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PolitiFact’s “lie of the year” once again not a lie

Michael Cannon at Cato writes:

The annual unveiling of its “Lie of the Year” award garners PolitiFact more attention than anything else. Hopefully, it will garner so much attention that people will recognize this award, which is supposed to improve political discourse, instead degrades it. …

PolitiFact’s past three Lies of the Year have been about health care.  Not one of them was a lie. …

The third and latest Lie of the Year—that “Republicans voted to end Medicare”—is arguably true: its veracity depends on what your definition of “Medicare” is.  … My leftist friends are right and PolitiFact is wrong: from a certain and valid perspective, this claim is true.

Moreover, even if these three statements were false, the speakers believed them to be true. Therefore, they cannot be lies. Every single Lie of the Year award has gotten that basic fact wrong.

[T]his award degrades political discourse by implicitly launching—an encouraging others to launch—ad hominem assaults on people who hold legitimate differences of opinion. PolitiFact should find a better way to attract readers.

Read the whole post: Strike Three for PolitiFact | Cato @ Liberty.