How about a Star Barber/Kelly Fact Check on Medicare and Social Security?

by David Safier

The Star has an AP Fact Check in today's paper looking at Romney's claims about Obama's responsibility for the national debt. I'm pleased to say, it doesn't indulge in false equivalence. It basically says Romney's accusations against Obama are incorrect without creating a weak, on-the-other-hand "balance" to muddy the waters.

Obviously, I especially like the Fact Check because it calls Romney on his misstatements, and I would be less happy if a similar Fact Check made Obama's statements look flawed. But if the AP is this accurate in an Obama takedown, it doesn't matter whether I like it or not. That's how the journalism game should be played.

I write the following suggestion with trepidation, but I'll write in anyway. The Star should do a similar Fact Check with two separate articles looking at what the Barber and Kelly camps are saying about their positions on Social Security and Medicare as well as their criticisms of the opponents' positions. The point of these analyses should not be to make them "fair" in the sense that they make both candidates look equally good and bad. The point should be to get as close to the truth about the claims as possible.

My trepidation is, if the task were given to Brady McCombs, the Star's political reporter, I fear he doesn't have the political understanding or the intestinal fortitude to look at the information and make clear-headed analyses of the claims on both sides. I don't know that he has the chops to go beyond a basic "He said/He said" format. Would he look at national analyses of Kelly's "Barber wants to cut your Medicare benefits by $500 billion" accusation and analyze it without trying to create a false equivalence between a tiny truth and a larger truth? Would he look at Barber's accusations that Kelly has changed — or claimed to change — his positions on Medicare and Social Security from 2010 to 2012 (and even from April, 2012, to May, 2012) and see if they are accurate?

McCombs may have what it takes to create an accurate Fact Check, I don't know. I hope so, even though I haven't seen the evidence. But I do know the Star is shirking its duties by not trying to un-muddy the waters concerning the claims and accusations from the Barber and Kelly campaigns.