FactCheck.org are they really interested in facts?

I wrote a letter to FactCheck.org regarding a recent article.


I really do appreciate the efforts you go through to clarify and demystify political rhetoric.

But let me throw this at you…

From the second presidential debate:

Bush defended his opposition to importing cheaper, price-controlled drugs from Canada, saying another way to make drugs cheaper is "to get our seniors to sign up to these drug discount cards, and they're working." But in fact they're not working nearly as well as originally advertised.

So you agree with the President that they are working, they’re just not working for as many people as they initially said they would. In the debate, Bush didn’t claim the program was perfect – that would be factually inaccurate and should be subjected to scrutiny. Earlier in the story you indicated

Kerry claimed the "the president has underfunded [the No Child Left Behind law] by $28 billion," but that's an opinion and not a fact.

It’s good that you also go beyond fact vs. fiction and measure opinions on how well-informed they might be. As long as the critique you provide is labeled as such, it’s a real service.

But what Bush said was factually accurate, he never made statements as to how well, or how much money was saved or how many people were covered. You moved from setting facts straight to parsing opinions without making the shift clear. Worse yet, there was no opinion to shift to and the fact of the statement you agree with. It’s clear that this was pure opportunism. You used an accurate and unambiguous statement as an opportunity to include other facts which you wanted in the story.