Opinion: Gleaning facts can be a 'slippery' business. Even when the truth is messy, 'good journalism offers a way.'

Adobe Stock photo

Getting the facts right may sound like Journalism 110 class, but gathering and verifying a story can be like walking on shifting sands, writes Fergus McIntosh of The New Yorker. "Journalists put more stress on accuracy than ever before. The problem is, accuracy is a slippery idea."

Like many professions, journalism has a before and after social media story. Before Americans became absorbed in Facebook, Twitch, TikTok and podcasts, they listened to and read mainstream media. But once social media siphoned huge audiences, "people stopped paying attention to the news, or decided that they didn’t believe it anymore," McIntosh adds. "This story is not unsupported. Trust in many institutions has fallen over the years, but in journalism, it has plummeted."

Examining how little journalists are trusted, makes "fake news"and the harm it does to the news-consumer trust equation that much more worrisome. "'Many Americans now register displeasure with inaccurate or unverified information on social media, and a majority now think that somebody . . .should do something about it," McIntosh explains. "Despite endemic skepticism and distraction, there is an enduring thirst for reliable information. The question is, where can it be found, and how can its purveyors make themselves heard amid the noise?"

CBS and BBC have branded themselves as singular "purveyors" of the facts using an "'only we can provide accuracy' model," McIntosh writes. "For the first Presidential debate of 2024, The New York Times tasked 29 staffers with combing through the candidates’ statements in real time." Even with aggressive fact-checking, "the provision of facts does not, in itself, engender trust. . . . What is more certain is that, from time to time, every journalist, no matter how well-meaning, gets something wrong, or misses the point."

"Because The New Yorker, like many publications, trades on its reputation for accuracy, readers can easily feel cheated, even betrayed, when an error slips in," McIntosh explains. "In such circumstances, it becomes difficult to know what is true, and, consequently, to make decisions. Good journalism offers a way through, but only if readers are willing to follow. . . . Gaining and holding that trust is hard. But failure is not inevitable. . . . Any solution must acknowledge the messiness of truth, the requirements of attention, the way we squint to see more clearly. It must tell you to say what you mean, and know that you mean it."

Fact check at the Democratic National Convention: Harris' acceptance speech lacked detail but still strayed from facts

Photo by Nils Huenerfuers, Unsplash

Last week the Democratic National Convention rallied around Kamala Harris and her choice for vice president, Tim Walz of Minnesota. The four-day event culminated in Harris giving her 40-minute nomination acceptance speech, which included more rhetoric than checkable facts. 

Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post reviewed several claims from Harris' acceptance speech, which are edited and highlighted below. For the Post's complete fact-check story, click here.

Note: The Rural Blog previously posted a fact-check story on the Republican National Convention. 

“We are not going back to when Donald Trump tried to cut Social Security and Medicare.”
This is mostly false. . . . But that hasn’t stopped Democrats from asserting this all week. On Medicare, virtually all anticipated savings sought by Trump would have been wrung from health providers, not Medicare beneficiaries, as a way of holding down costs and improving the solvency of the old-age health program. Trump, in fact, borrowed many proposals from Barack Obama, who had failed to get them through Congress. . . . As for Social Security, Trump kept his promise not to touch retirement benefits, bucking longtime efforts by Republicans to raise the retirement age.

(Trump) doesn’t actually fight for the middle class. Instead, he fights for himself and his billionaire friends, and he will give them another round of tax breaks that will add up to $5 trillion to the national debt.
The numbers don’t tell the whole story. Harris’s $5 trillion figure reflects the cost of extending the 2017 tax cuts. (The Congressional Budget Office estimated $4.6 trillion.) Because of the way the law was written, the tax cuts expire in 2027 and, unless Congress acts, Americans would face a steep tax increase. . . . By wanting to extend some of the tax cuts, Harris is acknowledging that a good chunk — as much as half — of Trump’s tax cuts benefited the middle class.

(Trump) intends to enact what, in effect, is a national sales tax. Call it a Trump tax that would raise prices on middle-class families by almost $4,000 a year.
This is a high estimate. Trump suggested he wants to impose a 10% tax on every imported good entering the United States and a 60 percent tax on every imported good from China. The Peterson Institute for International Economics has estimated that this would cost a typical U.S. household in the middle of the income distribution about $1,700 in after-tax income. . . . Harris is relying on an estimate from the left-leaning Center for American Progress Action Fund, which calculates the cost would be $3,900.

“As commander in chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”
Harris. . . has not put out detailed policy papers yet, but it’s worth noting that Biden repeatedly proposed budgets that have failed to keep military spending ahead of inflation.

“He encouraged [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to invade our allies, said Russia could, quote, do whatever the hell they want.”
This needs context. Harris carefully uses the word “encouraged” in this passage. Trump did not issue an invitation to Russia to invade U.S. allies, but (in his telling) was informing the leader of a NATO member country that he would not defend that country from a Russian attack if Trump deemed the nation was delinquent on payments to the military alliance. . . . NATO figures show that the defense expenditures for NATO countries other than the United States have been going up — in a consistent slope — since 2014. . . . When NATO decided to boost spending in response to Russia’s seizure of Crimea.

