Pants on Fire

It used to be that the news media included platoons of small, quiet mysterious people up the back of the newsroom or hiddeni in dusty offices full of reference books and magazines. These creatures were known as “fact-checkers”, and they would examine the detail of news stories to ensure an acceptable level of truth.

These days, most journalists are expected to check their own facts – it’s called “research”. Young reporters are taught to research as part of their role, and the research is now so much faster and easier with the internet, something not dreamed of when the role was first created, around a hundred years ago. There are still researchers within media organisations but rarely are there more than a handful, and smaller operations just can’t afford them.

Now, in the era when everyone outsources everything, some new companies are starting to spring to life. These companies offer a professional fact-checking service to anyone who wants to pay for it…and in recent weeks, plenty of people have been happy to pay experts to have facts checked.

In the age of the Internet and instant communication and open access, why is it necessary to have specialists check facts? Because it appears that people – particularly politicians, but also lobbyists and interest groups – may not always tell the truth, or may package the truth in order to obfuscate the meaning. That's before the news media has had a chance to add their spin. Not all do, but if you're not paying attention, it's hard to tell the difference between those who spin and those who report. For this reason, we need to check facts.

The perfect example in Australia was the Australian Christian Lobby’s Jim Wallace’s provocative statements that suggested that smoking cigarettes was healthier than pursuing a gay lifestyle. He even cited studies and statistics to support his argument. Crikey’s own Get Fact has looked at Mr Wallace’s “facts”  in considerable depth, and here’s their conclusion:
  So, while the gay population does appear to experience a disproportionate prevalence of negative health effects brought on by others, the evidence that gays die earlier than straights is dubious at best. Accordingly, we rate Wallace’s claims as mostly rubbish.

In the USA, it’s Convention Season, and although the Democratic Convention is continuing, their speakers’ speeches are being thoroughly checked. The  Republicans held their conference a couple of weeks ago. Their candidate for Vice President Paul Ryan, has been roundly criticized for all sorts of crimes against reality. In addition to his embarrassing lie about his best marathon time, Factcheck.org has identified several more inaccuracies in the speech during which he accepted the nomination to be Republican Candidate for Vice President under Mitt Romney.

TAMPA, Fla. — Paul Ryan’s acceptance speech at the Republican convention contained several false claims and misleading statements. Delegates cheered as the vice presidential nominee:

• Accused President Obama’s health care law of funnelling money away from Medicare “at the expense of the elderly.” In fact, Medicare’s chief actuary says the law “substantially improves” the system’s finances, and Ryan himself has embraced the same savings.

• Accused Obama of doing “exactly nothing” about recommendations of a bipartisan deficit commission — which Ryan himself helped scuttle.

• Claimed the American people were “cut out” of stimulus spending. Actually, more than a quarter of all stimulus dollars went for tax relief for workers.

• Faulted Obama for failing to deliver a 2008 campaign promise to keep a Wisconsin plant open. It closed less than a month before Obama took office.

• Blamed Obama for the loss of a AAA credit rating for the U.S. Actually, Standard & Poor’s blamed the downgrade on the uncompromising stands of both Republicans and Democrats.

• And when he wasn’t attacking Obama, Ryan was puffing up the record of his running mate, Mitt Romney, on taxes and unemployment.

FactCheck.org has also investigated Bill Clinton’s fact-laden speech from yesterday. Described by FactCheck.org as a fact-checker’s nightmare due to the sheer number of statistical and historical claims, they have nevertheless assessed the speech, and summarised it like this:
"Republicans will find plenty of Clinton’s scorching opinions objectionable. But with few exceptions, we found his stats checked out."


In Australia, we’re checking facts too. Here in Queensland, the new LNP Government’s Independent Audit of Queensland’s finances has been reviewed by Professor Bob Walker of the University of Sydney Business School, and found to be inadequate. Professor Walker is not a junior media staffer; he is an expert in the field. Steve Austin interviewed the Professor this morning.

This review should be of concern to all Queenslanders, as this report is the Government’s justification for the “essential” programme of cost-cutting, as well as being their answer to most questions.  If this review is correct, the LNP Government will have a hard time justifying the cuts they’re making to the public service, particularly today, when over 2700 jobs are being taken out of the Health Department.


