WaPo Fact Checker: We Don't Check Ourselves

Washington Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler will not fact check any facts published by his own paper. Kessler announced in his article that he won’t be awarding any “Pinocchios” to the Post’s claims that Romney outsourced jobs during his Bain days.

On July 3, John Nolte astutely pointed out  there was no outsourcing of jobs while Romney was at Bain Capital. Romney has demanded that the Washington Post retract its deceptive June 21 story, but the Post refuses to do so.

“The Fact Checker does not check the facts in the reporting of Washington Post writers or columnists,” Kessler writes. “We generally confine ourselves to checking the rhetoric used by politicians and interest groups.”

Even as Kessler refuses to fully fact check his own paper, he does say that Barack Obama is misleading people on what the Post’s story says. As Kessler wrote, “there is little in the Post article that backs up the Obama campaign’s spin.”

That seems to be central to this issue. If Kessler can say Obama is misleading people over the claim that Romney was responsible for the Bain outsourcing, then the Washington Post article is misleading as well.