Fact-checking the first presidential debate of the 2024 race

The first debate of the 2024 presidential race, among eight Republicans, featured some claims that were false or "misleading at best," CNN reports.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the federal government locked down the economy during the pandemic while Florida "kept our state free and open," when in fact he "imposed significant restrictions" at the start of the pandemic, CNN's Daniel Dale said on the cable channel's post-debate report. The restrictions were imposed by states, not by the then-President Trump.

Former Vice President Mike Pence said the Trump-Pence administration spent money "to backfill on the military cuts of the Obama administration," but that's misleading, CNN’s Haley Britzky writes: "While military spending decreased under the Obama administration, it was largely due to the 2011 Budget Control Act, which received Republican support and resulted in automatic spending cuts to the defense budget." Pence, an Indiana congressman at the time, voted for the law.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said Trump, who did not participate in the debate, added $8 trillion to the national debt. The figure is accurate, but "The increase in the debt during any president’s tenure is not the fault of that president alone," CNN notes. "A significant amount of spending under any president is the result of decisions made by their predecessors – such as the creation of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid decades ago – and by circumstances out of a president’s control, notably including the global Covid-19 pandemic under Trump."

U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina said the Biden administration is calling “parents that show up at school board meetings . . .  domestic terrorists.” That is false, CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz writes: "The claim stems from a 2021 letter from the National School Boards Association asking the Justice Department to 'deal with' the uptick in threats against education officials and saying that 'acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials' could be classified as 'the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes'." Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo encouraging federal and local authorities to work together against such harassment campaigns "but never endorsed the 'domestic terrorism' notion," Rabinowitz writes.

Trump, who counter-programmed the debate with an online interview, "did not receive any pushback from pundit Tucker Carlson after promoting false statements about the 2020 election," reports Dominic Mastrangelo of The Hill.

Iowa State Fair, a celebration of rural life and a must for presidential candidates, is on; voters get up close, personal

The Des Moines Register's soapbox draws a crowd. (Photo by Salwan Georges, The Washington Post)

The Iowa State Fair began today, and every Republican presidential candidate is expected to attemd, seeking support for the caucues that will see the first votes for president in 2024. It's a celebration of rural life in an agricultural state that has trended Republican under Donald Trump, who will attend but will not join other candidates in conversation with Gov. Kim Reynolds, "whom he has recently criticized as being too close to a rival presidential candidate," Dylan Wells of The Washington Post reports. DeSantis and Trump, both coming Saturday, will both skip the Des Moines Register’s Political Soapbox, where candidates make brief speeches "and answer questions directly from fairgoers."

"The Democratic National Committee voted in February to replace Iowa as the party’s first nominating state, rendering it irrelevant to securing the party’s nomination," Wells notes. "Still, both of President Biden’s long-shot challengers — Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [here's a FactCheck on him] — plan to attend the fair. . . . Most candidates hope to make common ground with working-class people. They will flip pork chops and sample Iowa’s notorious fried foods while trying to avoid awkward photos of themselves eating. . . .The fair offers candidates a unique opportunity to showcase their skills in retail politics, gain national recognition and prove themselves as relatable people — or just the opposite, should they make a gaffe or become a meme for their behavior at the event."

Wells offers examples: "In 2011, Mitt Romney told someone while being heckled during a speech, 'Corporations are people, my friend' — a line that came to haunt his campaign. . . . Candidates are under a microscope at the event, given the large amount of face time with Iowans and the constant presence of news media. Candidates also have suffered from ordering the 'wrong snack': John F. Kerry went for a smoothie . . . Although good politicking at the fair isn’t an indicator of who will become president, a strong performance can refresh a struggling campaign or lift political underdogs into the national spotlight."

North Country Public Radio wins 3 Sigma Delta Chi awards; coverage of wildfires, prisons, Uvalde shooting also win

A disabled mother and daughter in northern New York lived
in this tent and in their car. (North Country Public Radio)

Several of the Sigma Delta Chi Awards for excellence in journalism, announced Saturday night by the Society of Professional Journalists, had rural resonance.

The rural media standout was North Country Public Radio, based in Canton, the seat of St. Lawrence County, New York. Its report on affordable housing, or the lack of it, won the award for public service in radio, and its report on uninspected housing for dairy workers won the award for small-market radio feature reporting. NCPR also won the contest's new award for regional political reporting with its profile of U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, chair of the House Republican Conference, whose district coves most of NCPR's coverage area, where it has 33 transmitters.

A prison in rural Illinois was the topic of "How the newest federal prison became one of the deadliest," a two-part story by NPR and The Marshall Project, which advocates criminal-justice reform. The package won the award for radio investigative reporting. The Intercept's five-part report on the effect of global warming and climate change on prisons and inmates won the award for science, environment or climate reporting.

