Way back in 2011, I started crusading against the dishonesty of the media’s so-called “fact checkers.” I gained some notoriety and did a whirlwind of media on the subject for a few years, but these days I don’t write about the topic as much, mostly because the fact-checkers have done a tremendous job of discrediting themselves.
But just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. Here’s a howler from the Washington Post: “Fact Checker: The president said he had ‘no confidence’ in the figures issued by the Hamas-run health ministry, but it has a good track record on reporting death tolls.”
You read that right: the Post had to choose between who is more trustworthy, Joe Biden or Hamas, and they went with the terrorists. Speaking as someone who’s been pretty blunt about Biden’s legendary problems with veracity, even I’m kind of stunned.
To be clear, my objection here is not rooted in any desire to obscure or downplay the number of deaths resulting from Israel’s military action against Gaza, however justifiable it may be following the Hamas atrocities of October 7. There’s no point in pretending that war involving civilian casualties isn’t anything other than horrifying.
But this case does speak to a certain liberal internationalist view of the world, where NGOs and government agencies exist almost for the sole purpose of laundering political ideology into dubious empirical stats. Here’s essentially how the WaPo fact-checker frames his case:
Biden’s dismissal of