In fairness, Professor Walker’s report was commissioned by Queensland Council of Trade Unions, and the report’s conclusions support the position most beneficial to the Trade Unions. Some listeners to Steve Austin’s interview this morning feel that because the results benefit the group that commissioned the report, the entire report lacks credibility. I find this criticism troublesome, as the Audit Report that was being investigated was commissioned by an LNP Government, and prepared by a former Coalition treasurer: the original Interim Report says what Premier Newman and his team need it to say in order to justify their criticism of the previous government.

If Professor Walker’s report is biased, so is Mr Costello’s audit.

But back to the USA for a moment, where the professional and amateur fact checkers are breaking records to score President Obama’s Acceptance Speech. With such a focus on fact-checking, several organisations are worth watching. For the best look at how American politicians are shaping up during the two months between now and election day, keep an eye on PolitiFact for broad coverage of who said what and who lied.

In Australia, there's not enough fact checking for my liking. Leigh Sales' interview with Tony Abbott proved that! But keep an eye on Crikey for their healthy cynicism and separation of fact from spin.

In any case, don’t believe everything you read on the internet, or see on television, unless it’s a live, real-time, unedited broadcast, but keep reading, keep watching and keep questioning.

Update: 9:00pm. President Obama's speech has been fact checked, and there are no major lies, although a few points could have benefitted from more information, clarification or context.

No Cure For Stupid

It’s been a rough couple of weeks for me, and to be honest, for most of the women in Australia, for most of our LGBTI community, for all public servants across the three eastern states, for intelligent people everywhere, and for anyone who prefers winter to summer. With the exception of the last one – the end of winter – the rest of our group ennui is the result of the stupid things high profile people say, and the probability that they actually mean it, and the all-too-real likelihood that things will continue to get stupider.


Who are these sayers of stupid things? Both men and women are represented, private business owners and elected officials, conservative and leftie, although in fairness, the vast majority of the stupid has come from middle aged white male conservative politicians and lobbyists.

I’ve talked about some of these instances before, but they deserve to be revisited in the context of even more stupidity, so let’s take a stroll back to…

August 22

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott was eviscerated by Leigh Sales on the ABC’s 7:30 programme. This interview stirred up more media reaction than we’ve seen since the last time Tony Abbott was made to look foolish by a ranga at 7:30 on a weeknight on ABC. It beggars belief that the alternative Prime Minister of Australia would be allowed to go on tellie to be interviewed about the details of a report he hadn’t read.

LEIGH SALES: I'm going on the facts that Marius Kloppers said today when he was directly asked if the decision on Olympic Dam was affected by Australia's tax situation and I'm going on the facts that are outlined in their results statement that they've issued. Have you actually read BHP's statements?

TONY ABBOTT: No, but I've also got again the statement of Jacques Nasser, who says, "While we're still evaluating the impact of the carbon tax, but it just makes it more difficult."

LEIGH SALES: But hang on, no, no, you haven't read their statements today, but you're commenting about what they've announced today and how the Federal Government's to blame for that.

August 23
Characteristically, Andrew Bolt had a unique perspective on that interview. Mr Bolt saw what the rest of us could not: Leigh Sales’ disgraceful disrespect, her shrill tones, sighs, eye rolls, accusations… The list of emotionally loaded descriptors rolls on as he refers to ABC journalists who are actually asking questions and expecting answers from the Leader of the Opposition as:

ANDREW BOLT: “…a recent in-house obsession of a small coterie of ABC Leftists.”

August 28
Meanwhile, in a radio interview with Hugh Hewitt, the newly announced Republican running mate Paul Ryan had a bit of a moment and fudged his marathon time by over an hour. It’s become a big deal because it was so easy to disprove, but it wasn’t alone in straying from reality. Ryan’s entire Convention speech has been scrutinized by armies of fact checkers and has found to be somewhat inventive. Now, it’s the marathon lie and the fact-checkers’ lists of inaccuracies that are the focus of Ryan’s world. How could he disregard the fact that as Republican VP Candidate, every breath is the subject of international attention?

The 42-year-old congressman has a reputation for telling "hard truths" about the US government's yawning fiscal deficit but his speech to last week's Republican convention was criticised for accuracy by independent fact checkers.

He accused President Barack Obama of failing to honour a campaign pledge to keep a Wisconsin car-making factory open. In fact, Mr Obama had made no such promise and the factory closed in December 2008 - a month before he took office.

