Discussion: PolitiFact's Lie Of The Year: Mass (Conservative) Hysteria Over Ebola

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Discussion for article #231222

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The exploding infected ISIS militant disguised as a 10-year old Guatemalan child was one of my favorites.

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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.

And though PolitiFact doesn’t say it, most of their named 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.

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.

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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?

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Yes, same with ISIS. Mostly gone from the media.

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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.

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Senator Randie Paul, is, a doctor? My eye Doctor, who is in his second, maybe, third childhood, loves him, and my gm doctor’s office is across the street from where his, “Dr.” Paul’s, office was; they tore the building down after he left for Washington. It’s now a parking lot. This is frightening, because there are a lot of doctors gone right-wing politicians now. It’s time to question the medical system, REALLY!

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Ebolarolla.

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You haven’t been paying attention to how the GOP works.

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Indeed. Rand Paul is a “board certified ophthalmologist.” Of course the board that certified him is the “National Ophthalmology Board" which no longer exists. Interestingly enough, Rand Paul created the “National Ophthalmology Board" so that he could become a “board certified ophthalmologist.”

Kinda creepy and absolutely true.

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My point was that “hysteria” is not the same thing as a lie. Nearly all of the statements that they pointed to were factual - they might have been talked about it more than necessary, but repeatedly making true statements about a topic that doesn’t need much coverage doesn’t somehow make it false. The one major exception was the claim that people were bringing ebola across the southern border - but that didn’t get enough coverage to justify it being the lie of the year alone.

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Every time PolitiFact exercises subjective judgment it damages what little credibility it has left.

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The Republicans were deliberately creating a lie by stressing only the points that supported mass hysteria. Politifact called them on it. Deal with it. Don’t pretend it didn’t happen. My belief is that the lie was both deliberate and orchestrated.

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Imagine if this country responded to diabetes and obesity the way it responded to a handful of Ebola cases.

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they used their ebola hysteria as a major part of their campaign. they earned this lie of the year award.

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Meanwhile, I’ve spent the day talking to chicken hawks about why they think torture and any other means of fighting terrorism are absolutely justified because of big scary men with knives making snuff videos. I’ve come to the conclusion that you’ll never find a bigger bunch of pants wetting crybabies than right-wingers no matter how hard you look.

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Mostly gone from the media, but still scary enough to the chicken hawks to justify giving the CIA permission to do pretty much anything if it keeps us “safer”. Facepalm

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Who knew the cure (for the lie or for Ebola - you decide) was a mid-term election with Republicans taking control?

I mean, besides everybody?

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Yeah, well, I got to keep my doctor. So, there you go.

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So, Mission Accomplished?