Here at FactCheck.org, we’re always excited to see news organizations devoting time to fact-checking. So we were pleased to see that the Associated Press had decided to fact-check Sarah Palin’s new memoir, "Going Rogue." Putting 11 reporters on the task strikes us as overkill, but that might just be because it’s four more than our entire staff. Still, we’re glad to see others taking up the fact-checking standard.
Not everyone was a fan, though. The Columbia Journalism Review‘s Greg Marx is unimpressed with the AP’s efforts.
Stories by Joe Miller
TGIF
President Obama’s unexpected Nobel Peace Prize may end up being the story of the week, but it was the third-party groups that occupied most of our attention here at FactCheck.org. Once again, health care dominated the discussion, though we also saw some new ads on taxes and on climate change.
We’ve seen both sides making false claims about Medicare. This week it was the conservative group Americans for Prosperity leading with the alarming claim that "Medicare will be bankrupt in 8 years."
Thirty Million Uninsured
One of the items we noted in our Sept. 10 wrap-up of President Barack Obama’s televised prime-time address to Congress was his carefully worded estimate of the number of uninsured citizens.
Obama, Sept. 9: There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage.
We said that Obama appeared to be underestimating the number of uninsured, even if we subtract the estimated 10 million uninsured who are not U.S. citizens. With the Census Bureau now reporting 46.3 million people without insurance,
Chinese Flag
Q: Will the White House be flying the Chinese flag on Sept. 20 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China?
A: No. The flag will fly at the Ellipse, across the street from the White House. The Chinese flag has flown on White House grounds before, though only during "official" or "state" visits from Chinese leaders.
TGIF
The last weekend of summer may have knocked a day off of the work week, but the false and misleading claims didn’t take a break. As always, we were on the case.
The highlight of the week, of course, was President Obama’s Sept. 9 address on health care to a joint session of Congress. Contrary to at least one now-notorious critic, the president did not lie about illegal immigrants: The House bill specifically states that no affordability credits will go to anyone in the country illegally.
Boustany’s Response
Barack Obama wasn’t the only person misstating health care facts during prime time on Sept. 9. Louisiana Rep. Charles Boustany delivered the Republican response to Obama’s speech. We found a couple of factual flaws.
Bureaucracies vs. Bureaucrats
Boustany exaggerated when he stated that the Democrats’ bill "created 53 new bureaucracies." The claim is based on an analysis of H.R. 3200 conducted by the House Republican Conference. The Republicans’ analysis charges that "the House Democrats’
RSS Feed
Those of you who follow FactCheck.org via RSS may have noticed some temporary glitches with the feed last night. Indeed, several of our more observant readers wrote to us to let us know that our feed was apparently redirecting to a squatter site. We apologize for the mix up.
The problem is corrected now. We’ll be continuing to do some maintenance throughout the day as we work out some of the kinks in our feed. Try not to be too alarmed if you see odd things happening once in a while.
Obama and Kenya. Again.
We’ve burned through rather a lot of pixels combating the claims of those who deny that Barack Obama is eligible to be president of the United States. He is, by virtue of having been born in Hawaii, as attested to repeatedly by state officials and even by the flagship of conservative publications, the National Review. And, for the 10 percent of you out there who aren’t entirely sure, yes, Hawaii is part of the United States.
Health Care and the “One Way Hash”
Here at FactCheck.org, we like to complicate things.
The statement isn’t meant to be (entirely) a flippant one. It really is true that a lot of what we do here is to take what appear to be pretty simple claims and show that the reality is far more complicated than it might appear at first glance. Quite often we find ourselves saying things like, "That’s true, but it’s misleading…"
Julian Sanchez, now a research fellow at the Cato Institute,
TGIF
August traditionally may be a slow news month in the nation’s capital, but the bogus claims have continued to fly in the final full week of meteorological summer. This week, we’ve written about health care, health care and, oh yeah, more health care.
An article from Aug. 21 addresses abortion funding in H.R. 3200, the House version of the health care overhaul backed by the White House. We found that President Obama is stretching when he claims that the bill won’t provide any abortion funding.