Keller @ Large: A Call For More Fact-Checkers
BOSTON (CBS) -- The polls, the media, Hillary Clinton – these days, Donald Trump is calling everything he sees "crooked."
So I can't get too excited about his attack yesterday on fact-checkers, websites, and TV and newspaper reporters that specialize in analyzing candidate statements for signs of truth and falsehood.
Trump calls them all "crooked as [heck]," although he didn't say heck. But I beg to differ.
Let's take the Pulitzer Prize-winning site Politifact as a case in point.
We can see why Trump doesn't care for it.
Fully 70% of the Trump campaign statements fact-checked by Politifact have been found to be either mostly false, false, or in a category they reserve for an especially bald-faced lie, "pants on fire."
For instance, in his relentless quest to stir up anti-immigrant feeling, Trump recently claimed that "14 percent of non-citizens are registered to vote." Notes Politifact, after laying out its extensive research: "Trump is citing a study that has been refuted by the experts who actually gathered the underlying data."
Oh. Never mind.
Hillary Clinton fares somewhat better – only 26% of her statements were ruled false, with another 23% deemed half true, but this record hardly inspires confidence.
In one recent whopper, she "twists Trump's words on rescuing the auto industry during [the] recession."
Nice.
Without the fact-checkers, reflexive dissemblers like these two would run roughshod.
I say, give us more fact-checkers, and maybe the pols will be a little less casual about making up their own fake facts.
Listen to Jon's commentary:
You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.