Facebook’s fact-checking of a Senior Economist from the American Institute of Economic Research was criticized by free speech advocates. The economist had been spreading false information. The platform flagged the economist for — get this — correctly defining the word “recession.”
“It is absolutely Orwellian,” economist Philip Magness said on the Aug. 1 edition of Fox & Friends First. What was Magness’s heinous thought-crime, exactly? Magness said he posted a screenshot of the White House’s attempts to redefine the word “recession” in a now infamous July 21 blog post. The White House released its post just days ahead of the July 28 Bureau of Economic Analysis report revealing GDP fell for the second quarter in a row, which meets the main description of a recession used during the “past century,” Magness said.
Even comedian Conan O’Brian mocked the White House in a viral post on Twitter July 27: “The White House now says it’s only a recession if you see a salamander wearing a top hat.”
The White House now says it’s only a recession if you see a salamander wearing a top hat.
— Conan O’Brien (@ConanOBrien) July 27, 2022
PolitiFact, a fact-checking partner of Facebook, flagged Magness’s post, he said. This Pravda-like organization stepped in and began “carrying water on behalf of the White House for political reasons, not economic reasons,” he added.
This is the same PolitiFact that engaged in a battle of wits with the artificial intelligence-powered Siri on the true definition of the word “recession.” At the time this article was published, Siri still defined a “recession” as “a period of temporary economic decline during which trade and industrial activity are reduced, generally identified by a fall in GDP of two successive quarters.”
Magness explained that he simply posted a screenshot of the White House’s own blog post on recession. He later added that his post going viral was an example of “sunlight” being “the best disinfectant,” in this case, for PolitiFact’s political defense of the Biden administration. Facebook did not respond to MRC Business’s request for comment.
The economist said his post “drew attention to the fact that [PolitiFact is]Instead of checking the facts, they use political rhetoric. They’re stepping in and becoming partisan actors here.”
Magness also commented on President Joe Biden’s so-called “Inflation Reduction Act.” The plan will cost a mammoth $670 billion if passed, according to Forbes.
Whether it’s recession or inflation, this is just more of the same for the Biden administration’s ineffective economic policy, Magness said. “The real problem here is they ignored inflation as an issue for basically the last year,” he said. “They were calling it ‘tranistory,’ they were pretending it would just magically go away.”
“Now, they’re finding themselves above nine percent year-over-year [as]The projected inflation rate is being estimated and they are trying to catch-up but very inefficiently. They just go back to old tax-andspend habits which have been part of the Joe Biden agenda since the beginning.
Conservatives are being attacked. Suggest to PolitiFact that it fact-check its own website for wrongly defining the word “recession” using This form.
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