Media Matters Daily Summary 08-30-09

Wallace's "fact check" ignores his prior "death book" falsehoods, advances new one
Purporting to "fact check" an interview with assistant secretary of Veterans Affairs Tammy Duckworth from the previous week's edition of Fox News Sunday about an end-of-life educational booklet used by the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), Chris Wallace falsely claimed, "The VHA handbook specifically mentions only one document, 'Your Life, Your Choices,' " which he noted "critics call the death book." Wallace's "fact check" segment in no way addressed several distortions and falsehoods he and former Bush administration aide Jim Towey advanced during an interview on the booklet that also aired during the August 23 broadcast. Read More

John King provides a forum for Hatch's public option misinformation
On State of the Union, CNN's John King allowed Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) to baselessly claim that "the vast majority of people" don't support the creation of a public health insurance option, and that the public option would cost "four to five hundred billion dollars" which would be taken "out of Medicare." In fact, most recent polls indicate that a plurality or majority of respondents support a public option, and the Congressional Budget Office has found that the public option proposed in health reform legislation by the Senate health committee -- on which Hatch sits -- would "not have a substantial effect on the cost" of the bill. Read More

In NY Times op-ed, Finder finds contradiction in consistent statements to assert Holder flip-flopped
The New York Times published an op-ed by Joseph Finder, who contrasted statements Attorney General Eric Holder made in 2002 and in 2008 to suggest that after originally stating that the United States government should not extend rights consistent with the Geneva Convention to detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Holder subsequently flip-flopped. But Holder's comments are completely consistent; Finder suggests otherwise by reporting Holder's 2002 statement that detainees were "not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention," but ignoring his statement later in the same interview that they are nonetheless "entitled to be treated in a very humane way and almost consistent with all of the dictates of the Geneva Convention." Read More