The MagazineDamned Lies and ‘Fact Checking’ (cont.)From The ScrapbookJan 2, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 16
• By THE SCRAPBOOK
 It was just two issues ago that The Weekly Standard published Mark Hemingway’s devastating brief against media “fact checkers” and their systematic bias against the right (“Lies, Damned Lies, and ‘Fact Checking,’ ” December 19, 2011). But Fortuna is a capricious sprite, and The Scrapbook awoke last week to find the left spitting nails about PolitiFact, the influential column produced by the St. Petersburg Times. For its “Lie of the Year,” PolitiFact selected Democrats’ claim that Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget—passed by the House GOP earlier this year—would “end Medicare.”  Practically the entire liberal wonkery cried foul, including writers at the New Republic, Slate, Mother Jones, and Washington Monthly. Paul Krugman, the New York Times’s attack-pundit, conjectured that PolitiFact was “terrified of being considered partisan . . . so they’ve bent over backwards to appear ‘balanced’—and in the process made themselves useless and irrelevant.” On the merits, they have a point. Sure, saying Ryan’s reform “ends Medicare” is arguably inaccurate and certainly misleading. But to what extent is it a “lie”? The Medicare program is $30 trillion in debt. We simply can’t begin to address that fiscal black hole without ablating Medicare as it currently exists. Accordingly, Ryan has been fairly explicit about the need for fundamental change in the program. Anyone who’s honest about our fiscal predicament knows that “ending Medicare” in favor of a program structured differently is the point. To read more, you must be a Weekly Standard Subscriber We're Sorry,
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