Fact Check for Yourself

Oh how I love Fox news and there band of merry purveyors of untruths. I'll just list a couple that happen in the last few days. The real problem, that I see, is that there are millions of viewer believing everything that come out of Fox with out checking on the validity of what they hear. Here is just a few examples of what I mean.

On March 4 Bill O'Rielly played a clip of ,the then candidate, Obama saying "We are going to ban all earmarks, the process by which individual members insert pet projects without review." Then O'Rielly states that he just signed the budget that had 9000 earmarks in it. O'Rielly was misrepresenting what Obama had said. Obama was referring to his desire to "ban all earmarks" from his "recovery and reinvestment plan," which he specifically distinguished from "the overall budget process." But if you don't follow up on what all of these talking heads saying is fact, you would just take what O'Rielly on face value.

Brian Kilmeade on Fox and Friends falsely said that President Obama has proposed eliminating the ability of taxpayers to take income tax deductions for their charitable contributions. Which is false. Obama has not proposed eliminating the charitable donation income tax deduction for any taxpayers. Rather, a provision in Obama's budget proposal would, beginning in fiscal year 2011, reduce the tax rate at which families earning more than $250,000 per year can take itemized deductions to 28 percent. Once again if you didn't look around and you take it at face value they you are misinformed.

Fox News' Special Report hosts Bret Baier and Megyn Kelly, respectively, misrepresented the reported plans of the Obama administration to reverse the Bush administration regulation to falsely state that the Obama administration's decision could result in doctors' being prosecuted or discriminated against for refusing to perform abortions. But the real story is that Federal law -- which the Obama administration cannot repeal, states that the regulation which prohibits public officials from requiring recipients of public funds to perform abortions or sterilizations in violation of their religious or moral beliefs. Similarly, federal law prohibits entities receiving public funds from discriminating against personnel who refuse to perform those procedures for those reasons. Check it out right here.

These are but a few of the stories that are being spread around the news. Fox is a big purveyor of these false stories, but it is other news organizations are doing similar misinformation as well. So just don't rely on the talking heads check it out for yourselves. The Internet is a wonderful place for information just go out and find it.