Tag Archives: Supreme Court

TV News Record: Fox on CNN, getting Gorsuch right + fact-checks

We changed our name! Our weekly updates from the TV News Archive are now titled TV News Record, to reflect our goal of providing many ways for viewers to put the news in context, whether through fact checks from our national fact-checking partners, visualizations of patterns of news coverage, or other ways of using TV news metadata to deepen analysis of the news.

This week we present fact-checks by fact-checking groups of claims about gang arrests, fraudulent votes, the Russia investigations, and Medicaid. But first, some observations about cable news coverage of news this week and realized hopes for the newest Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch by the religious right.

Fox devotes most air time to CNN story retraction 

In a stark reminder of how which cable channel you watch affects what news you see, Dave Weigel of The Washington Post noted this week that while health care was big news on Capitol Hill Tuesday evening, Fox cable stations were busy reporting on the fallout over a retracted story by CNN related to Russia investigations: “The network’s prime-time shows, ratings kings of cable news, ignored the health-care story,” he wrote. Meanwhile, “The CNN story, sparked by a retracted report on Russia and Trump and inflamed by the sting video, sprawled across multiple segments.”

Weigel’s analysis is borne out by plugging key search terms into the Television Explorer, a tool built by data scientist Kalev Leetaru fueled by TV News Archive data. Search for the term “retraction” near “story” over the 72-hour period ending on June 30, and Fox news dominates.

A search for “retraction” near “story” over 72 hour period ending at 10:20 am ET, June 30, 2017.

The converse is also true: a similar search for “health care” near “Senate” yielded the following results, with CNN  devoting the most attention to the story, and more than four times as much as Fox News did.

“Health care” near “Senate,” 72 hour period ending 10:20 am ET, June 30 2017.

Such searches are easily done on Television Explorer. With the explosion of coverage over the past 24 hours about President Donald Trump’s tweets about MSNBC “Morning Joe” co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, we’re keeping on eye on this search of “Trump” near “tweet.” Questions? Contact tvnews@archive.org.

Getting Gorsuch right

In the lead up to the Senate’s confirmation of Neil Gorsuch as the newest member of the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year, many commentators noted that his appeal to conservatives was enhanced by his stance on religious issues. With the conclusion of the Court’s term on Monday, Gorsuch’s champions were vindicated with his decisions in such matters as Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer, in which Gorsuch sided with the majority affirming that a church was eligible for public funding to build a playground. Here is CNN reporter Ariane de Vogue back in April 2017 explaining why the case matters:

And now on to this week’s highlighted TV news fact-checks.

Claim: MS-13 gang members are being deported by the thousands (hundreds)

At a rally speech in Iowa on June 21, President Trump said of MS-13, “They don’t like to shoot people. They like to cut people. They do things that nobody can believe. These are true animals. We are moving them out of the country by the thousands, by the thousands. We’re getting them out, MS-13.”

Michelle Ye Hee Lee reported for the Washington Post’s Fact Checker that while the Trump administration has increased enforcement against gang activity, deportations “are in the hundreds, not the thousands, under Trump.”  The reporters at FactCheck.org concurred, and quoted Danielle Bennett, a spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who said the agency “does not track gang removals by specific gang.”

Claim: People hired for independent Russia investigations are all Hillary supporters (mostly false)

In a recent TV interview, President Trump said “I can say that the people that have been hired (for the independent Russia investigation) are all Hillary Clinton supporters, some of them worked for Hillary Clinton.”

For PolitiFact, Manuela Tobias reported “Three of the eight available Mueller hires made campaign contributions to Clinton, which undermines Trump’s statement that all are Clinton supporters. Furthermore, none of them have worked for Clinton directly. Two represented either the Clinton Foundation or an aide, never her, and working for WilmerHale, which has also represented key members of Trump’s White House.”

You’re grandfathered in if you became a Medicaid recipient under Obamacare (mostly false)

White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said on Sunday about the proposed GOP health care legislation, “If you became a Medicaid recipient through the Obamacare expansion, you are grandfathered in.”

Joshua Gillin reported for PolitiFact, “The ‘grandfathered expansion enrollees’ would have to maintain near-continuous coverage, with no breaks of more than a month, in order to get the higher rate.” He continued, “Continuous coverage can be hard for Medicaid recipients to maintain. Medicaid patients have to continuously provide proof of income, and if a patient goes over the income limit, they lose coverage. This is a concept known as churning.”

Claim: 5.7 million undocumented immigrants might have voted in 2008 (wrong)

On a recent morning show, Fox co-host Ainsley Earhardt said of the 2008 election, “5.7 million – that’s how many illegal immigrants might have voted.”

According to Amy Sherman at PolitiFact, “Trump has made repeated claims about massive voter fraud and election rigging, which we’ve debunked again and again and again and again and again and again and again (and we debunked a claim by his spokesman Sean Spicer).” She goes on to explain that the figure used by Earhardt “is based on an extrapolation of a controversial study that relied on a very small number of responses. Researchers involved in the underlying survey of voters have cautioned against using their data to reach conclusions about noncitizen voters.”

