Yesterday a diary rocketed up the rec list. It had the juicy headline “Trump Appellate Nominee Says Her Religion Supersedes the Constitution” which, for liberals, was akin to waving a red cape in front of a bull. The diary stayed on the rec list all day and was still on it this morning, garnering 387 recommends and over 26,000 Facebook likes/shares.
The title image of the diary was a picture of Amy Coney Barrett, a law professor who has been nominated by Donald Trump for an appeals court seat. The image has an embedded caption which asserts that Barrett believes that “judges should be bound by their religious faith, not the law.”
In the text, the diarist describes Barrett as someone “who said judges have a duty to put their faith above the Constitution.” Further in the diary, the author repeats this claim, citing statements by the Alliance for Justice (AFJ), a progressive group that evaluates judicial nominees and makes recommendations for or against them to our political leadership.
The diarist includes a link to the AFJ’s report on Barrett as well as a link to a law review article, Catholic Judges in Capital Cases, which Barrett wrote nearly twenty years ago. That article is cited as evidence for the claim that Barrett has stated her faith should supersede the Constitution and federal law.
That shocking claim is entirely false and easily refuted by even a cursory reading of the linked law review article. It was fake news and Daily Kos members have now shared it all over the internet.
I was intrigued by the claim at first and found it remarkable that a potential jurist would expound such a view. So, I decided to read the article in question. It was a long read — about 45 pages — but surprisingly accessible to me, a non-lawyer, with little legal jargon to muddle through. As I read, I grew increasingly puzzled: Barrett and her co-author were actually advocating exactly the opposite position of the diary’s claim. They presented an interesting argument as to why a judge should recuse himself or herself if put in the position of judging a case where the outcome (the death penalty) would violate their most fundamental religious tenets.
In other words, they specifically said that the Constitution has primacy as the law of the (secular) land and that a judge should step aside rather than impose his or her religious beliefs when ruling on the law.
Judges cannot — nor should they try to — align our legal system with the Church's moral teaching whenever the two diverge. They should, however, conform their own behavior to the Church's standard. [bold by Krotor]
They mean a judge should recuse himself or herself, when absolutely necessary, rather than subvert the Constitution and the law by ruling based on the judge’s religious or moral beliefs. That is 100% in contradiction to what the diary claimed that Barrett wrote. Furthermore, the quoted citation that was attributed to Barrett is nowhere to be found in the cited work.
I wasn’t the only one who went to the source cited in the diary. Catte Nappe and a few others read the law article also and all of us who did so appear to agree that AFJ and the diarist misrepresented Barrett’s article completely …. enough so that it would be more accurate to call it a lie rather than a mistaken interpretation.
We posted many comments explaining how the diary was factually wrong and that readers should read the article themselves. However, it was like shouting into gale force winds; hundreds of comments — almost all angry or outraged — poured in, obscuring our attempts to set the record straight.
Regardless of how I or others feel about Barrett and her suitablitity to the appeals court, it is just wrong to make up stuff and attribute it to her. We, the DK community, are better than that and we mustn’t sink to the level of Fox News and Breitbart and then justify it to ourselves because our end goal is worthy. We can oppose her nomination on things she has actually said or written, without falsely accusing her of things she never said or wrote.
That diary is still up today and still getting more recs, more comments, and more social media shares. Every time it does, it tarnishes Daily Kos’ reputation for being fact-and-reality based a little more.
One or two instances like this will not turn us into the left’s version of Infowars, a place where people just make stuff up willy-nilly and the masses believe every word of it. However, it’s not the first time that diaries have made unfounded claims or twisted facts to suit a goal. Whenever we let such things pass, we risk letting “fake news” become normalized here and I think most of us abhor the idea of DK becoming an unreliable source of information.
Well, that horse is out of the barn now so there’s not much we can do to rectify that unfortunate error. However, we can and should take steps to prevent more “fake news” from being promoted on Daily Kos in the future.
For diarists
- Check and double-check the sources for the stories you write. If your primary source cites a secondary source as its principal evidence for a claim, read the secondary source as well and verify that the primary source has indeed understood and summarized it correctly. Be sure that you also fully understand the content of primary and secondary sources that you cite or consult.
- Find multiple sources whenever possible. Even dependable organizations — journalistic or other — can make mistakes or be themselves the unwitting dupes of bad information. If you can find another source to support or substantiate a story, all the better. And no, if the other source says that it is basing its story on your original source, it’s not independent verification at all.
- Engage with the community. The comments section is not there just to tell you how awesome you are and how clever your writing is. One of its functions is to provide a forum for members to question or challenge your diary or ask for further details and explanations. If you make an error, someone is likely to catch it and point it out to you; then you will have a chance to correct the record.
In the case of the diary in question, the author has written 28 diaries and has 33 comments. Every diary automatically has a Tip Jar as a comment so the diarist has written only 5 comments ever. That means he or she is writing what we call “drive-by” diaries — firing off a missive and walking away without any further interaction with the readers and commentators. I believe that shows a lack of interest in the community and lack of respect for readers and it makes it impossible for the community to encourage an author to fix mistakes.
For readers
- Check the reputation of diarists. If you see the diarist’s total comments as nearly equal to the number of diaries written, that usually means a “drive-by” author, as described above. I suggest taking that into account when evaluating a diarist’s dependability.
- If something looks too good to be true (or too bad to be true), use a bit of skepticism. Go to the source(s) cited in the diary and check the facts for yourself. Sure, it takes a little extra effort but your reputation is on the line too. After all, when other DK members see you reccing something here that is shown to be false, it calls into question your judgment or gullibility; when your Facebook and Twitter friends/followers see that you have endorsed “fake news” it will be your name that is mud, not the diarist’s.
- Scan through the comments before making a comment of your own, if the diary sets off your “spidey sense” in any way. Other members may have spotted trouble in the diary earlier and noted it but if you comment without reviewing first you may miss that and possibly embarrass yourself.
We should all try to do what we can to keep Daily Kos an invaluable and reliable source of information, activity, and community. Beset with the Trumpster fire that brings us daily massive doses of fake news, lies, and twisted half-truths, DK is a bright and warm safe place where we can share good solid info and support each other in efforts to make the world a little better, one step at a time.
Let’s keep it that way.