Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Calvin Freiburger: "Newt Gingrich Reminds America That the Media Covered for Barack Obama’s Baby Killing Past"

Note:  We reproduce the title of a work criticizing PolitiFact as a matter of custom.  We think Freiburger's use of the term "Baby Killing" is hyperbolic and damages his message for those who do not already agree with his pro-life views.  Though if the topic was a different one like, say, outsourcing jobs, PolitiFact might rule that it's at least partially true.  One can apparently be responsible for "baby killing" without any direct action in PolitiFact's eyes.  If PolitiFact is consistent, anyway.

Calvin Freiburger, who links to this blog from his own and contributes to the Live Action blog, had a PolitiFact criticism embedded in a post he did for Live Action.

During the Republican presidential primary, candidate Newt Gingrich criticized President Obama for his past non-support of a pro-life Illinois bill that would have prevented some instances of infanticide resulting from withholding medical care from newborns.

Freiburger:
Right on cue, Naureen Khan of National Journal sprang into action to defend the president and the press:
According to Politifact, an independent fact-checking organization that looked into similar claims made by former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum on the campaign trail, Obama voiced his opposition to the new legislation as a state senator because it would have given legal status to fetuses and would thus have been struck down by the courts, and because Illinois already had laws to ensure infants who survived abortions would be given medical attention.
Not true, Politi-“fact”:  as Ramesh Ponnuru explained at the time, Illinois’ preexisting protections were “loophole-ridden” and only applied to babies who were considered to have “sustainable survivability,” leaving pre-“viable” newborns unprotected.
By overlooking that important detail, PolitiFact left itself wiggle-room to defend Obama's record from Gingrich's attack--and ding Gingrich's "Truth-O-Meter" record in the process.  That's a win-win in terms of expressing a liberal bias.

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