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Does the media have a double standard on Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s embellishments?
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are fighting about Clinton's assertion that videos of Trump are being used to recruit Islamic State terrorists. Trump wants an apology for what Clinton said during Saturday’s Democratic debate; Clinton’s campaign says “Hell, no.” And that’s an actual quote.
But there’s also a wrestling match in the media over whether Clinton’s claim is completely false, just slightly off-base, or even right on the money.
Many fact-checkers, including ours, have taken Clinton to task for saying that the Islamic State is “going to people, showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists.” So far, there is no evidence that Islamic State recruiters are using video of Trump’s anti-Muslim remarks — a finding conservative media outlets have trumpeted as proof that Clinton lied. Some have gleefully cited a recruiting video that features images not of Trump but of presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
But Rita Katz, executive director of the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors social media activities of Islamic terrorist groups, told The Washington Post Fact Checker that, through social media, “ISIS supporters and recruiters have used Trump’s rhetoric to promote ISIS’s ideas and agenda.”
That’s close enough for the liberal watchdog Media Matters, which wagged its finger at much of the press for having “fixated on Clinton’s specific statement that the terrorists use Trump’s comments in recruitment ‘videos.’” Her broader point — that Trump is an Islamic State recruiting tool — still stands, the site argued. The Huffington Post also downplayed Clinton’s imprecision, reporting that she merely “stretched the truth a bit,” while suggesting that Trump might very well show up in Islamic State videos in the future. (My take: That would make Clinton a clairvoyant, not a liar, which seems a little too generous.) And Mediaite went so far as to claim total vindication for Clinton, based on Katz’s social media analysis, asserting that journalists who called her statement false “all owe her an apology, especially Politifact.”
http://tinyurl.com/hd2ssve
But there’s also a wrestling match in the media over whether Clinton’s claim is completely false, just slightly off-base, or even right on the money.
Many fact-checkers, including ours, have taken Clinton to task for saying that the Islamic State is “going to people, showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists.” So far, there is no evidence that Islamic State recruiters are using video of Trump’s anti-Muslim remarks — a finding conservative media outlets have trumpeted as proof that Clinton lied. Some have gleefully cited a recruiting video that features images not of Trump but of presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
But Rita Katz, executive director of the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors social media activities of Islamic terrorist groups, told The Washington Post Fact Checker that, through social media, “ISIS supporters and recruiters have used Trump’s rhetoric to promote ISIS’s ideas and agenda.”
That’s close enough for the liberal watchdog Media Matters, which wagged its finger at much of the press for having “fixated on Clinton’s specific statement that the terrorists use Trump’s comments in recruitment ‘videos.’” Her broader point — that Trump is an Islamic State recruiting tool — still stands, the site argued. The Huffington Post also downplayed Clinton’s imprecision, reporting that she merely “stretched the truth a bit,” while suggesting that Trump might very well show up in Islamic State videos in the future. (My take: That would make Clinton a clairvoyant, not a liar, which seems a little too generous.) And Mediaite went so far as to claim total vindication for Clinton, based on Katz’s social media analysis, asserting that journalists who called her statement false “all owe her an apology, especially Politifact.”
http://tinyurl.com/hd2ssve
7 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Trump is a tool
