ABC News published a lengthy feature that claimed to fact check Wednesday’s vice presidential debate between Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris, but the Disney-owned network only bothered to scrutinize one of the candidates.
The piece, “Fact-checking the 2020 vice presidential debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris,” promised to review “what both candidates said” but went on to examine only Pence’s comments.
ABC News promised to fact check “what both candidates said” and went on to examine only Vice President Mike Pence’s comments.
The sections of the one-sided “fact check” were headlined:
- Pence misleads when comparing COVID-19 pandemic to H1N1, Obama administration response
- Pence overstates China travel restrictions
- Pence defends White House event after over a dozen COVID-19 cases, does not mention indoor portion
- Pence misleads on pandemic employment
- Trump has released financial records required by law – but has been significantly less transparent than Biden, predecessors
- Pence claims that Biden and Harris want to ban fracking – but it’s complicated
- Pence exaggerates US testing capacity, PPE availability
- Pence says Biden called China travel restrictions ‘xenophobic,’ but that’s not clear
- Pence falsely says Trump has released health care plan and that it would protect preexisting conditions
- Pence claims Biden will raise taxes on every American – but increases will largely be shouldered by wealthiest
- Harris has liberal voting record, but Pence’s claim she’s ‘most liberal’ leaves out context
- Pence peddles discredited claim that universal mail-in voting leads to massive fraud
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In total, ABC News fact-checked 12 different moments from the debate and all of them were examining Pence.
ABC News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
ABC’s “Fact-checking the 2020 vice presidential debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris,” promised to review “what both candidates said” but went on to examine only Pence’s comments. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
“I can’t tell if the fact-checkers at ABC are actually working for the Biden-Harris campaign or not with this article,” political satirist Tim Young told Fox News. “It reads like a talking points memo directly from Democrats.”
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Young said “there were many moments where Harris clearly needed to be fact-checked” during the debate, which should have been included in any objective piece. Even liberal CNN managed to find things to fact check Harris about.
CNN noted that Harris was “misleading” when she claimed President Trump called coronavirus a hoax, and that she wasn’t accurate when saying Trump got rid of the White House pandemic office. CNN also noted that she lacked context by stating that one in five businesses have closed amid the coronavirus pandemic and that it was false to suggest America is in a manufacturing recession.
“But I guess in the left-leaning, biased minds of ABC News she’s just perfect,” Young said.
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