"Riffed from the Headlines" is Townhall's daily VIP feature with coverage on the deeply flawed aspects of journalism in the nation. We'll look to bring accountability to the mishaps, malaprops, misdeeds, manipulations, malpractice, and manufactured narratives in mainstream media.
03.24.22
Body Checking the Fact Checkers – VARIOUS OUTLETS
- How about the actual nominee gang – any curiosity there or nah??
The fact-checkers sure have busied themselves this week with the confirmation hearing in full effect. Not so much with Ketanji Brown Jackson's comments, mind you, but with her interrogators in the Senate.
PolitiFact has conducted four fact checks so far, correcting her questioners in all of them.
FactCheck.org has a few checks on the hearing, all centered on the Republicans, like Sens. Josh Hawley and Marsha Blackburn.
Here are the headlines from the three AP fact-checks on the confirmation:
– Republicans Skew Jackson's Record…
– Republicans Twist Jackson's Judicial Record…
– Senators Misrepresent Jackson On Abortion…
Presentation Paradox – NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO
- Understand that four days of highlighting Ketanji Brown Jackson as a woman of color was not highlighting her being a woman of color.
Senator Corey Booker gave what the press called an emotional delivery in the Senate hearing. KBJ and many in attendance were moved to tears. He was so inspired to see a black female about to be confirmed he gave an impassioned speech not about her career as a judge but about her being a black woman.
And then declared it had nothing at all to do with her being a black woman.
- "I want to tell you when I look at you, this is why I get emotional," said Booker, the only Black member of the Senate committee and one of only three Black senators. "I'm sorry — you're a person that is so much more than your race and gender."
He's black, she's black, but in speaking about anything but her career accomplishments, she is so much more than being black, it seems.
Pathological Media Amnesia – MSNBC
- When your imagination cannot conjure how to Search-Send…
The media allegiance to seeing Ketanji Brown Jackson is so strong that it has created a wave of recollection blindness. The examples abound of journalists incapable of imagining a worse confirmation process than KBJ withstanding the crucible of answering questions about her judicial record.
Chris Hayes has managed to display a unique brand of this obliviousness, all posturing as some type of authority on the subject of Supreme Court justices.
Can you *IMAGINE* what they would be doing if this was the fifth seat of a 5-4 majority.
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) March 23, 2022
I imagine it could lead to someone being labeled a drunken rape-circle participant. Oh wait, Chris – that isn't creative pondering; it is RECOLLECTION.
Pathological Media Amnesia – WASHINGTON POST
This is why you need to hire seasoned writers and editors to cover events that have a historical basis. Otherwise, you end up with daffy columns such as this from WaPo, pretending that never in our history have we seen such behavior from senators in a SCOTUS hearing. It's like rape-circles and "Boofing" in yearbooks never took place!
Republicans boast they have not pulled a Kavanaugh. In fact, they’ve treated Ketanji Brown Jackson worse, the Editorial Board writes https://t.co/HS2NOlmeFT
— Washington Post Opinions (@PostOpinions) March 24, 2022
Body Checking the Fact Checkers – CNN
CNN's Daniel Dale is another who could not find the time to look into the accuracy of any of KBJ's claims, what with all these offensive questions from Republican senators who asked about her judicial record in a racist fashion. In delving into one of the intolerant queries from Sen. Lindsey Graham about a past case, Daniel Dale shows how he operates with the default that the GOP is always wrong, even as he is busy proving them correct.
Let's walk through Daniel's process. First, the charge.
- "GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina alleged that Jackson had gone 'just too far' in, he claimed, calling the government "a war criminal in pursuing charges against a terrorist."
Next, the framing.
- "Both Graham and Cornyn left out important context. Specifically, neither mentioned that Jackson's allegation of war crimes was about torture. Also, Jackson didn't explicitly use the phrase 'war criminal.'"
Then finally, the ponderous resolution.
- "Jackson and her colleague then argued that the acts of the US 'respondents' they named in their petitions -- acts they described as 'directing, ordering, confirming, ratifying, and/or conspiring to bring about the torture and other inhumane treatment' -- 'constitute war crimes and/or crimes against humanity' under the Alien Tort Statute and that they violate the Geneva Conventions."
Soooo…uh…well, the only way this is in any way a disproven claim by Graham is that you adhere to the very strictest level of semantics. Graham claimed Justice Jackson referred to the government as a "war criminal," she merely said it was an entity "guilty of war crimes." Sooo…it is something completely different, you see.
