During President Barack Obama's speech on health care last week, Representative Joe Wilson (R-SC) yelled out, "You lie!" while Obama himself was trying to address rumors on whether illegal immigrants would get publicly funded health care.
Even if we ignore the absolute rudeness of this outburst, we still need to answer the question of "Who is really lying?" This is not the only recent example of two completely separate realities being pushed on us. This summer's death panel rumors, largely amplified by a careless media, did little to offer us a serious debate on a very important issue. We often find that such misdirection hurts progress and is better quickly weeded out for more important issues.
The likelihood that a major politician would plan the murder of anyone's grandmother is about as likely as your grandma being abducted by aliens. And yet, so many people take it for granted that mythical "death panels are part of some great liberal conspiracy" while correctly dismissing UFO kooks out of hand. We owe it to ourselves, as well as to our fellow citizens, to be careful about what we believe and to not trust any one source. If we want to continue to improve our society, we need to find out the truth so that we may have an honest debate. We should never be afraid to fact-check our politicians.
Normally, we rely on the media to help us in our quest for the truth. However, with the modern day media, we often find that online sources such as blogs, tweets and partisan Web sites make up a large part of our news diet. There is no standard mode of operation in this new environment, and quality is extremely variable. Making it worse is that traditional media will often take sources from online blogs in order to prove their points, but in doing so they are subject to whatever standards are represented from the online world. Even without the "new media," the 24-hour news cycle creates a thirst for sensationalism that can often hurt integrity. Add to this the fact that in today's media marketplace there is a thirst for partisan news that has created a market for "Fair and Balanced" media outlets whose programming is anything but. To be clear, this happens on both sides of the aisle, and while it might feel good to listen to someone who agrees with your bias, it is our job to keep them honest.
As concerned citizens, we need to be ever vigilant that we are not just buying into a view that agrees with us just because it agrees with us. If we spend all our time watching Fox News, we should take some time to watch MSNBC occasionally. However, that does not mean that all points of view are equal. Often we find that news organizations wish to provide the appearance of a story and will frame debates between guests in such a way so as to imply that both sides have a valid point of view. And this would make sense in many political debates where the debate is philosophical in nature, but it also gives unnecessary airtime to conspiracy theorists, such as the birthers, who believe that Obama was not born a citizen. It is not likely that there will be a change in the news culture any time soon, so it is left to us to use our minds to verify any claims that may be put forward.
Of course, Google and Wikipedia are helpful, but in using them we are often left unsure about the validity of the sources used. There are two major sites respectively on both sides of the aisle that try to fact check the media and our politicians: Politifact.com and Factcheck.org. Politifact, run by the St. Petersburg Times, does a great job of looking into statements made by both sides of our political spectrum. To keep the left at bay, Politifact keeps an Obameter, which measures about 500 different campaign promises that Obama made on the campaign and tells whether he has acted upon, compromised or broken any. Politifact has done a wonderful job of debunking statements made by the birther movement and tracking lies and rumors made about the health care reform proceedings. Factcheck is a project out of the University of Pennsylvania, which is best known for its verification of Obama's birth certificate. While Factcheck did come to Obama's aid in this instance, they have never shied away from pointing out the spin that can come from the left, too.
So who was actually lying last week? Well, it seems to actually be a pretty clear-cut situation. Checking both the sites above we find that Obama is telling the truth and that Representative Wilson was in fact lying. It seems that in this case many of the bills being debated are very explicit about not providing health care for illegal immigrants, and this is also true of the version that the Obama administration is backing. Even if you were on the side of health care reform in this debate, the point is worth verifying. Politics is about persuasion, and it is the job of the politician to sell his point of view. Even if we agree with the basic philosophy of our public servants, we should always do some basic fact checking - it is for our good and for the good of our nation.