The facts behind Donald Trump’s many falsehoods; Washington Post, 8/1/16

Dana Milbank, Washington Post; The facts behind Donald Trump’s many falsehoods:

"In each case, video, audio and written evidence proves otherwise. So, too, do the facts refute his denials that he called Sen. John McCain a “loser,” objected to Fox News Channel host Megyn Kelly as a debate moderator and used a vulgar word to describe Sen. Ted Cruz at a campaign rally.

In each case, Trump surely could have known that a simple Internet search would prove him a liar. This suggests that he may not think he’s lying — and that he sees truth not as an absolute but as the last thing to come out of his mouth."

Lies, lies and more lies; Washington Post, 8/1/16

Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post; Lies, lies and more lies:

"Trump lied, saying that it wasn’t his voice on a tape pretending to be his own publicist, even though in the past he said he would do this sort of thing.

He lied about seeing widespread celebrations by American Muslims on 9/11. He lies about what Hillary Clinton is proposing (e.g. “repeal the Second Amendment,” “open borders”). He lies when caught saying something objectionable (e.g. his ear piece wasn’t working).

No wonder he’s gotten 4 Pinocchios from The Post — 33 times. Perhaps we should instead start keeping track of the times he tells the truth. It would be less work."

Trump Says His Russia Comments Were a Joke. He Always Lies Like This.; Slate, 7/28/16

Josh Voorhees, Slate; Trump Says His Russia Comments Were a Joke. He Always Lies Like This. :

"Trump wasn’t joking or being sarcastic; he was just being Trump. He was speaking without thinking and didn’t grasp the full implications of what he was saying in the moment or even its immediate aftermath. It’s possible that now that enough people have explained the situation to him, he understands the danger of calling on a geopolitical rival to conduct cyberespionage against your political opponent. That, though, should make us all sleep only marginally better given this time next year there is a legitimate chance this man could be performing his belligerent and ill-informed improv in the White House."

Mr. Trump’s fake charity; Washington Post, 7/3/16

Editorial Board, Washington Post; Mr. Trump’s fake charity:

"A painstaking review by The Post’s David A. Fahrenthold, comparing Mr. Trump’s public statements with available records of his giving, found a pattern of exaggeration and unfulfilled pledges...

The truth is, Mr. Trump’s exaggerated eleemosynary claims match his long history of embroideries, overstatements and wildly inflated assertions of prowess in other endeavors. The GOP candidate’s whoppers come so fast and thick that it’s easy to lose track, and it’s tempting to ignore much of what he says. That would be a mistake. Contempt for the truth is a disqualifying feature in a candidate for the presidency."

Superintendent; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 6/22/16

Rob Rogers, Brewed on Grant, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Superintendent

The G.O.P.’s Cynical Gay Ploy; New York Times, 6/20/16

Charles M. Blow, New York Times; The G.O.P.’s Cynical Gay Ploy:

"Maybe Republicans want us to forget that, as ThinkProgress reported in December:

“Six of the Republican candidates vying for the presidency have signed a pledge promising to support legislation during their first 100 days in the White House that would use the guise of “religious liberty” to give individuals and businesses the right to openly discriminate against L.G.B.T. people.”

They want us to forget that although people of all political stripes have evolved on the issue of gay equality — including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton —Republicans are the trailing edge of that evolution.

No amount of the exploitation of fear and the revising of history is going to change what we know about the Republican Party and their continued abysmal record on gay rights.

In the wake of tragedy, you can’t conveniently hang the L.G.B.T. community on the tree of life as a glistening ornament."

Trump’s lies aren’t unique to America: Post-truth politics are killing democracies on both sides of the Atlantic; Salon, 6/19/16

Brogan Morris, Salon; Trump’s lies aren’t unique to America: Post-truth politics are killing democracies on both sides of the Atlantic:

"“There was a time, not long ago, when we would differ on the interpretation of the facts. We would differ on the analysis. We would differ on prescriptions for our problems. But fundamentally we agreed on the facts. That was then. Today, many feel entitled to their own facts.”

