What Is Fact-Checking without Facts?
On the New York Times’ disgrace
Author: Andrew C. McCarthy
The views of the Authors are not necessarily the views of Enigmose.
‘Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”
How quaint seems this trenchant observation by the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of the greatest progressive thinkers of the 20th century’s latter half. Not because of the patriarchal pronoun presumptions of the aging white cis male; I refer to Senator Moynihan’s very assumption that there are facts. That there is an objective reality on which we can all agree, even if we disagree about what it means. And equally important, that there is a way of getting to facts, a common language of reason that enables us to investigate, communicate, and explicate.
Senator Moynihan would not recognize that paragon of 21st century progressivism, the New York Times.
On Thursday, with its snowflakes in meltdown, the Times issued an apology. What triggered the staff? Was it an earthquake, perhaps? A mass-casualty attack? An assassination? A cinnamon rugelach shortage at Zabar’s? No, this unspeakable atrocity was an op-ed . . . by a conservative Republican senator . . . and a combat veteran from, you guessed it, the South!
Oh, let’s not be too hard on them. It took a full day of mau-mauing before the Times said “Uncle” — or whatever non-binary relation we use to convey surrender these days. The Upper West Side can rest assured there’ll be no more Tom Cotton screeds to churn bile through the avocado toast — they can go back to the thoughtful essayists of Hamas and the Islamic Republic of Iran. No more unnerving mentions of federal statutes like . . . dare I utter it . . . the Insurrection Act that have been on the books for two centuries. Fear not, the Gray Lady’s opinion pages will now get back to the laws that aren’t on the books — for example, did you know that “without legal protection, a pedophile cannot risk seeking treatment or disclosing his status to anyone for support”? (And hey, hey, hey, what’s with the his?)
The best part of the Times’s apology, the instant classic, was the commitment to “expanding our fact-checking operation.” Plainly, they don’t mean fact-checking the way you antediluvian types think of facts and checking. After all, as our Rich Lowry details, Senator Cotton’s op-ed was exhaustively fact-checked. And, while the prestigious academic institution in question is not anxious to have word of this get around (so let’s keep it between us, shall we?), Tom Cotton graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and was on the editorial board of The Crimson. Cotton doesn’t like to brag, but he can speak fluid Times. There is no possibility that the many communications between the senator’s office and the paper’s opinion editors were garbled.
And, while this may be a real phenomenon in the 21st century, the fact-checking worked, in just the way Moynihan talked about facts: stuff that is true, regardless of whether we like it. You are entitled to your own opinion, of course. You may believe a proposal to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 to help police restore order in major American cities is a Know-Nothing stratagem that smacks of racism and fascism. Or you may not be unhinged but believe, nevertheless, that it is a bad idea. That, however, does not falsify the assertions of fact on which Cotton relied. Full Story @ National Review
What is the 1619 Project
Hidden Agenda of the 1619 Project
The 1619 Project is an ongoing abomination focused on rewriting the history of Slavery in America, it was the brainchild of leftarded New York Times journalist, Nikole Hannah-Jones and developed by The NY Times Magazine in 2019 with the stated overt goal of 're-examining the legacy of slavery in the United States'. It was timed for the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans in Virginia. While its overt goal seems commendable, its covert goal is evident and reprehensible. Read More