By Lee Williams

The USA TODAY factchecker we profiled Tuesday, Daniel Funke, might want to find another line of work. He seems to have a problem getting his “facts” right.

In our story titled “Fake News: Fact Checking the Media’s Anti-Gun Fact Checkers,” we showed how Funke only focuses on conservatives and conservative issues. His stories have targeted gun owners, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, Donald Trump, QAnon, election fraud, anti-vaxxers, and the NRA, while providing cover for Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, mask mandates, mandatory vaccinations and Dr. Tony Fauci.

A story Funke wrote for Gannett’s flagship paper Wednesday, in which he tried to provide cover for Biden’s horrific Afghan rout, exploded after gun owners and conservatives unleashed hell online.

Funke “factchecked” stories, social media accounts and even videos that all showed how Biden kept checking his watch during the dignified transfer ceremony held at Dover Air Force Base for the 11 Marines, Navy Corpsman and Army staff sergeant who were murdered by a suicide bomber outside Kabul airport.

“Biden did appear to check his watch during his visit to Dover Air Force Base. But he did so after the dignified transfer ceremony was over. Footage leading up to the moment shows Biden with his hand over his heart for about 30 seconds as vans carry the service members’ remains off the tarmac. After the vans had left, Biden closes his eyes briefly before dropping his arms and glancing down at his watch,” Funke wrote.

Funke concluded the stories and videos were “partly false.”

The families of the 13 slain service members, conservative writers and thousands of folks who watched the video with their own eyes exploded in anger over Funke’s bogus, politically motivated claims.

“This scumbag who smeared Gold Star mothers has all the right ‘credentials’ and still smeared Gold Star mothers anyway,” tweeted Human Events senior editor Jack Posobiec.

“I rarely get angry, life ain’t worth it. SEETHING right now. Many of us lost friends. Imagine you lose a son or daughter, and USA Today calls you a liar. This is below scum bag behavior, it’s totally another level,” tweeted conservative author and veterans advocate Mike Cernovich. “I hope the families sue.”

“Do you have any idea how harmful these lies are to our military community? You are a disgrace with zero credibility. We believe our Gold Star families and the video footage,” the veterans advocacy group Code of Vets wrote.

Because of the intense backlash, USA TODAY was forced to issue a correction for Funke’s story, which is rare for factcheckers, who are supposed to get the facts right:

Corrections & Clarifications: This story was updated Sept. 2 to note that Biden checked his watch multiple times at the dignified transfer event, including during the ceremony itself. The rating on this claim has been changed from partly false to missing context.

The newspaper also changed the headline on the story. The original headline: “Fact check: Biden honored service members killed in Kabul, checked his watch only after ceremony,” was changed to “Fact check: Biden honored service members killed in Kabul, checked his watch during ceremony.”

Takeaways

The legacy media has two standards of accuracy: one for stories involving guns, the Second Amendment and other conservative issues, and one for everything else. Gun owners have known this for years. It’s about time the rest of the country bears witness to this unethical practice too.

 

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This story is part of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project and is published here with their permission.

 

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29 COMMENTS

  1. This “factchecking” burns me up!!!
    I get emails from AP…the Associated Press and they all include a this quote:
    “There are only two forces that can carry light to all the corners of the globe … the sun in the heavens and The Associated Press down here.”
    Mark Twain
    Mark Twain would roll over in his grave if he saw what the AP had become!
    I recently saw an AP “fact check” that said
    “No, we did not give the Taliban a kill list”
    If you just read the headline(as most people do) you would assume the talk of a kill list was just conservative propaganda.
    I read the article. We ABSOLUTELY left the Taliban a list of everyone who worked with us and their families! The reason the unbiased AP labeled this misinformation is because the list didn’t say “Kill List” on the list! These scumbags need to held to account!

    • quote—————-Mark Twain would roll over in his grave if he saw what the AP had become!—————-quote

      If anything Mark Twain would be proud of AP as he had a tough time getting his reviews published about his condemnation of the American invasion of the Philippian Islands and the American atrocities and mass murder after we invaded in 1899. It was only when the troops themselves sent letters home confirming what he said that right wing fanatics stopped throwing stones at him. Twain was a radical liberal and condemned America’s new march towards colonialism and imperialism which Teddy Roosevelt lionized. Roosevelt’s pig headed glorification of war soon came home to roost in his own home when his son was killed in WWI. Like most Conservatives, they only wake up to reality when war hits them personally. Roosevelt admitted his glorification of war persuaded his son to get involved in WWI as soon as he could.

      “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”——————Mark Twain

      • Shouldn’t you be getting out of your momma’s basement then, Her dacian? Your bigotry towards the American rural culture shines through in a lot of your comments.

      • “Twain was a radical liberal”

        Liberalism has two main principles, first is individualism, where the social order is built around and places the individual at its heart arguing that will achieve the highest value for society. —–Leftist believe in collectivism, communism, it takes a village, which is the polar opposite.—–

        The second principle is Liberty, which means freedom and freedoms (freedom of speech/religion/press), consent of the governed and equality before the law. Liberty is the freedom to act as you wish. ——Leftist believe in dependence on the government and government permission slips to act and live.—–

        In summary Conservatives are the true Liberals.
        .

