Thus, by giving Romney a pass and simply accepting his current self-serving claim, the "fact-checkers" became accomplices to a cover-up. Citing these "independent fact-checkers," Romney stiffened his refusal to answer more questions or to provide more than his last two tax returns.
When I asked Kessler in an e-mail if he felt uncomfortable being used this way -- a "fact-checker" being exploited to cover up facts -- he responded by saying:
"I think you misunderstand my role. I vet political statements on a case by case basis, as do the other fact checkers. ... In the case of Romney's departure from Bain, I have always maintained that 1999-2002 is a grey area. I have tended to say that transactions in which Romney was personally involved before 1999 are fair game, even if the bankruptcy (such as Ampad) came later. ..."Romney could certainly clear this up by releasing more information, but in the meantime the Obama campaign has not provided enough evidence to back up claims of Romney being personally involved in deals post-1999. The burden really is on them since they are making the charge."
Yet, the same point could be made about any investigation. You start out with some evidence, which -- especially in the face of stonewalling -- you can legitimately cite, even if there remain some unanswered questions. In this case, the Obama camp produced official Bain Capital filings with the SEC that contradicted Romney's current claims.
If you went back four decades and looked at the Washington Post's reporting on Watergate, you would see a similar pattern: President Richard Nixon and his White House insisted there was no cover-up while reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein kept uncovering contradictory pieces of evidence.
It wasn't until the end of the process -- when Nixon was forced to disclose internal tapes -- that the mystery was solved. Nixon was lying and the Post was vindicated.
However, if Kessler's standards had been applied, the earlier Post stories would have received four "Pinocchios" -- for a "whopper" -- because Woodward and Bernstein could not prove categorically a high-level White House cover-up. They had evidence pointing in that direction but it wasn't ironclad.
So, Kessler and his fellow "fact-checkers" might want to re-examine how they operate. If they don't consider themselves investigative reporters -- but rather people who simply "vet political statements" -- they should stick to a narrower set of parameters.
They certainly shouldn't jump into the middle of a complex investigation and begin denouncing the investigators for not knowing everything that might conceivably be known. That only guarantees that the public never gets the full story. However, they might take issue with some dishonest selective editing.
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