• mozz@mbin.grits.devOP
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    1 month ago

    [Medium]

    What the fuck is the issue now

    I was all set to say, okay you redeemed yourself with The Guardian because you actually picked out some factually wrong stuff I didn’t know about and I learned they were maybe more sensationalist a paper than I was aware of and that’s relevant information

    Now this I am somewhat confident is some bullshit, but let’s see

    Edit: Hm. Here are some of the things they’re calling out as lies, and then the context:

    • Says Walmart is “one of the largest sellers of assault-style weapons.” – False

    There’s not really any further information, but it kinda looks to me like when this was said, it was true. “Walmart estimates that it contributes just 2% of total US gun sales and 20% of ammunition sales. He said this means Walmart is probably not among the top three guns sellers in the country.” So, they’re potentially among the top 3 means to me they’re one of the largest. I mean you could nitpick what “assault style weapons” means but the point is it’s not wildly off base.

    • “Bloomberg spent $500 million on ads. The U.S. population is 327 million. He could have given each American $1 million and still have money left over.” - Pants on fire

    They showed, on air, a tweet that said this, Brian Williams and his guest talked about it, and then Brian Williams explained that that’s not how that works. And then, after the show, they put out a tweet just reiterating for anyone who missed the point that that’s not how that works.

    I didn’t watch the video so maybe I’m missing something but it sounds like Politifact should not be calling this any kind of untrue.

    Idk; I think it’s clear that something is wrong and that this is not a good way to rate news programs. I think maybe they have sort of criteria in mind and they’re suited to print media when applied correctly, but not to a video program where two people are talking to each other, and they’re also not really doing much more than quickly scouring for individual instances instead of trying to get a sense of the overall reliability of the outlet.

    It’s not like transparent bullshit like “anti Israel = lying” like they were doing on some other outlets, but it is some type of bullshit.