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Ocasio-Cortez slams ‘standard of who gets fact-checked’ by fact-checkers

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Monday called into question “the standard of who gets fact-checked” and “how often” by fact-checkers, arguing she is getting singled out for fact checking despite just taking office four days ago.

“Facts are facts, America. We should care about getting things right. Yet standards of who gets fact-checked, how often [and] why are unclear,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote to her more than 2.1 million followers while sharing an opinion piece from Fair.org that was also published by Salon.

“This is where false equivalency [and] bias creeps in, allowing climate deniers to be put on par w/scientists, for example,” the 29-year-old freshman congresswoman added.

{mosads}Ocasio-Cortez was interviewed on “60 Minutes” on CBS on Sunday night, where at one point correspondent Anderson Cooper asked about a claim she made that earned her “four Pinocchios” from The Washington Post. The Post applies Pinocchios to rate public statements, ranging from one to four Pinocchios depending on the degree of the lie, with four being the most egregious. 

Ocasio-Cortez in December said that “accounting errors” totaling $21 trillion at the Pentagon could have paid for about two-thirds of the cost of a “Medicare for all” bill. The Post called it a “flawed comparison” because “the two numbers are not apples-to-apples to begin with.”

Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday said people are less concerned “with being factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.”

“If people want to really blow up one figure here or one word there, I would argue that they’re missing the forest for the trees,” she told Cooper. “I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.”

“But being factually correct is important,” Cooper responded.

“It’s absolutely important. And whenever I make a mistake. I say, ‘OK, this was clumsy,’ and then I restate what my point was,” she replied. “But it’s — it’s not the same thing as — as the president lying about immigrants. It’s not the same thing, at all.”

Tags Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

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