August 30
Back to Tony Abbott and Leigh Sales and a new character in this comedy: Enter Grahame Morris, political strategist, commentator, and speech writer. On ABC702 in Sydney, another accomplished ABC journalist Linda Mottram was asking Mr Morris about the Leigh Sales interview, and in his response, amongst other things, he called Ms Sales a cow. Later, he apologised – but why did he say it in the first place? He’s had plenty of experience in front of a camera or open microphone. As for the apology, how’s this?


      “Poor little sensitive souls," he said, having been told of the feedback.

Asked whether he would have made the comment if Sales had been a male interviewer, Mr Morris said: "That's silly. It's a phrase I have used a million times that somebody can be a real cow when they want to be. Look, I apologise.”

August 30
Gina Rinehart has all the social and communication skills of an angry orang-utan. She put them on display yesterday for the world to see – and the world took notice. She may be unimaginably rich, cultured, softly spoken, articulate, but she’s also in the Homer Simpson class of insensitive. In a column she wrote for Australian Resources Magazine, she advised that anyone can become a millionaire if they work hard.

"If you're jealous of those with more money, don't just sit there and complain,” Rinehart wrote. “Do something to make more money yourself -- spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising, and more time working.”

Good advice from Our Gina, who has clearly worked very hard indeed after taking control of Hancock, and has been incredibly successful. When Mrs Rinehart took control of her father's company, she inherited a $75 million dollar head start. You and I can work as hard as we’re capable of working, but few of us are capable of earning that $75m from a scratch start, but once you've got that, it gets easier. 
 
August 31

Alan Jones’ incendiary comments about the women “destroying the joint” aren’t confined to Australia any more. The Guardian (UK) has reported the story, too. Jones’ remarkably misogynistic comment has become an internet meme and a rallying cry for women (and men) all over Australia. There’s a petition to boycott 2GB’s advertisers, reminiscent of the very successful petition to boycott 2DAY-FM’s advertisers in response to yet another Kyle Sandilands offence. #Destroythejoint trended on twitter on and off for over 24 hours, and now has its own Facebook page and there’s already a range of T-shirts and accessories carrying the phrase.

What’s that old saying? You can have as many opinions as you like, but you can’t have your own facts? Someone needs to tell Alan Jones. Not content with putting the shock in shock jock, he’s still in denial about climate change, and is working with Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate to undermine it. He has even drafted a letter that his listeners can use as the template for a letter of complaint to the Mayor, which includes the following:

“We were talking about the hoax that is the carbon dioxide tax and he was calling on councils to boycott it. Basically he said he's going to do everything he can to make sure his Council won't pay the tax.”

August 31

Meanwhile, back in Republican American, Clint Eastwood took twelve minutes to deliver a five minute speech which was supposed to support Mitt Romney, but was far more effective as a plea for senior citizens with mental health issues. He spent the bulk of the time berating an imaginary President Obama – in other words, talking at an empty chair. In fact, this shouldn’t be here. It’s not stupid; it’s art.

CLINT EASTWOOD (to an empty chair): “So anyway, we're going to have -- we're going to have to have a little chat about that. And then, I just wondered, all these promises -- I wondered about when the -- what do you want me to tell Romney... I can't tell him to do that. I can't tell him to do that to himself. You're crazy, you're absolutely crazy. You're getting as bad as Biden.”

September 5


It’s Gina again, back for another bite of the Attention-Seeker Cherry, and another opportunity to insult the thousands of people who work very hard to keep her in the style to which they would like to become accustomed. Apparently Australia is just too expensive and companies don’t want to invest here…which is why yesterday’s Annual Growth figures were head and shoulders and a few curly chest hairs above every other comparable country.

It seems that Ms Rinehart’s life would be immeasurably better if Australians were paid less – and then she stated that it was cheaper to do business in Africa, where she can exploit the underclasses for $2/day.

"Furthermore, Africans want to work and its workers are willing to work for less than $2 per day,'' Ms Rinehart says in the video. Such statistics make me worry for this country's future.''

Newsflash for Mrs Rinehart: they worry us, too. It’s a disgrace that she believes that paying workers so little because she can get away with it is at all acceptable. Shouldn't we be working to bring African employment standards up, not push ours down?

Always

There’s no one stupid thing that Queensland Premier Campbell Newman has said. There’s a gazillion. His becoming this year’s George W Bush. My personal favourite was his gleeful statement on Day 100 of his Premiership that he’d had fun. Woohoo! Delighted that he enjoyed threatening the jobs of every public sector worker in Queenslalnd; thrilled that he relished cutting vital programmes for Queensland’s most vulnerable; gratified that he’s prioritised the Gambling Industry and his former best mate Clive’s interests over those of the rest of Queensland.

