PolitiFact sometimes looks more like it is playing word games than verifying facts. Bill McCarthy called Sean Hannity, Fox News’ Fox News Star, “False” on Monday. But this is what they did: They very carefully quoted one sentence.
Conservatives have gained more Twitter followers since the deal was announced with Elon Musk. This is because “Twitter lifted anti-conservative, antiTrump shadow ban.”
It was the subhead “Sean Hannity takes false credit conservative Twitter follower gains to lifting of ‘shadow ban’.” PolitiFact did not include some important words at the top of the article, although they accurately quoted the same later.
“It almost seems as though Twitter employees are tweeting. lifted a broad anti-conservative, anti-Trump shadow ban, which we all knew was taking place anyway, in an effort to cover their tracks before the new boss takes over,” Hannity said in the April 27 segment. While Twitter now claims there’s nothing illegal at work here, it’s been saying that since before. (Emphasis mine.)
In fact, at the top of the article PolitiFact claims Hannity’s fib was on a “May 27, 2022 TV segment,” which was off by a month.
Bryan White (or @ZebraFactCheck), noted the tweet “games” This was his thread:
The English common hedge “It’s almost if” is the use of this phrase. The term is most commonly used to express a working hypothesis rather than to say that the following facts are true. This is what a fact-checker cannot figure out. PolitiFact, that’s who.
PolitiFact actually verified that Sen. Murphy, a Democratic-Conn. Senator, said: “It almost seems as if there are two federal governments.” No. You are not saying that it is true by using the phrase “It’s almost as though” Duh.
Notable is also the fact that PolitiFact’s headline quote from Hannity omits “employees”, but does not use an ellipsis in order to inform readers of this omission. Why is this? Incompetence?
McCarthy then goes on to reduce the quotation as it was at the beginning of the article.
Hannity stated that conservatives have gained Twitter followers since Musk’s deal was announced because Twitter lifted an anti-conservative and anti-Trump shadow banning.
Shady word games
It New York PostAccording to reports, some conservative accounts saw huge increases in their followers over the past week. Donald Trump Jr. saw a rise of over 200K — Hannity made that point just before Hannity said the “It’s almost if” line. Ron DeSantis was up more than 200,000 and Tucker Carlson, over 140,000. It is not permissible to guess the reason for this.
Part of it could simply mean that Twitter users who became discouraged by conservatives after the suppression and riot on January 6, 2012, were reactivated. After Musk purchased the company, Mark Levin signed up again. Conservatives cannot speculate as to what’s going on behind the scenes at Twitter, but they are allowed to make their own guesses.
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