Coverage of two major wildfires won awards. CBS's "60 Minutes" won the award for television investgative reporting for “What Happened at Grizzly Flats,” a California town destroyed by a mismanaged forest ifre; and KUSA-TV of Denver won the award for TV documentaries in large markets for “The story behind the Marshall Fire” near Boulder. 

Also in broadcasting, Virginia Public Media won the award for small-market television feature reporting for its story on black descendants of Thomas Jefferson; Scripps News and the Center for Investigative Reporting won the award for narrative podcast or radio documentary for their six-part "Inside the global fight for white power;" and NPR won the radio feature reporting award for interviews with the mother of one of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook, Conn., school shooting.

Journalism about the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, last spring, received two SDX awards. KPRC-TV in Houston won for deadline reporting, and the San Antonio Express-News won the large-market editorial award for its "Standing with Uvalde" series. David Plazas of The Tennessean won the smaller-market award for a collection of editorials. Jake May of the Flint Journal was a double winner for feature photo and small-circulation breaking-news photo.

Other awards of general interest included:

Fact checking: Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post for "The truth about Hunter Biden."

Washington correspondence: Nick Grube of Honolulu Civil Beat, for coverage of Hawaii's congressional delegation.

Editorial cartooning: Michael Ramirez, Las Vegas Review-Journal (small markets), and Gary Markstein, Creators Syndicate.

Magazine writing: Lizzie Presser of ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine for "I was never ready for this," a profile of a teenager from Copperas Cove, Texas, who became the mother of twins after a judge refused to let her get an abortion.

General column writing: Melinda Henneberger of The Sacramento Bee, for five columns.

Biden's rural points were on broadband, other infrastructure; on some other topics he exaggerated or lacked context

President Biden spoke in front of Vice President Kamala Harris and
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. (Pool photo by Jacquelyn Martin)

Did President Biden have anything for rural America in his State of the Union speech? And how closely did he stick to the facts?

He used the word "rural" once, in saying the bipartisan infrastructure law is funding projects in all kinds of places: “Urban. Suburban. Rural. Tribal.” Just before that, he mentioned “high-speed internet across America,” and later he said “We're making sure every community in America has access to high-speed internet.” He also announced that all materials in federal construction projects will have to be made in America, including fiber-optic cable that is the standard for high-speed internet.

Another line could be taken as a rural reference: “My economic plan is about investing in places and people that have been forgotten. Amid the economic upheaval of the past four decades, too many people have been left behind or treated like they’re invisible.”

Rural America is the home of extractive industries, and Biden slammed oil companies, noting their record profits and saying “They invested too little of that profit to increase domestic production and keep gas prices down. Instead, they used those record profits to buy back their own stock, rewarding their CEOs and shareholders.” An ad-lib about oil brought derisive laughter from Republicans: “We’re gonna need oil for at least another decade.” Longer than that.

"Some of Biden's claims in the speech were false, misleading or lacking critical context," CNN's Daniel Dale writes. Biden claimed the infrastructre law "funded 700,000 major construction projects," but the actual number is 7,000. The New York Times' analysis repeatedly cited lack of context.

In his Fact Checker column for The Washington Post, Glenn Kessler writes that Biden exaggerated several points, including deficit reduction, U.S. exports, the nation's infrastructure ranking. the effect of recent tax legislation and the number of jobs being created.

Kessler also looks at Biden's claim that "some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset," explaining that word is "inside-the-Beltway lingo for programs terminating automatically on a periodic basis unless explicitly renewed by law. Last year, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, released a 60-page “11-point plan to rescue America” that offered 128 proposals. Buried on Page 39, in a section on government restructuring, was one sentence: 'All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.' Scott’s write-up — which offered few details and had no proposed legislative language — was almost immediately rejected by most Senate Republicans. Scott also said he was being misinterpreted. 'No one that I know of wants to sunset Medicare or Social Security, but what we’re doing is we don’t even talk about it. Medicare goes bankrupt in four years. Social Security goes bankrupt in 12 years,” Scott said on Fox News last March. 'I think we ought to figure out how we preserve those programs. Every program that we care about, we ought to stop and take the time to preserve those programs.'"

Truth about election fraud: It’s rare, says The Fact Checker

The 2022 midterm elections are underway and many Americans have voiced concern over election fraud. An October Fox News poll showed that more Republicans than Democrats are worried that fraud could play a part in election outcomes. They shouldn't worry so much, writes Glenn Kessler of The Fact Checker column of The Washington Post, who shares his analysis:

• By every single metric, election fraud is rare in the United States.
• Almost no elections in the past 50 years have been flipped because of documented voter fraud, with occasional exceptions at the local level.
• Whenever experts and reporters have tried to tally cases of election fraud, the numbers remain minuscule.
• False claims about the prevalence of voter fraud are nothing new.

