[Air-l] fact checking

[Nancy Baym]

A couple of interesting follow ups on this --

Soros does not own the domain factcheck.com, the people who did own 
that domain (in the Caymen Islands) apparently heard the debate, got 
tens of thousands of hits immediately, and redirected it to the Soros 
site of their own initiative (much to Soros's surprise and delight, 
apparently).

Those who went to the other domain that Cheney meant to reference, 
factcheck.org, were greeted with this headline:

Bush Mischaracterizes Kerry's Health Plan
10.04.2004

Bush claims Kerry's plan puts "bureaucrats in control" of medical 
decisons, "not you, not your doctor." But experts don't agree with 
that.


Nancy



>Cheney Blunder Lauded Anti-Bush Web Site
>
>By Joanne Kenen
>
>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney probably did not 
>intend to direct millions of television viewers to a Web site 
>calling for President Bush's defeat but that's what a slip of the 
>domain achieved. Anyone who heeded Cheney's advice and clicked on 
>"factcheck.com" was greeted on Wednesday morning with a message from 
>anti-Bush billionaire investor George Soros entitled "Why we must 
>not reelect President Bush." "President Bush is endangering our 
>safety, hurting our vital interests, and undermining American 
>values," Soros' message said. Defending his record as Halliburton's 
>chief executive, Cheney said in the Tuesday night debate that 
>Democratic vice-presidential challenger John Edwards was trying to 
>use Halliburton as a smokescreen. Any voter who wanted the facts, 
>Cheney said, should check out factcheck.com -- which led to the 
>Soros site. The Web site Cheney had in mind, factcheck.org, was not 
>amused when the vice president proved that he was not master of the 
>factcheckers' domain.
>
>Factcheck.org, run by the Annenberg Center of the University of 
>Pennsylvania, said on its site on Wednesday that Cheney not only got 
>the domain name confused, he had mischaracterized its fact-finding.
>
>"Cheney ... wrongly implied that we had rebutted allegations Edwards 
>was making about what Cheney had done as chief executive officer of 
>Halliburton," the site said on Wednesday.
>
>"In fact we did post an article pointing out that Cheney hasn't 
>profited personally while in office from Halliburton's Iraq 
>contracts, as falsely implied by a Kerry TV ad. But Edwards was 
>talking about Cheney's responsibility for earlier Halliburton 
>troubles. And in fact, Edwards was mostly right."
>
>The White House Web site annotated the debate transcript, 
>parenthetically noting that Cheney meant factcheck.org, not 
>factcheck.com. It linked the transcript to factcheck.org.
>
>
>
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-- 
Nancy Baym	http://www.ku.edu/home/nbaym
Communication Studies, University of Kansas
Bailey Hall, 1440 Jayhawk Blvd., Room 102, Lawrence, KS 66045-7574, USA
Association of Internet Researchers: http://aoir.org