In an interview with The Courier-Mail, Mr Newman said his first 100 days in office, had been "a lot of fun in most cases, and very, very rewarding to get on with what we'd said we'd do, particularly on the cost-of-living stuff".

But I am trying to limit myself to stupidity that’s occurred within the last fifteen days, so here goes: just today, Premier Newman made a complete arse of himself with this:

"The biggest thing we need to do, ladies and gentlemen, is create jobs," he told the assembled audience.

"Shelter, food, a job are the critical ingredients to advance all people, those are the things that give people dignity and self-respect.

"Those are the things that this Government is committed to."

Go tell it to the Public Servants whose jobs you're about to cut, and the former contractors and staffers who've already been shown the door. This government is committed to nothing except paying down the now infamous debt.  And Forever

Astonishingly, Jim Wallace head of the Australian Christian Lobby, gets the gong for the stupidest of all these absurd proclamations that I’ve heard recently, and that’s saying a lot. Just yesterday, he declared that smoking was healthier than the kind of lifestyle that gay marriage would bring. The statement was made during a debate with Christine Milne on same sex marriage. The number of ways in which this statement is entirely preposterous is higher than I can count.

Mr Wallace, an intelligent man and accomplished leader, tried to compare decrease in life expectancy between smokers and gay men. Gay men, he says, have higher rates of risky behaviour and suicide, and hence life expectancy is reduced by up to 20 years, compared with 10 years for smokers. Well, if your survey data on gay mortality came from San Francisco during the early years of the AIDs crisis, that’d be right. In September 2012, it’s irrelevant.

“We have to accept the unfortunate levels of suicide, the unfortunate levels of excessive drug use (are) because of the nature of the lifestyle.

“I am very sorry for that. My heart goes out to these people. But it is a fact.”

  I’d like to encourage Mr Wallace to consider the role that his organisation’s relentless isolation and condemnation of the LGBTI community has contributed. In a confounding case of wit, he described gay activism as “bullying”. How would he categorise his own behaviour towards the LGBTI public?

Today, Prime Minister Gillard finally got on board, and has cancelled her plans to speak at the ACL’s conference, and described Mr Wallace’s comments as “unacceptable.” Mr Wallace argued that he’d been misquoted. Misunderstood. The ACL has issued a release.

 
The Last Word

Lyle Shelton (@LyleShelton) of the ACL spent time last night energetically tweeting the rousing words of Bishop Anthony Fisher of Parramatta Diocese. Bishop Fisher is the one who announced his arrival in Parramatta by proclaiming that "Godlessness and secularity caused Naziism, Stalinism, mass murders and abortion..." Last night, Mr Shelton tweeted that the Bishop had said:

The sexual revolution has already damaged marriage. We should hold onto what is good and rebuild. – Bishop Fisher

In the midst of all of that, Mr Shelton tweeted this popular quote from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass.

When I use a word it means what I choose it to mean – Humpty Dumpty #marriage

Mr Shelton has tagged the tweet #marriage, so with due respect, no. Marriage does not mean what you choose it to mean for anyone except yourself. I get to choose what marriage means to me; Ross gets to choose what it means for him. Mandy gets to choose what it means for her. The rest of it is just ignorance and hatred.

Okay, I'm done for now. If you'd like to add to my list of stupid things, please do! Click the Comments link below, and rant away. 

Eve of Destruction

For much of the last 48 hours, Australian women have been talking about destroying the joint. Sounds like something Pete Townsend and his mates might've done to a hotel room 40 years ago. Instead, these are the words that radio shock jock Alan Jones used on Friday morning to describe our current Prime Minister, Victoria's former Police Commissioner and Sydney's Lord Mayor.

"She (the Prime Minister) said that we know societies only reach their full potential if women are politically participating," he told listeners.

"Women are destroying the joint - Christine Nixon in Melbourne, Clover Moore here. Honestly."

Is this really what Mr Jones thinks? That women are destroying the joint? That women are incapable of filling leadership positions? That it's wasteful to spend money on developing female candidates to participate in the political arena?

That's the context here. Mr Jones was joking with Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce about the sale of Cubbie Station, Australia's largest cotton farm, to foreign interests. Mr Jones thought it would be funny to point out that the amount Australia had pledged to assist women in the Pacific Region would have saved Cubbie from falling to foreign ownership.