There are logical reasons for this," Kessler writes. "The decentralized system of American elections — where elections are run by more than 8,000 local governments and almost 90 percent of Americans vote on paper ballots, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission — make it impossible to steal a nationwide election through voter fraud." He notes The Associated Press's comprehensive report on the 2020 election, which found 475 fraud cases out of 25 million votes in the six decisive states, and rulings against Donald Trump's claims by "at least 86 judges, including Trump appointees." (AP allows any weekly newspaper to republish its report, with a link to it.)

The Heritage Foundation says it knows of 1,384 proven cases of vote fraud, dating back to 1979, and is "following dozens of other prosecutions that are ongoing," Heritage Senior Fellow Hans von Spakovsky told Kessler. That’s 32 per year, out of 2 billion votes cast, "according to a calculation for The Fact Checker by the Brennan Center for Justice," Kessler reports. "In a critical review of the Heritage numbers, the center said the database “confirms that widespread voter fraud does not exist.”

The most notable recent case of vote fraud was in North Carolina in 2018, when courts "ordered a new congressional election after an absentee-ballot scheme was discovered in one county that helped to narrowly tip the election to the Republican," Kessler notes. "Suspicions rose after 61 percent of the vote-by-mail ballots in the county were cast for the Republican candidate, despite the fact that only 16 percent of them were registered Republicans." The case illustrated a general rule of vote fraud: The smaller and poorer the electorate, the easier fraud can be accomplished.

Citizens for Sanity ad in World Series games on Democrats and immigrants' crime is mostly false, fact-checkers say

Politifact rates the ad "mostly false." (WRAL image)

By FactCheck.org

There is a new "dark money" group linked to aides of former President Donald Trump that is getting involved in the midterm elections.

Dark money groups spend other people's money to influence elections, but don't disclose their donors. Three former Trump officials sit on the board of one such group that calls itself Citizens for Sanity. Open Secrets, a nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog, describes the group's ads as "provocative."

Open Secrets reports, "Citizens for Sanity has paid for billboards emblazoned with messages like 'Protect Pregnant Men from Climate Discrimination' and 'Real progressives support violent criminals in their hour of need' in states across the country – including Massachusetts, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, California, Michigan, Texas, Illinois and Georgia."

Fact Check Deputy Managing Editor Rob Farley wrote about one of the TV ads this week. The ad, which has run in heavy rotation during postseason baseball games, focuses on a deadly knife attack on the Las Vegas Strip in early October, and misleadingly claims that “every Senate Democrat voted against deporting criminal illegal immigrants.”

As Rob points out, the ad's claims are unsupported. In fact, every Democrat – and some Republicans – increased funding earlier this year for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency charged with deporting those living in the country illegally. The Biden administration also has directed ICE to prioritize the deportation of immigrants in the country illegally who have committed serious felonies.

The ad is based on one of many moves that Republicans made during Senate debate on the tax-and-climate bill that Democrats dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act. These "vote-a-ramas" are largely political theater in which the opposing party often proposes amendments that can be used in future political ads. This move would have sent the bill to the Judiciary Committee to “ensure that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has sufficient resources to detain and deport a higher number of illegal aliens who have been convicted of a criminal offense in the United States.” The ad says Democrats voted against “deporting criminal illegal immigrants,” period, and that’s not accurate.

For Farley's complete report on the ad and the issue, click here. Politifact has a similar report, enhanced with a video package from WRAL in Raleigh.

Local newspaper quashes falsehoods fed by mystery

Top of the newspaper's special section

When the enigmatic Georgia Guidestones were bombed into oblivion July 6, there were many questions, and falsehoods rushed into the vacuum of truth. But the local newspaper fulfilled its fact-finding role.

The Elberton Star "published a story with the actual facts," and Editor Rose Scoggins "didn't stop there," a sister paper, The Northeast Georgian, said in an opinion piece by Matt Aiken and Matthew Osborne. She "turned out an eight-page special section documenting the history of the Guidestones the day following their destruction. It’s filled with photos, and facts and letters from locals lamenting the loss of the stones. . . . It’s a perfect example of why old school journalism is so vital to a community. Every town, no matter how big or how small, benefits from a real local news source that specializes in asking questions and checking facts."

The story and the section were local antidotes to false stories about a reported plan by a pharmaceutical executive to rebuild the structure, and a supposed time capsule beneath it. The Star reported that a marker at the site "described a time capsule being buried six feet below," but "Elberton Granite Association Executive Vice President Chris Kubas said Friday morning that the granite marker was not placed at the site at the same time the Guidestones were unveiled in 1980. The marker included directions to the granite museum, which Kubas said did not exist until 1982."

Falsehoods may have been fed by mystery. The section recounts in detail the history of the monument, funded by a man who identified himself only as Robert C. Christian and bought "a monument that would be dedicated to conservation and would leave behind a message for those at the time and for years to come," in eight languages. In 1981, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution quoted a local banker as saying that "Christian," whose real name was known only to the banker, that he "represented a group of individuals who anticipate a future nuclear, economic or social holocaust and wanted to leave 'guides' for preserving humanity."

