The Associated Press continues publishing "Fact Checks," which really are outlets for its unhinged, Donald Trump-obsessed reporters to vent against the President even more than they already do in their alleged hard-news stories.
One of AP's more recent efforts went after Trump's Saturday tweets following Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe's firing.
Of 48 fact-check entries listed at APNews.com at 6:00 p.m. ET Tuesday, 33 were about Trump. Three others concerned Republicans: EPA head Scott Pruitt, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, and Indiana's GOP Senate primary candidates.
Ten of the remaining 13 were "What Didn't Happen This Week" items which appear to be a by-product of AP's involvement in a network of outlets helping Facebook in "fact-checking, labeling, and burying fake news and hoaxes in its News Feed."
Only three focused AP fact-check entries weren't about Republicans or conservatives.
AP's primary tactic against Trump is applying courtroom standards to evaluate 280-character tweets. In Monday's effort, Hope Yen and Jill Colvin made their ground rules clear in this statement:
Trump left out important context in weekend tweets rejoicing over the firing of former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe ....
So there's something wrong with a tweet if it doesn't include all "important context."
Here are three instances showing how AP plays its dishonest game:
(From a Trump tweet) “The Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime."
Trump was clearly referring to "no collusion-related crime" against him or administration members. AP insisted that Trump was wrong by reciting noncollusion-related offenses alleged by Mueller against Paul Manafort and others.
(From same Trump tweet): “a Fake Dossier paid for by Crooked Hillary and the DNC (was) improperly used in FISA COURT for surveillance of my campaign."
Rather than addressing the dossier's genuineness or its FISA court use, the AP reporters changed the subject, claiming that "The FBI’s investigation began months before it received a dossier."
So?
(In a separate Trump tweet): "As the House Intelligence Committee has concluded, there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump Campaign."
AP says this is false because Democrats on the committee disagree. What a joke.
Republicans represent the committee's majority. Any action approved by the majority is by definition an action of that committee. Are we only allowed to say that the Republican House passed December's tax reform law, because no Democrat supported it? No.
Meanwhile, the AP hasn't "fact-checked" or formally corrected its own bogus mid-February claim that Parkland High School massacre perpetrator Nikolas Cruz was a member of a white nationalist group.
AP eventually conceded only that a white nationalist leader "appears to have lied." The original bogus claim remains at APNews.com in a timeline entry (12:50 p.m. at link), at a never-deleted February 15 tweet, and at two dozen-plus AP-subscribing sites (most listed here are still live).
AP's "Fact Check" efforts, and its refusal to properly police its own failures, perfectly illustrate why so much of the public no longer trusts the establishment press.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