Incidentally, the audio isn't crystal clear, but it does sound as though Senator Joyce may have described Prime Minister Gillard's grant to help the women of the South Pacific into leadership roles as "putting it up against the wall." He's no fan of the women either.

And before we move from Mr Jones and Senator Joyce, I'm wondering where in the Coalition Handbook does it mention that the federal government should step in and buy failing businesses like Cubbie Station? It must be in there somewhere, because Mr Jones and Senator Joyce both see it as a viable option. If I was to whisper the words "state-owned farms" into Barnaby's ear, I'm pretty sure the images in his mind would be grainy black and white shots of toothless peasants digging potatoes for the Greater Good.

I still can't quite believe that anyone, anywhere in the world, would say that "women are destroying the joint". There is nothing acceptable in that statement.

It wasn't the only comment of that ilk made this week. Liberal Party Thought-Leader Grahame Morris referred to ABC journalist Leigh Sales as a "cow" because she pushed Tony Abbott during a television interview.

Let's apply the Reverse Test here. If the journalist had been a man instead of a woman, and the questions and tone had been the same, would Mr Morris have called him a cow? For that matter, we should apply the Reverse Test to Mr Jones comments too. It's no secret that he doesn't like women...

At the same time, the Republican National Convention in Tampa was trying to diffuse the idea that they were waging a war against women. Their key arguments to prove the non-existence for the war on women was that candidate Mitt Romney had employed women in key roles in his campaign team. In the frantic days of the Convention, no-one was able to ask why. No-one was able to ask if he was paying these women what he'd pay men in the same roles. No-one was able to ask about his view of the never-passed Equal Rights Amendment that's been floating around Washington for 40-odd years.

We do know that Mr Romney privately supported limited rights to abortion. He's said so, but he's also said the opposite. He objects to various women's health issues being covered in "Obamacare" - in fact he objects to the entire scheme - and he introduced a similar version in his home stats of Massachusetts, prior to the federal scheme.

It's only weeks since Republican Todd Akin exposed his ignorance by suggesting that rape victims rarely became pregnant because the female body would just stop that from happening. He's wrong to the tune of about 32,000 rape-related pregnancies per year in the USA, and has been chastised by Governor Romney for saying it.

Now, his statement has been defended by a female Republican Party official, Sharon Barnes, who said she believes Akin only "phrased it (his statement) badly."

Barnes was quoted by The New York Times saying, "abortion is never an option." Barnes went on to biblically claim that, "If God has chosen to bless this person [the rape victim] with a life, you don’t kill it."

No Ms Barnes, it wasn't phrased badly. Todd Akin's statement is factually incorrect. As for Ms Barnes' statement, I hesitate to use the word "bless" in relation to the product of violent sexual abuse.

Governor Romney's running mate Paul Ryan is far more conservative than even the Mormon Romney, which is one of the reasons he was selected. He is rock-solid in his anti-abortion stance, where his pro-life record was reported on Al Jazeera, earning screaming fits of rage from the Ryan-loving, Muslim hating Tea Party crowd. While he's not waging war on women, he also voted against the Fair Pay Act, and wants to make some forms of contraception, and IVF illegal.

It's chicken-and-egg question: are you a conservative because you have issues relating to women, or does being a conservative cause the problems with women? Probably neither; most likely, the conservative attitude towards women is just one of a complex series of values that defines conservatism.

I use the word "values" deliberately. It's a word most closely associated with conservative politics. Add the word "Christian" and you're defining the voter base of the Republican Party in America and to a lesser degree, the Liberal Party in Australia. I find the term "values voters" to define conservatives quite ridiculous: it suggests that the more progressive you are, the further to the left you move, the less "values" you have.

Oftentimes, the opposite is true. Those to the right, the conservatives, tend to be driven more by economic policy than issues of morality and ethics, while the true lefties are always concerned with values first. Lefties will vote according to policies on gay rights, the environment, and government support for the most vulnerable in our society: disabled, elderly, sick, poor, illiterate, and those outside our society via asylum seeker, refugee and foreign aid. These are the true values of most religions: hope, charity, generosity, sharing, loving.

How do conservative women sleep at night?

In any case, the question of a woman's place in society is still a dividing line between the political right and left in 2012. I'm genuinely appalled. I thought this fight was all but over. I thought we'd moved onto other, less basic fights: fat acceptance, anti-bullying, mental health, gay marriage. But I'm wrong, and we need the next generation of women activists - and our male supporters - to get this womens' issues back on the national agenda.