In search of 2020 voter fraud: There's not much there, there

By FactCheck.org
A service of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania

As the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol began its hearings, Deputy Managing Editor Robert Farley did a deep dive on "2000 Mules," a film by conservative activist Dinesh D’Souza.

The film, which is playing in select theaters around the country, uses cell phone data and surveillance video in an attempt to show that there was “coordinated, systematic fraud" in five key states in the 2020 presidential election -- perpetrated by "mules" who allegedly collected and dropped off illegal mail ballots in drop boxes.

But, as Rob explains, the supposed evidence is speculative and does not provide the proof that the filmmakers claim.

So far, the Georgia Board of Elections has investigated and dismissed three cases brought to the board by the filmmakers. In all three cases, the so-called "mules" were dropping off legitimate ballots for immediate family members who live in the same household. That's legal under Georgia's law.

As we have written many times before, election fraud is rare. And as we heard this week, even former President Donald Trump's own attorney general, William Barr, said he doesn't believe the claims of widespread fraud.

In taped testimony played at the committee's June 9 hearing, Barr recalled his conversations with Trump in late 2020: "I did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen and putting out this stuff, which I told the President was bullshit. And, you know, I didn't want to be a part of it. And that's one of the reasons that went into me deciding to leave when I did."

For more about the film, see "Evidence Gaps in '2000 Mules'."

News media roundup: How to reach audiences that mistrust the news; media literacy podcast; a fact-checker's toolkit

Six cues used to make snap judgements about whether to trust a news source (Trust in News Project graphic)

Here's some recent news about media literacy, misinformation, and disinformation:

It's possible to reach people who mistrust the news, but you can't just relying on good reporting and writing, according to a recent Trust In News Project study by the Reuters Institute and the University of Oxford. Great headlines, graphics, photos, and more are essential too. The study also categorizes six cues audiences use to make snap judgements about which sources to trust (see graphic above). Here's a write-up about the study from Poynter and here's the study itself.

A fact-checker for Snopes discusses how she tells real news from fake and shares the toolkit she and colleagues use. Read more here.

Last year, Illinois became the first state to require all high school students to be taught media literacy skills. NPR podcast "In Case You Missed It" takes a deep dive into why media literacy is an essential skill today, as well as what people need to know who didn't learn about it in school. Listen to it here.

Here's a reminder to consider your source's motives and fact-check outrageous "trends" before reporting: Facebook parent company Meta hired GOP consulting firm Targeted Victory to help turn the public against social-media rival TikTok and draw attention away from Meta's privacy and antitrust issues. The nationwide media and lobbying campaign "includes placing op-eds and letters to the editor in major regional news outlets, promoting dubious stories about alleged TikTok trends that actually originated on Facebook, and pushing to draw political reporters and local politicians into helping take down its biggest competitor," Taylor Lorenz and Drew Harwell report for The Washington Post. Internal emails obtained by the Post show that the firm wanted to portray "the fast-growing app, owned by the Beijing-based company ByteDance, as a danger to American children and society." Facebook has already been under fire for engineering its algorithm to push users toward false and inflammatory news.

Webinar at 2 p.m. ET today to discuss how real or perceived biased news coverage can mislead the public

Just in time for National News Literacy Week next week, the News Literacy Project is hosting a free webinar at 2 p.m. ET today to discuss the effects of bias in news coverage and how it can mislead and misinform the public. Hosts John Silva and Elizabeth Price will also discuss how unfounded perceptions of bias can cause people to dismiss credible reporting or mistrust established news media outlets altogether. From the website: "This session will help you think more clearly about what causes bias in reporting, what it looks like in coverage and what you can do when you encounter it in your news diet."

The webinar is the final in a series of four webinars called "Understanding Misinformation and How to Talk to People Who Believe It," aimed at fostering more productive, fact-based conversations among friends and family members. The series is meant to "help participants understand what misinformation is, how people come to believe it and how to effectively and compassionately communicate and debunk those beliefs. While older adults play a critical role in sorting fact from fiction and helping others to do so, everyone can benefit from resources and support to help prevent harm from mis- and disinformation."

Recordings of the first three webinars in the series are available on the website. They are:

• The Misinformation Landscape, which discusses how to move beyond the unhelpful term 'fake news' to more precisely identify the many types of misleading, inaccurate and false information that we encounter regularly. The session explores how propagators of misinformation use our emotions and cognitive biases to manipulate us.
• Essential Fact-Checking Skills shares tools and skills needed to fact-check and verify information.
• Productive Conversations Without Confrontation discusses the skills needed to have a productive, non-confrontational conversation with someone whose beliefs are fueled by misinformation.

Fact check: Public-health officials are NOT representing cases of the common cold as coronavirus infections

"In February 2020, as the earliest Covid-19 cases cropped up in the U.S., the late conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh told his listeners there was no need to worry. 'The coronavirus is the common cold, folks,' he said, pushing a false claim that would soon be repeated widely online," Bill McCarthy reports for The Poynter Institute's PolitiFact. "Nearly two years later, and after millions of people have died worldwide from the coronavirus and its variants, social media users are still taking up the refrain."

