So, FactCheck.org has this to say about the recent NARAL ad slandering John Roberts:

The ad is false.

Hard to get clearer than that. The FactCheck.org post about the NARAL ad is pretty scathing. It’s filled with phrases like “especially misleading” and “false implication.” I’d advise you to read the whole thing.

But the L.A. Times — which ran a story on the ad the other day that failed to quote any independent experts, portraying the ad’s veracity as a “he said, she said” type of issue — has no mention of the FactCheck.org analysis.

Interesting.

But, you say, maybe the L.A. Times is too lofty a news organization to outsource its fact-checking to an Internet site called FactCheck.org?

Excuse me while I heave with laughter. There. Okay, I’m done.

Because, you see, The Times has treated FactCheck.org like gospel — as long as it promotes a leftist position, of course. Examples? Yes, I have a few:

From an October 31, 2004 story (no Web link available, but proof that the story ran in The Times available here):

Census figures released in August — showing that median household income dipped 3.4% from 2000 to 2003, hitting $43,318 — were enough to convince the Annenberg Political Fact Check that Kerry’s middle-class rhetoric was right. The nonprofit monitoring group, which is operated by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, was initially skeptical but now says on its website, factcheck.org: “While the decline leveled off last year and may even be climbing again in 2004, most households are clearly worse off economically now than they were when the president was sworn in.”

From an October 19, 2004 front-page story (original story in a post of mine, which also contains the first draft of the story):

According to factcheck.org, a website operated by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, Kerry has been more of a supporter than an opponent of weapons systems that troops depend on.

Moreover, factcheck.org said, Vice President Dick Cheney and Bush’s father, former President George H.W. Bush, had proposed cutting or eliminating several of the weapons systems that the president now faults Kerry for opposing. Those proposals came after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

From an October 12, 2004 story (copy here):

At their second debate, on Friday in St. Louis, Bush accused Kerry of voting 98 times for tax increases. The figure was challenged by Democrats and by factcheck.org, an independent website published by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. According to factcheck.org, 43 of the 98 votes were on budget measures that established revenue targets but did not legislate tax increases. The Bush total included several votes on one bill.

(A similar claim is repeated in an October 9, 2004 story.)

Two other October 9, 2004 stories reported this story (no Web link available for the story, but look here for the quote):

The strangest moment came when Kerry sought to rebut Bush’s charge that the Democrat’s plan would raise taxes on hundreds of thousands of small businesses. Kerry said the president reached that number only by including thousands of high-income professionals who receive some additional income through freelance work or partnerships; even the president, Kerry said, would be counted as a small business because he received “$84 from a timber company he owns.”

Bush looked at Kerry quizzically. “I own a timber company? That’s news to me,” he said. “Need some wood?”

Four minutes after the debate ended, the Kerry campaign distributed a statement quoting the nonpartisan website Factcheck.org that Vice President Dick Cheney had tried to cite to buttress one of his points in his debate with John Edwards earlier this week. That website said Bush did in fact receive income from a timber investment that would have qualified him as a small business under the Republican definition.

Yup, the L.A. Times loves FactCheck.org — as long as it’s fact-checking assertions by President Bush. But when the web site shows that a controversial ad against John Roberts is utterly false, the sound from the L.A. Times resembles that of crickets chirping.

Surprised? If so, you must not read my site regularly.