It wasn’t a particular person or fact that earned PolitiFact’s 2014 Lie of the Year, but the general mass hysteria that accompanied the Ebola epidemic.
And though PolitiFact doesn’t say it, its most prominent examples were conservative figures, which isn’t too surprising given the level of delirium on Fox News and elsewhere once the disease, which has killed more than 5,000 people in West Africa, claimed one life on American shores.
“Fear of the disease stretched to every corner of America this fall, stoked by exaggerated claims from politicians and pundits,” PolitiFact’s authors wrote. “They said Ebola was easy to catch, that illegal immigrants may be carrying the virus across the southern border, that it was all part of a government or corporate conspiracy.”
“The claims — all wrong — distorted the debate about a serious public health issue,” they continued. “Together, they earn our Lie of the Year for 2014.”
Conservative commentator George Will theorized Ebola could be spread through sneezing or coughing (False). Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) insisted it was “easy to catch” (Mostly False). Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) worried “illegal migrants” could be bringing it across the U.S. southern border (Pants On Fire). Those were the some of the top examples cited by PolitiFact.
Democrats weren’t entirely absolved, however. The fact-checking group also singled out Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor’s false claims about his GOP opponent’s votes on public health funding, which Pryor then portrayed as voting against “preparing America for pandemics like Ebola.” Pryor lost his Senate seat.
The exploding infected ISIS militant disguised as a 10-year old Guatemalan child was one of my favorites.
Sorry. But not pinning this massive lie directly where it originated is what makes PolitiFact such a worthless pile of shit as a fact-checking operation.
Umm…guess Mark Pryor didn’t invent that shit after all. He was a worthless follower trying to move to the right as a Blue Dog in a bad election year for him. It was always a diversionary tactic by rightwing politicians and operatives, aided by cable TV (sadly all of them for playing on the hysteria for ratings) in this case, but he didn’t start the hysteria like those on the right purposely did.
BTW, the very day after the election…the cable media world all but abandoned their massive coverage and within a week, it was non-existent…just as I had predicted.
Perhaps TPM could do a re-write of their own headline. Did PolitiFact lie or did they simply repeat the lies of others, or did PolitiFact point out the lies? The headline leaves this reader confused enough to question the (poorly-made) points of the article.
Can we have a re-write, please?
Yes, same with ISIS. Mostly gone from the media.
PolitiFact’s “lie of the year” is a joke. While the hysteria over Ebola was ridiculous, I don’t see how they can take a whole bunch of separate statements and call them collectively the “lie of the year”. Looking through the statements they point out, some of them don’t seem like lies at all.
“There are doctors who are saying that in a sneeze or some cough, some of the airborne particles can be infectious.”
PolitiFact’s own analysis of this says this statement is true - it can be spread through particles that come from sneezing or coughing (not the same as an airborne disease). The reason they ended up ruling it false was because it is only relevant to health care workers and not the general public - the problem is that George Will never said his comments were about the general public, PolitiFact incorrectly made that assumption.
Rand Paul described Ebola as “incredibly contagious,” “very transmissible” and “easy to catch.”
From PolitiFact’s analysis “The CDC defines contagious as ‘a very communicable disease capable of spreading rapidly from one person to another by contact or close proximity.’” That backs up Paul’s claim. They end up saying it is “mostly false” because of the R0 of Ebola compared to HIV - which is ridiculous seeing as HIV is spread over many years, while Ebola is spread over days/weeks.
Did people exaggerate the threat? Of course. But it’s hardly the “lie of the year”, especially since the examples they bring up aren’t actually lies.