But that's not so, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and five other authorities, the coronavirus and its variants are genetically distinct from influenza and other viruses. One noted that the common cold isn't a specific virus, but an infection that several viruses can cause, McCarthy reports. Some colds are caused by rhinoviruses, and some are caused by one of four mild coronaviruses. Those variants are genetically different from strains that cause Covid-19, SARS, and MERS.

Moreover, experts noted, Covid-19 cases are only counted if the patient has a positive test, not just for reported symptoms that can mimic the common cold or influenza. Likewise, influenza cases only count as such after a positive flu test, McCarthy reports. In addition to a comprehensive dashboard on Covid-19, the CDC publishes a weekly report comparing infections, hospitalizations and deaths from Covid-19 with influenza and pneumonia. It also publishes figures on covid-like and flu-like illnesses: in other words, patients with symptoms but who have not had a positive test to confirm their diagnosis. This data is collected from state and local public-health agencies and health-care providers.

FactCheck.org sets the record straight on its funding, and Biden's positions on guns and meat

FactCheck.org has a trio of recent posts worthy of mention here. 

The first involves FactCheck.org itself, or more specifically, a feature called SciCheck launched in 2015 to help the public better understand scientific research, Eugene Kiely reports. SciCheck began a Covid-19 Misconceptions page in December, funded by a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky, recently alleged in a tweet that FactCheck.org presents biased information about coronavirus vaccines because the late Robert Wood Johnson II was president of Johnson & Johnson for decades, and because the foundation still holds stock in the company. 

"Contrary to Massie’s suggestion, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — as is the case with all of our funders — has no control over our editorial content. Period. Full stop," Kiely writes. "As with our funding, we are also transparent about our editorial process for selecting, researching, editing and, if necessary, correcting our articles." Kiely notes FactCheck's financial transparency policies and briefly discusses where its writers get their facts. 

Conservative news sources, politicians and social media accounts have accused President Biden of seeking to force Americans to mostly stop eating red meat to help the environment, but that's false, Robert Farley reports. 

The rumor stems from Biden's opening remarks at the Virtual Leaders Summit on Climate on April 22, where he talked about how parts of his American Jobs Plan would help the U.S. cut greenhouse-gas emissions in half by the end of the decade. He mentioned that farmers could deploy "cutting-edge tools" to reduce carbon emissions, but didn't mention beef or cattle ranching (which Farley notes does account for some greenhouse-gas emissions). 

Afterward, British publication the Daily Mail ran a story with an alarmist headline: "How Biden’s climate plan could limit you to eat just one burger a MONTH, cost $3.5K a year per person in taxes, force you to spend $55K on an electric car and ‘crush’ American jobs." The story cites a University of Michigan study showing that Americans could cut its diet-related greenhouse-gas emissions in half by 2030 if they cut their red-meat consumption to about four pounds per year. "But again, nothing in Biden’s stated plans mentions anything about reducing beef consumption," Farley reports.

But conservative news outlets, social media accounts and politicos boosted the signal on the story, insinuating or outright stating that Biden sought to force Americans to cut meat consumption. For example, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., said in a tweet that "Joe Biden’s climate plan includes cutting 90% of red meat from our diets by 2030. They want to limit us to about four pounds a year. Why doesn’t Joe stay out of my kitchen?" On April 26, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack categorically denied that the Biden administration has any plans to reduce beef consumption.

And finally, President Biden "opposes the sale of assault weapons, and he supports a mandatory federal registry and a voluntary buyback program for all legally purchased assault weapons. But a video shared on Twitter by Sen. Ted Cruz leaves the false impression Biden wants to confiscate all guns," Farley reports.

The April 27 video, released the night before Biden's first address to a joint session of Congress, includes a clip in which Cruz accuses Biden of seeking to "erase the Second Amendment," Farley reports. Then the video shows a clip of CNN's Anderson Cooper prompting Biden: "To gun owners out there who say, well, a Biden administration means they're going to come for my guns." Then, the video shows Biden answering, "Bingo."

"Left out is Biden’s full answer, which makes clear he was referring only to the purchase of semi-automatic firearms, or so-called assault weapons," Farley reports. In the interview, Biden explicitly says he would not try to confiscate legally purchased assault weapons.

If it sounds like FactCheck is unfairly coming down on Republicans, we would note that the site has plenty to say about Biden administration claims, including a thorough fact-check of his recent address to Congress (The Rural Blog ran a similar one).

Biden lays out an ambitious agenda for a more activist government, strays from the facts with some assertions

Attendance in the House chamber was limited due to the pandemic. (Photo by Doug Mills, The New York Times)

"President Biden laid out an ambitious agenda on Wednesday night to rewrite the American social compact by vastly expanding family leave, child care, health care, preschool and college education for millions of people to be financed with increased taxes on the wealthiest earners," Peter Baker reports for The New York Times. "The succession of costly proposals amounts to a risky gamble that a country deeply polarized along ideological and cultural lines is ready for a more activist government."