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TV news fact-checked: Trump’s first 100 days

To mark his 100th day in office, President Donald Trump made several public appearances and released a campaign-style political ad. Here are some fact-checked claims from those televised interviews,  speeches, as well as the ad, all viewable and shareable on the TV News Archive.

Fact-checked TV news clips on the TV News Archive. Click, watch, and share: https://archive.org/details/factchecked

Fact-checking Trump’s first 100 days campaign ad

President Donald Trump put his stamp of approval on this ad, which includes several factual claims. Among them: “Fact: 500,000-plus jobs created,” and “America becoming more energy independent,” while the words “Keystone Pipeline” are shown on screen.

“Using just the two months on his watch–February and March–the U.S. economy created 317,000 jobs, not 500,000,” reported Louis Jacobson for PolitiFact.

“Samantha Gross, a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Energy Security and Climate Initiative… notes that she doesn’t think approving the pipeline was a bad decision…  ‘We’ve made it easier and efficient to ship that crude down to the states,’ though [sic.] the pipeline, ‘but as far as changing energy independence, I don’t think so,’ she said,” Lori Robertson reported for FactCheck.org.

Claim: first time in modern era a Supreme Court justice confirmed in first 100 days (mostly true)

At the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in Georgia on April 28, Trump said, “For the first time in the modern political era, we have confirmed a new justice in the first 100 days. The last time that happened was 136 years ago, in 1881. Now, we won’t get any credit for this, but don’t worry about it.”

This statement was rated “mostly true” by PolitiFact’s Lauren Carroll. “Trump has his history right. He is indeed the first modern president to fill an open Supreme Court seat within the first 100 days.” She went on to report “The reality is that very few presidents are presented with the opportunity to appoint and confirm a new Supreme Court justice within their first 100 days… Trump is the only one of the group who entered office with a vacant Supreme Court seat from the start—meaning he had a full 100 days to nominate and confirm his pick.”

Claim: U.S. has a $17 billion trade deficit with Canada (no, it’s a surplus)

President Trump sat down with FOX’s Martha MacCallum for their “The First 100 Days” interview. In it, Trump said “The trade deficit with Mexico is close to $70 billion, even with Canada it’s $17 billion trade deficit with Canada.”

The reporters at FactCheck.org, though, found that “For the second year in a row, the U.S. had a trade surplus with Canada. In 2016, the U.S. had an $8.1 billion trade surplus in goods and services with Canada, up nearly 33 percent from the $6.1 billion surplus in 2015.”

Claim: Trump has negative media coverage because reporters donated to Clinton (misleading)

The president spoke to a large crowd in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he cited a study by the conservative Media Research Center talking about negative coverage of his administration. He then suggested the reason was “perhaps that’s because, according to the Center for Public Integrity, 96 percent of journalists who made donations in the last election gave them to our opponent.”

FactCheck.org reported that the Center for Public Integrity study showed “that about 430 people ‘who work in journalism’ contributed about $382,000 to the Clinton campaign through August, compared with about 50 journalists who contributed $14,000 to Trump. Notably, however, the study did not find that any journalists responsible for covering the White House, Congress or national politics made political contributions of any kind.”

Claim: people with pre-existing conditions are covered in the House GOP health care bill (unclear)

In an interview for CBS’s Face the Nation, President Trump said, “Pre-existing conditions are in the bill. And I just watched another network than yours, and they were saying, ‘Pre-existing is not covered.’ Pre-existing conditions are in the bill. And I mandate it. I said, ‘Has to be.'”

PolitiFact’s Amy Sherman reviewed and rated this claim “mostly false,” reporting “Overall, the latest proposal seems to weaken existing protections for people with pre-existing conditions, not strengthen them.”

An amendment was proposed since then, and Glenn Kessler summarized the new proposal for the Washington Post’s Fact Checker, writing, “if the bill ever became law, much would depend on unknown policy decisions by individual states–and then how those decisions are implemented.” This proposal had a House vote yesterday, Thursday, and passed.

How to find Trump’s 100th-day TV news appearances

To review the 100 days interviews and speeches yourself and grab the clips you want, check out this Fox interview in two parts, the Harrisburg, PA speech, the NRA address, the Face the Nation interview in two parts, the “CBS This Morning” interview in two parts, and Trump’s weekly address.

Trump’s Harrisburg address, as seen in context in the TV News Archive. Note Trump icon on top left, showing this show is part of the Trump Archive.

To peruse all the fact-checking work our partners have done on statements made on TV and archived in the TV News Archive, take a look at this table of more than 800 fact-checks of Donald Trump, his administration, and some congressional leaders. This collection will continue to grow as we develop the congressional collections, add more administration official statements, and integrate new statements and reporting.

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