The Weekly Standard’s Kavanaugh Fact Check Was Correct

[Wingnut]

ThinkProgress and its allies show their bias by denouncing it.  Slate gets this one correct.

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Can journalists on the right honestly fact-check journalists on the left?


 That question erupted this week in a fight over Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings. The fight, as promised, has exposed media bias. But in this case, the bias is on the left.

The dispute centers on an article published on Sunday by ThinkProgress. The piece, written by Ian Millhiser, argues that Kavanaugh’s answers at his confirmation hearing last week, when combined with a speech Kavanaugh delivered last year, imply that he would overturn Roe v. Wade. It’s a smart and well-written piece. But the headline goes further. It claims that Kavanaugh “said he would kill Roe v. Wade.”

The Weekly Standard, in its “fact check,” said the headline wasn’t true. The author, Holmes Lybrand, wrote: “While ThinkProgress engages in an argument to suggest how Kavanaugh might vote in a Roe v. Wade redo, the article does not provide evidence that ‘Kavanaugh said he would kill Roe v. Wade.’ ” Lybrand delivered the same verdict against MoveOn.org for claiming that Kavanaugh “stated he’d overturn” Roe. He reported that “TWS Fact Check could not find” such a statement from Kavanaugh.

Based on the Standard’s fact check, Facebook declared the ThinkProgress article “false.” This led to a warning label and an editorial demotion of the article on Facebook. Whether Facebook should issue such labels and demotions at all is worth debating. But ThinkProgress and its allies haven’t focused on that question. Their complaint is more specific: They want the Standard to be removed from Facebook’s list of approved fact-checking organizations, on the grounds that the magazine is biased.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/09/thinkprogress-weekly-standard-facebook-fact-check-kavanaugh.html

[TomSea]

Some of Slate is okay, they certainly are not Salon.