Originally posted by Mysti-ken:...And therefore, IMO, quoting or referencing partisan journalists as a means to support or legitamize your argument should carry no weight.
Fair enough, though I was running short on time to dig deeper and find more reviews on the topic. He's what one supposed impartial political watchdog had to say about Cheney and Halliburton:
BTW - my comments above were directed at all posters here that support their position with partisan journalism and not you specifically.
Having said that, by using the term "supposed" you seem to indicate you doubt the impartiality of factcheck.org - do you?
Their mission and value statement makes it quite clear that this is their goal about factcheck - I guess it is for others to decide to what degree they succeed. For my part, a quick review of their articles since December 2003 suggests they are equally critical of both campaigns which is by no means absolute proof of impartiality, but it is a good indication.
Additionally, there are a number of articles that conclude they (factcheck)don't have enough information to conclude truth or not; which IMO is true to their stated journalistic and scholarly processes.
Interestingly, a quick search on this entire thread found only one reference to factcheck.org (yours in your previous post)and you referenced it rather selectively I think, to support the conclusions of an article that IMO could reasonably be called partisan. Although perhaps a little disingenuous on your part, it nonetheless does not invalidate your assertions in this case. ;-)
I think the difficult thing for both camps is that factcheck.org is highly critical of both parties ... so one is rather forced to accept their impartiality for good and bad references to their candidate; or for neither - which seems to be the case for the most part. After all, who wants to hear that both candidates for the Presidency are either out and out lying or grossly misleading the electorate? Although much more dangerous IMO, it seems easier for most people to believe that one candidate is lying/misleading about everything, and the other is nothing more than a victim of a specious campaign.
The degree to which mindless, irrelevant, misleading, malicious, and personal attacks on both candidates is influencing voters, is IMO hugely destructive to the democratic process.
And the degree to which, not only the campaigners, but also and especially the popular media is guilty of gross manipulation, is IMO a terrible indictment of the current American political environment.
Borrowing and paraphrasing a line from science: how can you trust the outcome if you can't trust the process?
Memo: the following are the errors in reasoning that I have identified so far in this thread and I probably missed quite a few: ad consequentiam, ad hominem, ad ignorantiam, ad misericordiam, ad verecundiam, questionable premise, straw man, suppressed evidence, sweeping generalization, tu quoque, unfalsifiability, biased statistic, weak analogy, willed ignorance, stereotyping.
Excellent tools to bash the opposition with, not so good if the goal is an honest, open and constructive dialogue on the pros and cons of two different positions.
