By: Brian Sikma
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel‘s PolitiFact feature handily cloaks opinion writing in the guise of fact-based journalism. In its coverage of the U.S. Senate race in Wisconsin, PolitiFact has become a reliable critic of Republican candidate Tommy Thompson and by comparison ignoring Democratic candidate Tammy Baldwin. To date, PolitiFact has written 23 times about statements made by former Governor Tommy Thompson but only 8 times about statements made by Representative Tammy Baldwin.
Although claiming to be a purely unbiased fact-checker, PolitiFact’s bias has become evident through the total number of stories it chooses to write about individual candidates. Skewing the sample size so dramatically allows the feature’s writers and editors to reach more negative conclusions about one candidate than the other.
Public officials in office can expect to have their statements reviewed extensively – if not always accurately – by supposed fact-checkers who do not go out of their way to find opposing views they can fact-check. But in the midst of a campaign when two or more candidates are battling it out through statements, speeches and debates it would appear to be incumbent upon fact checkers to demonstrate at least some equality of interest in the two candidates.
The intellectual dishonesty and journalistic gullibility of PolitiFact Wisconsin was demonstrated in a “Mostly False” rating given to Thompson after he claimed that Baldwin supports a law, “in which government will take over your decisions on medicine, on doctors and on hospitals.”
Without apparently bothering to fully examine Baldwin’s record Tom Kertscher opined that, “Thompson himself goes extreme when he says the Madison congresswoman would have the federal government decide a patient’s private medical matters.”
Kertscher is wrong. The facts proving him wrong are embarrassingly evident in Congresswoman Baldwin’s record.
Before slamming Thompson with a negative rating for saying Baldwin wants government run healthcare, Kertscher’s piece meanders along focusing on ObamaCare, overlooking critics who note that the legislation is so poorly written it won’t even work as advertised. Because ObamaCare, in the pure opinion of PolitiFact, doesn’t constitute a government takeover of medicine, Thompson’s charge is “extreme” and “mostly false.”
Disproving PolitiFacts’ reasoning and conclusion is a video of Congresswoman Baldwin declaring to a Madison audience at a 2010 rally, “I actually was for a government take over of medicine.” Baldwin has said nothing since then to indicate that she would not continue to support a government takeover of medicine of elected to the U.S. Senate.
The video turns up as one of the first unsponsored results in a YouTube search with the terms, “Baldwin government takeover of healthcare.” It has been uploaded for at least 7 months.
If Baldwin herself clearly says she supports a government takeover of healthcare then there is little need for a fact checker to spend over 1,000 words trying to prove that is not the case. Doing so proves an extraordinary bias that ignores truth.