Fact checkers are not under assault—but poor fact checking should be

Sadly, this is not in the spirit of Christmas. I originally was going to write a charming tale about a Christmas-saving rodent of some kind, because people seem to like that sort of thing and because during Christmas-time, even disease-carrying vermin somehow seem like reasonable potential heroes for teaching values like generosity and cherishing family bonds or the like. It didn't pan out; the rodent in question turned out to be an ordinary rodent, and did not do a damn thing for Christmas one way or the other, as far as I could tell in my own observations, and so back to politics (or in this case, media-watching) we go.

Fact checkers are under assault!

Before we present our list of the biggest Pinocchios of the year, we would like to address the torrent of criticism addressed at fact checkers (primarily PolitiFact, Factcheck. org and The Fact Checker) in recent weeks. The Weekly Standard last week had a cover story denouncing fact checkers as a liberal plot to control the political discourse. This week, PolitiFact’s decision to award its “Lie of the Year” trophy to Democratic claims that the GOP “killed” Medicare has earned it and its fact checking brethren additional scorn from the left.

Sorry, but I'm going to have to rate this one "Pants on Fire. Nobody is physically assaulting fact checkers. Also, criticism is not assault.

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