[Air-l] fact checking

[rtynes at u.washington.edu]

thanks for that follow up, nancy!

it looks like cheney made a meme, didn't mean to, and then it bit him and bit 
him, and then bit him.

-robert



On Wed, 6 Oct 2004, Nancy Baym wrote:

> 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
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