The Lie of the Year award is easily PolitiFact’s biggest publicity-generator. In 2009, they picked Sarah Palin’s “death panels” claim. In 2010, they picked the claim that the new health care law is a “government takeover” of health care. …
… each of those statements is actually factually true; it is rather that they are true for reasons that PolitiFact failed to consider. …
PolitiFact’s decision to go further by declaring those statements lies highlights a logical flaw in their Lie of the Year award. For a statement to be a lie, the speaker must know or believe it to be false. In neither the case of “death panels” nor “government takeover” has PolitiFact offered any evidence that the speakers knew or believed their statements to be false.
Since January, I have declined maybe four requests for help from PolitiFact reporters …
Read the whole post: Why I’m Boycotting PolitiFact.
