Lies and The Lying Liars Who Tell Them
By 
In one of the many excellent parts of his 2003 book, Al Franken had a good discussion of how the media turned Al Gore saying that during a debate that he had visited a disaster site with James Lee Witt into a major scandal. You see, while Gore had visited more than a dozen disaster sites with Witt, in that case he had visited a disaster site with Witt’s deputy. Hence Gore was a massive liar, while Bush lying his ass off about his tax proposals was a matter of Views Differ. At least Bush winning the election did not have any bad consequences for management at FEMA!
The media covered the 2016 campaign with the same false equivalence playbook, with similar results:
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt made the Sunday morning talk show rounds in an effort to defend President Donald Trump’s decision to exit the Paris climate accord. Pruitt repeatedly argued the climate agreement would harm the U.S. economy, particularly coal industry jobs.
Pruitt make several misleading and inaccurate statements during his tour of the television networks. The EPA chief’s biggest fib was probably his statement, made on multiple shows on Sunday, that the coal industry has grown by 50,000 job over the last few months.
No data exists from government or industry sources to back up the claim that the industry has seen such a dramatic surge in coal mining jobs over this time period. In fact, the average number of coal mining jobs increased by only 586, or about 1.1 percent during the first three months of 2017, according to a report from S&P Global Market Intelligence, citing data from the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration.
Heckuva job, everyone!