA.
From where I sit they messed up. I think the average person would take “National Strategy” to mean a plan with targets for how much vaccine would be shipped to each state (along with information on how allocations were decided). It would also include science based guidelines on priorities for distribution – i.e. which groups of people should get vaccinated first and when more vaccine will be available to expand the number of people vaccinated. It would include predicted schedules for when new shipments of vaccine would be sent to each state. Finally, it would include a list of things the federal government would do and/or resources that could be called upon AND how much funding the federal government would make available to move vaccinations along as quickly as possible.
Saying, we will ship it to the states and then it’s up to them is NOT a national strategy.
The best thing you can do both to fix a mistake (especially when crucial information is involved) and repair any damage to your credibility is stand up and clearly say “I blew it on this one. Here is what I should have said and/or done.” Followed by an apology and promise to do better in the future.
I’m not seeing any of that and each hour that goes by without PolitiFact doing that is damaging their most precious asset – their credibility.