So said Marty Baron, executive editor of The Washington Post, in a speech he gave to Temple University’s newest Media and Communication graduates not two weeks ago. Baron was talking about a new form of politics that’s been taking hold, a kind that brings into question the prospects of these hopeful future journos, a kind that threatens democracy as we know it."

The challenges in covering Trump’s relentless assault on the truth; Washington Post, 6/16/16

Eugene Robinson, Washington Post; The challenges in covering Trump’s relentless assault on the truth:

"My aim is to defend the truth.

Political discourse can be civil or rowdy, gracious or mean. But to have any meaning, it has to be grounded in fact. Trump presents a novel challenge for both the media and the voting public. There is no playbook for evaluating a candidate who so constantly says things that objectively are not true...

How are we in the media supposed to cover such a man? The traditional approach, which seeks fairness through nonjudgmental balance, seems inadequate. It does not seem fair to write “Trump claimed the sky is maroon while Clinton claimed it is blue” without noting that the sky is, in fact, blue. It does not seem fair to even present this as a “question” worthy of debate, as if honest people could disagree. One assertion is objectively false and one objectively true.

It goes against all journalistic instinct to write in a news article, as The Post did Monday, that Trump’s national security address was “a speech laden with falsehoods and exaggeration.” But I don’t think we’re doing our job if we simply report assertions of fact without evaluating whether they are factual.

Trump’s lies also present a challenge for voters. The normal assumption is that politicians will bend the truth to fit their ideology — not that they will invent fake “truth” out of whole cloth. Trump is not just an unorthodox candidate. He is an inveterate liar — maybe pathological, maybe purposeful. He doesn’t distort facts, he makes them up.

Trump has a right to his anger, his xenophobia and his bigotry. He also has a right to lie — but we all have a duty to call him on it."

Swim. Bike. Cheat?; New York Times, 4/8/16

Sarah Lyall, New York Times; Swim. Bike. Cheat? :

"The winners were announced: Julie Miller first, Susanne Davis second. “She didn’t come down and shake our hands,” Davis said, referring to Miller. “In my entire 20 years of racing, I’ve never had that happen. That’s when I looked at her and said: ‘Gosh, I didn’t see you. Where did you pass me?’ ”

Miller replied that she had been easily recognizable in her bright green socks and then all but ran off the awards stage, Davis said, telling Davis that she would see her at the world championships in Kona, Hawaii.

Davis compared notes with the third- and fourth-place finishers. They, too, were mystified. They had not seen Miller on the course, either.

This odd series of events eventually touched off an extraordinary feat of forensic detective work by a group of athletes who were convinced that Miller had committed what they consider the triathlon’s worst possible transgression. They believed she had deliberately cut the course and then lied about it.

Dissatisfied with the response of race officials, they methodically gathered evidence from the minutiae of her record: official race photographs, timing data, photographs from spectators along the routes, the accounts of other competitors and volunteers who saw, or did not see, Miller at various points. Much of it suggested that Miller simply could not have completed some segments of the race in the times she claimed, and all of it raised grave questions about the integrity of her results at Whistler and other races."

In N.F.L., Deeply Flawed Concussion Research and Ties to Big Tobacco; New York Times, 3/24/16

Alan Schwarz, Walt Bogdanich, Jacqueline Williams, New York Times; In N.F.L., Deeply Flawed Concussion Research and Ties to Big Tobacco:

"With several of its marquee players retiring early after a cascade of frightening concussions, the league formed a committee in 1994 that would ultimately issue a succession of research papers playing down the danger of head injuries. Amid criticism of the committee’s work, physicians brought in later to continue the research said the papers had relied on faulty analysis.

Now, an investigation by The New York Times has found that the N.F.L.’s concussion research was far more flawed than previously known.

