Erin Burnett's Fact Checking Flop

       She pulled out all the stops to accuse the DNC of lying last night. Part of what's going on is what Krugman talked about-an orgy of false equivalence.

        The media feels because Lying Paul Ryan got called out last week, it's only fair that the Democrats get called out in an exactly equal amount.

        Ezra Klein basically gave away the media game plan after Ryan's speech.

         "Quite simply, the Romney campaign isn’t adhering to the minimum standards required for a real policy conversation. Even if you bend over backward to be generous to them — as the Tax Policy Center did when they granted the Romney campaign a slew of essentially impossible premises in order to evaluate their tax plan — you often find yourself forced into the same conclusion: This doesn’t add up, this doesn’t have enough details to be evaluated, or this isn’t true."

      "I don’t like that conclusion. It doesn’t look “fair” when you say that. We’ve been conditioned to want to give both sides relatively equal praise and blame, and the fact of the matter is, I would like to give both sides relatively equal praise and blame. I’d personally feel better if our coverage didn’t look so lopsided. But first the campaigns have to be relatively equal. So far in this campaign, you can look fair, or you can be fair, but you can’t be both."

       http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/democrats-stage-a-big-opening-night/2012/09/05/862d5eac-f77f-11e1-8b93-c4f4ab1c8d13_story.html

       Ie, as the campaigns are equally honest criticizing both equally, is dishonest. However, the media really wants to criticize both equally. So today we see Glenn Kessler over at Washington Post's Fact Check, coming up with some real nitpicking to claim that the Democrats weren't honest last night.

      http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2012/09/media-on-orgy-of-false-equivalence.html

      Last night not for the first time Erin Burnett has distinguished herself in fact checking and not in a good way. Just recently she showed made some really dubious questions about the Fed and drawing a false equivalence between the Fed's asset purchases and Obama's stimulus spending.

      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/31/cnn-erin-burnett-federal-reserve-stimulus_n_1848210.html?ref=topbar

      Last night she criticized the Democrats claims of 4.5 million jobs created since February, 2010 in a way that has long been criticized-counting job losses against the President from the first few months-even the 3 weeks in January, 2009 before he even was inaugurated.

     "If you’re looking for a better study in contrasts between CNN’s coverage of the Republican National Convention and the just-beginning Democratic National Convention, look no further than Out Front host Erin Burnett. In the moments following GOP running mate Paul Ryan‘s speech last week, Burnett dismissed the litany of falsehoods that she herself noted, and called his speech “Precise, clear, and passionate.”

   "On Tuesday night, faced with Democrats who passed fact-checking with flying colors, Burnett and Tom Foreman invented a “Reality Check” based on a lie of their own."

    "Convention anchor Anderson Cooper tossed to Burnett with an innocent-sounding “Let’s go to Erin Burnett and Tom Forman for a reality check.”

    “A lot of things were said this evening, making fact checkers everywhere very busy,” Foreman began. “But there was one cornerstone claim of the Democrats tonight, they pounded it like a nail, that President Obama has created more than 4 million jobs since taking office."

     http://www.mediaite.com/tv/fact-wreck-cnn-subjects-democratic-convention-to-reality-check-based-on-a-lie/

     She then makes much of the idea that the Democrats are claiming '4.5 million jobs since in office' rather than over the last 29 months. However, this is actually false.

    "He then played several clips of Democrats touting the improvement in jobs numbers over the last 29 months. “So it’s clear,” Foreman said, “the claim is the President created 4.5 million new jobs since taking office.”

   "Well, no, that’s not what any of the speakers said in that clips package. They all quoted jobs created within the last 29 months, not “since taking office,” so Foreman and Burnett are basing their “Reality Check” on a lie that they made up."

     “The problem here is not in the math,” Foreman continued. “More than 4 million jobs have been created.”

     "Great, so the story is that Democrats told the truth! Good news, for a change."

     “What is missing here is context,” Foreman continued, and Burnett chimed in “Yes, and context is everything.”

     "(Needle-scratch sound effect!!!) Hold the phone. Last week, Paul Ryan delivered a speech so chock-full of falsehoods that Erin Burnett was having trouble jotting ‘em all down, yet her reaction to that speech was that it was ”Precise, clear, and passionate.”

      "But now, the Democrats grab Burnett’s and Foreman’s attention by “pounding like a nail” the fact that “our economy has gone from losing 800,000 jobs a month to adding 4.5 million private sector jobs in the last 29 months,” a claim which she admits is 100% true, and their reaction is that we need to take a blowtorch to it?"

      What they also were doing-along with Glenn Kessler-is holding Obama accountable for public sector jobs-though it's the GOP who claims that government jobs aren't real jobs and do nothing but drain the private sector. Yet they include these losses in the President's record? Erin has the excuse of being from CNBC where general practice is to only fact check Democrats. Kessler's problem is just being part of the media's orgy for falsse equivalence. CNN is surely proving it's not liberal whcih is the only thing they care about.

     What the record does show is that the private sector has come back since early 2010. The drag has been government jobs especially state and local. However, this was due to the spending cuts the GOP pushed through Congress in Spring, 2011 and their refusal to pass the President's Jobs Bill, even those aspects of it they agree with.