The St. Petersburg Times' Politifact.com fact checking web site has revealed the #1 lie of the year.
First, here is #2:
• "A claim by conservative talk show host Glenn Beck that John Holdren, President Barack Obama's top science adviser, "has proposed forcing abortions and putting sterilants in the drinking water to control population."
For #1, click on...
Here it is, the #1 lie of 2009. (Drum roll.)"Death Panels."
From Politifact.com:
PolitiFact readers overwhelmingly supported the decision. Nearly 5,000 voted in a national poll to name the biggest lie, and 61 percent chose "death panels" from a field of eight finalists.
Here are the runners up.
Good to know newspaper readers are not so dumb.
I wish more people read newspapers. Even our local very conservative Columbus Dispatch mostly reports the truth on the news pages, and for that, gets inundated with "you liberal media" LTEs--this week, several from climate deniers.
But I fear it's loosing battle. Monopoly media--Fox, KKKlear Channel, etc.--rule the airwaves, and a tin-foil curtain has descended across the continent, with conspiracy theories replacing facts, and the main-stream TV meat puppet stenographers chanting "he said she said."
We are being de-educated. And even when Frank Luntz ADMITS he is lying about climate change, no one reports it.
BTW, as for the myth that the media is pro-Obama, see 71 Days: The Media Assault On Obama by Michael Jason Overstreet.