      • So what you’re saying is that Twain would be proud of the AP lying and telling half-truths? Yup… …that sounds liberal all right.

      • Do you believe people actually read your rants? Most of us just see your avatar and are easily reminded how freedom is also provided for the stupid & dependant. But we still fight for it. No need to thank us, just do us a favor and keep your fucking mouth shut. I mean, it’s your right not to, but I believe it’s someone’s right to shut you the fuck up too. See, that’s the difference, in freedom, there is no such thing as assault. Sure would make thinning the heard of people like you a lot easier. Scrawny little fem bois like yourself would still be used occasionally tho…

        • “Do you believe people actually read your rants?”

          The people replying are quoting what he said, so yes.

      • “Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” Mark Twain was a very perceptive man.

        And I believe he’d instantly perceive that vegetating in one little corner of the earth is exactly what “liberals” and urban dwellers do.

        They grow up thinking the black and brown people they pass on the street in their city have exactly the same lives and values as black and brown folks in rural America (or Africa, South America, or Afghanistan). They go to college, where everyone that matters thinks exactly like they do. Then they return to life in “progressive” urban circles, safely sheltered from prolonged contact with anyone whose lifestyle and ideas don’t conform to the “liberal” circles they’ve confined themselves to, and completely unaware that their ideology runs counter to reality and is untenable for everyone else.

        Dacian here is a perfect example. If he’s seen the world outside his “progressive” leftist bubble, he sure as hell didn’t understand any of it.

        • Nice try on trying to totally corrupt what Mark Twain, said and meant. In either your total ignorance or your total hypocrisy you ignore the fact that Mark Twain was a world traveler by “choice” not by necessity. He was trying to get people to realize that YOUR ATTEMPT TO SANCTIFY RACISM is perverse, corrupt and immoral and the apex of sadistic cruelty.

    • “Missing context” is the new fact-checker code for “it’s true but it doesn’t fit our politics so we’re going to make it seem like it’s the other guys taking something out of context or being intentionally misleading.” They’re at the point where they don’t even deny the claim, they just offer some excuses or explanations to try and couch the incident in a positive light or blame it on something/somebody else.

      • Yeah, like my other favorite: “concur with intent”, which meant, “We know what you mean, but … what if we just re-word what we want to sound like what you want?”

        • These are not “fact checkers”.

          Rather they are leftist editorials on why you should not believe your lying eyes.

          Biden never checked his watch, he was just flapping his wings. It only looked like he was checking his watch, a dozen times!

          See all better, go back to sleep now…

  3. funke monkey breath…Fact check the racist and genocide roots of Gun Control then go hang the racist nazi sign around your neck. Next fact check the democRat Party and hold it monetarily liable for slavery, segregation, lynching, Jim Crow, the KKK, Eugenics, Gun Control and other race based atrocities. Hop to it you pompous pasty mouth pos.

  4. The picture in the heading.
    As the National anthem is played Joe checks his watch.
    “15 more minutes and I get jello.”

  5. Don’t worry, once they finish tightening up their control of electronic communications those evil gun owners and conservatives won’t be able to complain at all! Problem solved, and no need for corrections either!

    And because it’s corporations doing it at the behest of the Government, it’s totally okay.

    Don’t worry though, Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham and the Republicans have promised to get real mad on our behalf.

  8. I wonder how much of this half-assed and blatantly partisan “fact checking” is simply stupid bias and how much is the purposeful erosion of trust to create a confused, angry and tuned out population.

    No data is safe. Everything is sitting on an arbitrary and subjective field of interpretation where the goalposts move by the minute and shit like “partly false” and “missing context” are held as having some objective value.

    It appears from the outside that ALL media outlets and figures are farming congnitive dissonance. That’s fine. Click bait all the things. Where we’re going to live (hopefully) to regret tolerating this crap is when we can no longer trust our own doctors and engineers. Who knows what shit they’ve latching onto either consciously or sub? We already know things as ubiquitous and seemingly innocent as dietary recommendations are constructs of this media/corporate/government amalgamation and have resulted directly in the illness and death of tens if not hundreds of thousands over the decades. Where else is policy being shaped in such a way? NHTSA? EPA? DoE? DoD? FDA? Forget looking for reasons to mistrust them. Give me a reason to trust them.

    Maybe 2+2 doesn’t = 4. Maybe they just want me to think it doesn’t. Maybe they’re all just greedy assholes out for cash and power and an insane, paranoid population at each other throats is just an unfortunate side effect of their petty pursuit.

    Tuning it all out and living your own life is good. Until the mob decides to come for the witch.

  9. There was a old guy at our church who used to check his watch all the time. We stopped seeing him at church and asked someone where he was. Well it turns out he passed away. It also turns out he had alzheimers, didnt know who he was or where he was and his watch had been broken for 10 yrs.

  10. The legacy media has two standards of accuracy: one for stories involving guns, the Second Amendment and other conservative issues, and one for everything else. Gun owners have known this for years.

    Known this downunder since the mid-1980s. Usually exaggerations, distortions, or omissions, but also complete out-and-out lies. And the lies continue to this day. And those telling the lies are in positions of influence to change the current regulations.

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