Biden's speech to a limited-attendance joint session of Congress had a couple of lines aimed at rural voters, saying his infrastructure plan "creates jobs, connecting every American with high-speed internet including the 35 percent of rural America that still doesn't have it," and would pay farmers for helping thwart climate change.

The speech also included some misleading claims, according to fact-checkers. One came early: "The economy created more than 1,300,000 new jobs in 100 days. More new jobs in the first 100 days than any president on record." That's misleading, the Times' Jeanna Smialek wrote:

"That is extremely fast by historical norms, but it’s also a function of the state of the economy. About 8.4 million jobs are still missing compared to the employment level before the pandemic started to weigh on the economy in March 2020. Most people who lost jobs in the downturn are expected to come back fairly quickly as reopening gets underway, because they presumably want to work, but have been thrown out of jobs by state and local lockdowns. It doesn’t make sense for Mr. Biden to seemingly take credit for the rapid rebound in his bragging point, because it is partly or mostly the result of economic reopening."

Biden also claimed that “a broad consensus of economists, left, right, center . . . agree that what I’m proposing will help create millions of jobs and generate historic economic growth.” Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, giving the Republican response, contradicted him, saying unspecified "experts" say the plan would lower the average wage and shrink the economy. Scott appeared to be referring to projections by The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

A more optimistic projection came from Moody's Investors Service, which Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post cited: "The infrastructure plan would especially spur job growth in 2024 and 2025, after a slight decline in jobs because of the impact of Biden’s proposed tax increases to fund the plan," according to Moody's. The Associated Press said Biden was "glossing over the naysayers."

Biden made many ad libs to his prepared text, some of which strayed from the facts. Mentioning the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, he said "the vast majority [are] overstaying visas."  There is no official count, but Daniel Dale of CNN said that was true of the newly undocumented until 2017, and AP cited an expert who figures the overstay share in 2018 was 46 percent, "not a majority, let alone a 'vast majority'."

Finally, two style points, perhaps also attributable to ad libs: Biden asked Congress to send him a bill "which I will gladly, anxiously sign," and said the U.S. is "the most unique idea in history." First, if he was glad, he wouldn't be anxious; what he surely meant was "eager." It's a common mistake.

Also common, but more irritating to those of us who put a premium on clarity of language, was his misuse of "unique," which should take no modifiers of degree. Otherwise, we lose a unique word, the only one that means "one of a kind." We need that word. Let's treat it with respect and accuracy.

FactCheck.org sheds light on the J & J vaccine pause and recent Tucker Carlson comments about Dr. Anthony Fauci

FactCheck.org takes a critical look at some recent coronavirus vaccine-related news and commentary, including Fox News talker Tucker Carlson's comments about Dr. Anthony Fauci and masking, and the current pause in administering the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

"All of the authorized Covid-19 vaccines are effective at preventing symptomatic disease," report Eugene Kiely and Saranac Hale Spencer of FactCheck, a service of the communications school at the University of Pennsylvania. "Carlson baselessly casts doubt on the effectiveness of the vaccines, because federal officials urge fully vaccinated people to wear masks in public settings."

On April 14, Carlson "repeatedly questioned why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that vaccinated people continue to wear masks, insinuating that vaccinated people aren't really protected from future infections, and that Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has not or could not address this 'most basic of all questions,' as Carlson called them," FactCheck reports.

Fauci has repeatedly addressed this question, noting that the vaccines are proven to keep people from becoming seriously ill with Covid-19, but may not protect them from becoming infected with the coronavirus and suffering mild symptoms and transmitting it to others. At a recent White House briefing, "Fauci said vaccinated people are not expected to show any symptoms and science needs to conduct more research on whether asymptomatic vaccinated people can make other unvaccinated people sick," Kiely and Spencer report.

FactCheck also lays out the facts on the recommended pause in administering the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Out of 7.2 million doses of the vaccine administered in the U.S., six recipients have had a rare, severe type of blood clot. Out of an abundance of caution, the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC recommended a pause in the use of the J&J vaccine while more research was done.

"All six cases involved women ages 18 to 48 and their symptoms — which included severe headache, abdominal pain, leg pain or shortness of breath — occurred six to 13 days after they received the J&J vaccine, the agencies said in a joint statement. One died and one remains in critical condition," Kiely and Jaramillo report. "The recommended pause only involves the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which uses a different type of vaccine technology than the other two vaccines that have been authorized in the United States and administered in much greater numbers." Read more here.

No April fool: Tomorrow is International Fact-Checking Day; webinars, other resources available for journalists and public

International Fact-Checking Day is tomorrow (not coincidentally, the day after April Fool's Day), an observance spearheaded by the Poynter Institute's International Fact-Checking Network, which celebrates, promotes and funds fact-checking through grants, weekly newsletters, fellowships, training, conferences and more.

