Custom Search

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Obama's First Campaign Television Ad Gets Four Pinocchios By Wapo Fact Checker

By Susan Duclos

[Update] Wapo has revised it's ruling and lowered it to three Pinocchios:

We love ads that cite fact checkers, but President Obama’s first campaign ad contains a real blooper. It cites a positive fact check by PolitiFact, while ignoring a subsequent column taking away that original ruling. (UPDATE: There were two PolitiFact rulings that same day, and Obama choose the one most favorite, so we are revising our original ruling.)
[End Update]

While the New York Times' The Caucus blog headlines with "Obama Fights Back Against Koch Brothers in New Ad," The Washington Post actually checks the facts of the first televised Obama campaign ad of the season and gives it one of the worst ratings of Four Pinocchios.

The Pinocchio Test

The suggestion that Obama was responsible for the 2.7 million clean-energy jobs or the decline in foreign oil imports is bad enough, though the ad does not directly claim that. But if you are going to quote fact checkers, you need to get your facts straight. PolitiFact began to pull back its positive assessment of Obama’s ethics actions almost as soon as it issued it. The Obama campaign should not be citing the original assessment in its ads.

Four Pinocchios






The Four Pinocchio Obama ad can be seen here.

Team Obama is starting the way he means to continue in his reelection campaign..... by lying to the American people.

.