For the last 13 years, the N.F.L. has stood by the research, which, the papers stated, was based on a full accounting of all concussions diagnosed by team physicians from 1996 through 2001. But confidential data obtained by The Times shows that more than 100 diagnosed concussions were omitted from the studies — including some severe injuries to stars like quarterbacks Steve Young and Troy Aikman. The committee then calculated the rates of concussions using the incomplete data, making them appear less frequent than they actually were.

After The Times asked the league about the missing diagnosed cases — more than 10 percent of the total — officials acknowledged that “the clubs were not required to submit their data and not every club did.” That should have been made clearer, the league said in a statement, adding that the missing cases were not part of an attempt “to alter or suppress the rate of concussions.”

One member of the concussion committee, Dr. Joseph Waeckerle, said he was unaware of the omissions. But he added: “If somebody made a human error or somebody assumed the data was absolutely correct and didn’t question it, well, we screwed up. If we found it wasn’t accurate and still used it, that’s not a screw-up; that’s a lie.”

These discoveries raise new questions about the validity of the committee’s findings, published in 13 peer-reviewed articles and held up by the league as scientific evidence that brain injuries did not cause long-term harm to its players. It is also unclear why the omissions went unchallenged by league officials, by the epidemiologist whose job it was to ensure accurate data collection and by the editor of the medical journal that published the studies."

No, Not Trump, Not Ever; New York Times, 3/18/16

David Brooks, New York Times; No, Not Trump, Not Ever:

"Donald Trump is an affront to basic standards of honesty, virtue and citizenship. He pollutes the atmosphere in which our children are raised. He has already shredded the unspoken rules of political civility that make conversation possible. In his savage regime, public life is just a dog-eat-dog war of all against all.

As the founders would have understood, he is a threat to the long and glorious experiment of American self-government. He is precisely the kind of scapegoating, promise-making, fear-driving and deceiving demagogue they feared.

Trump’s supporters deserve respect. They are left out of this economy. But Trump himself? No, not Trump, not ever."

Can I Lie to My Father About Being Gay So He Will Pay for My College Education?; New York Times, 9/2/15

Kwame Anthony Appiah, Amy Bloom, Kenji Yoshino, The Ethicists, New York Times; Can I Lie to My Father About Being Gay So He Will Pay for My College Education? :

"I am a young gay man in college. My father generously pays for my tuition and rent. The problem is that he does not know I am gay. He has made it very clear that if I were, he would not only withdraw all financial support but also cast himself entirely out of my life. His suspicion arose in high school when he found love letters between me and another male student. I swore they were meaningless and have since been defending my heterosexuality. Questions about my sexuality are inevitable whenever I come home. My father has demanded I produce archives of all emails and text messages for him to review, although I have successfully refused these requests on the grounds that he has no claim to my adult communications. Is it ethical for me to continue accepting financial support for my education and my career that will come from it? Could I continue to lie to accept the support and one day disclose my sexuality and pay him back to absolve myself of any ethical wrongdoing? NAME WITHHELD...

Kenji Yoshino: Yes, I agree with both of you. The father is behaving unethically, given that his support is accompanied by the demand that the letter writer change something that is not susceptible to change. So the question is how to conduct yourself ethically when a person with power over you is not doing so.

I do have a concrete answer here. I would encourage the letter writer to contact the Point Foundation. The foundation was created in 2001 to offer educational scholarships to L.G.B.T.Q. students, who are doing well in school, precisely to deal with this kind of situation. In a sense, the organization has ethically anticipated the letter writer’s dilemma."

Gaming the College Rankings; New York Times, 1/31/12

Richard Perez-Pena and Daniel E. Slotnik, New York Times; Gaming the College Rankings:

"[S]everal colleges in recent years have been caught gaming the system — in particular, the avidly watched U.S. News & World Report rankings — by twisting the meanings of rules, cherry-picking data or just lying.

In one recent example, Iona College in New Rochelle, north of New York City, acknowledged last fall that its employees had lied for years not only about test scores, but also about graduation rates, freshman retention, student-faculty ratio, acceptance rates and alumni giving."