In celebration of the day, IFCN is hosting two virtual panel discussions. The first panel, held in conjunction with FactCheck.org, will discuss the state of fact-checking in 2021, accusations of censorship against fact-checkers, the potential impact of misinformation and disinformation on the safety of fact-checkers, and what the future holds for sustaining and scaling the field of fact-checking. 

The second panel will look at how fact-checkers communicate and connect with their audiences. Panelists will discuss projects their organizations have been working on that have helped them form a deeper connection with their audiences, followed by insights on the best ways fact-checkers can meaningfully engage with the people consuming their fact-checks. Click here to register for either panel.

Fact-checking Biden's first presidential news conference

At his first presidential news conference yesterday, President Joe Biden took questions on immigration, foreign policy and more. Here's some fact-checking:

Asked about the increase in immigrant children crossing the border, Biden said "Truth of the matter is, nothing has changed. As many people came — 28 percent increase in children to the border in my administration; 31% in the last year in 2019, before the pandemic — in the Trump administration. It happens every single solitary year. There is a significant increase in the number of people coming to the border in the winter months of January, February, March. It happens every year."

Border crossings do have seasonal trends, but "unaccompanied immigrant children have come to the border in higher numbers than what he said," report Nomaan Merchand and Josh Boak of The Associated Press. "According to statistics published by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, authorities encountered 9,457 children without a parent in February, a 61% increase from January, not 28%. The numbers of unaccompanied children did rise 31% between January 2019 and February 2019." And while Biden downplayed his election as a reason many youths decided to come to the U.S., AP interviewed migrants who said they hope immigration policies would be more permissive under him.

Biden said the U.S. is sending back the "vast majority" of families crossing the border illegally. Not so, Jane C. Timm reports for NBC News. It's true that they're sending back more than 70% of people at the border, according to data from February, but less than half of family units were sent back.

Biden addressed Republican complaints that his pandemic relief-and-stimulus package was too expensive, saying GOP lawmakers and President Trump passed a nearly $2 trillion tax cut, 83% of which 83% benefitted the wealthiest 1%. That's misleading, AP says: The tax cuts disproportionately favored the top 1%, but the stats Biden cited will only be true if Congress extends the cuts in 2027.

Pandemic roundup: Federal program gets vaccines to more rural residents; Facebook adds fact-checks to vax posts

Here's a roundup of recent news stories about the pandemic and vaccination efforts.

Coronavirus cases are surging in 21 states as health officials warn against reopening too quickly. Read more here.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reduced its social-distancing recommendation for children in schools from six feet to three feet. Read more here.

Facebook is adding informational labels to posts about coronavirus vaccines as it expands its efforts to counteract pandemic misinformation. The platform is also adding a tool to give users information on where and when they can get vaccinated. Read more here.

The two-shot AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine reduced symptomatic disease by 79 percent, according to the drug maker's study. That will help the vaccine be authorized in the U.S. Read more here.

Experts warn: even those who have already been vaccinated must observe social-distancing measures and other precautions to help stamp out the spread of the virus. Read more here.

Vaccine eligibility in the U.S. is a confusing mish-mash of state rules. Read more here. 

Commentary: Primary-care physicians should be at the heart of rural vaccination. Read more here.

A federal program gets vaccines to qualified facilities, rural residents, and migrant workers. Read more here.

Rural Wisconsin residents now have more options for getting vaccinated since the state has expanded a federal pharmacy program. Read more here.

Pandemic roundup: Black churches help fight vaccine hesitancy; fact-checking Biden on vaccine claims; more ...

Here's a roundup of the latest stories on the pandemic and the coronavirus vaccine: 

People hesitate to get the coronavirus vaccine for several reasons, so fighting vaccine hesitancy requires a multi-pronged approach, experts say. Read more here.

Fact-checks cover President Biden's misleading remarks on the vaccine at a recent event at a Pfizer manufacturing site, rumors that Biden reduced coronavirus testing of detained immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border (he didn't), and rumors that the vaccine affects fertility (it doesn't, so far as scientists know).

This explainer discusses how the newly approved Johnson & Johnson vaccine works, when it will be available, and other details to know. Read more here.

The AstraZeneca vaccine, which is widely used in other parts of the world, hasn't been approved for use in the U.S. because the company hasn't applied an application here, saying it needs to finish its phase 3 U.S. trial. Read more here.

The one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine may make it easier to vaccinate harder-to-reach communities, but it also could drive perceptions of a two-tiered vaccine system where marginalized communities believe they're getting an inferior product. Read more here.

Rural vaccination rates vary, and data is hard to come by. Read more here.

Black churches fill a unique role in fighting vaccine fears. Read more here.

Many rural hospitals could close because of pandemic-related expenses, according to a report from the American Hospital Association, which is lobbying for $35 billion in funding for rural hospitals in President Biden's American Rescue Plan. Read more here.