All posts tagged: misleading

Conservative Party Out For ‘Misleading’ NHS Claim

Conservative Party Out For ‘Misleading’ NHS Claim

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] The Conservative Party has been corrected once again on social media by other social media users over its false claims – this time, it’s all to do with NHS. PM Rishi Sunak pledged to cut NHS waiting lists in his five pledges for 2023. And, almost halfway through 2024, the Conservative Party’s official account on X (formerly Twitter) implied they were successfully fulfilling this promise in a post published on Thursday. It read: “NHS waiting lists are down again. “The plan is working. That’s why it’s important we stick with it.” The attached graphic includes a line bouncing in a downwards trends across the last six months, with huge writing spelling out: “Biggest 6-month fall in NHS waiting list.” There is a small caption further down the graphic which adds the important context: “In over 10 years.” So, understandably, other accounts corrected the post. The community note attached reads: “Official NHS statistics show this isn’t the biggest six month fall in 10 years: that happened in May 2020. “Further, choosing a 10 year time …

Vaughan Gething: Wales’s first minister ‘entirely relaxed’ after being accused of misleading COVID Inquiry | UK News

Vaughan Gething: Wales’s first minister ‘entirely relaxed’ after being accused of misleading COVID Inquiry | UK News

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Wales’s first minister Vaughan Gething has said he is “entirely relaxed” after being accused of misleading the UK COVID Inquiry. Nation.Cymru reported on Tuesday that Mr Gething sent a text message in which he said “I’m deleting the messages in this group”. “They can be captured in an FOI [Freedom of Information request] and I think we are all in the right place on the choice being made,” the message added. The Welsh news outlet reported the message was posted in a ministerial group chat on Monday 17 August 2020. “The message that has been published today is a message from me without the context of the discussion,” Mr Gething said at First Minister’s questions. “I have asked for the screenshot in its full form to be shared with the inquiry so the context can be seen.” Image: A screenshot of a message in which Vaughan Gething says he is “deleting the messages in this group”. Pic: Welsh government Leader of the Welsh Conservative group, Andrew RT Davies, has written to inquiry chair Baroness …

Democratic secretaries of state urge Meta to ban misleading election ads

Democratic secretaries of state urge Meta to ban misleading election ads

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] A group of Democratic secretaries of state has formally requested that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, discontinue allowing advertisements that falsely claim the 2020 presidential election was stolen. According to the Associated Press, this collective, which includes the secretaries from Colorado, Maine, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, Vermont, and Wisconsin Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski, who does not oversee elections, expressed their concerns in a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The letter highlights the negative repercussions of allowing such content, including the erosion of public trust in electoral processes and the incitement of political violence. These officials argue that Meta’s policies are enabling extremists to amplify election denialism, potentially causing further harm to the democratic system. They urged Zuckerberg to reconsider the company’s stance and prevent any further damage by banning these ads. Despite multiple reviews, recounts, and audits affirming Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, misinformation continues to circulate, fueled in part by former President Donald Trump’s persistent, unfounded claims of fraud. This ongoing narrative has not only polarized …

Patrick McHenry Slams SEC’s Gary Gensler For Misleading US Lawmakers Over Ether

Patrick McHenry Slams SEC’s Gary Gensler For Misleading US Lawmakers Over Ether

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Authored by Turner Wright via CoinTelegraph.com, United States House Financial Services Committee Chair Patrick McHenry has alleged Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler “knowingly misled Congress” over the regulator’s alleged attempts to classify Ether as a security. In an April 30 X post, Representative McHenry claimed that Gensler intentionally misled lawmakers in testimony before the Committee. The U.S. lawmaker referred to claims made in a recent court filing by software development firm Consensys, which filed a lawsuit against the SEC on April 25. Source: Representative Patrick McHenry Consensys’s initial complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas highlighted public inconsistencies in the SEC’s approach to digital assets as securities, specifically Ether. Unredacted sections of the filing appeared on the court docket on April 29, suggesting that the SEC launched an investigation into ETH as security in March 2023. Gensler appeared before the House Financial Services Committee in April 2023, pivoting or ducking direct questions from McHenry on whether Ether fell under the SEC’s or Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC’s) purview. The timing of his testimony suggested that …

Historian says Trump lawyer “deliberatively misleading” SCOTUS: Ben Franklin “would be horrified”

Historian says Trump lawyer “deliberatively misleading” SCOTUS: Ben Franklin “would be horrified”

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] When Trump lawyer D. John Sauer spoke before the Supreme Court last week calling for presidential immunity for “official acts,” he repeatedly argued that at least one revolutionary mind would be on his side: Benjamin Franklin.  But a leading legal historian pointed out that Sauer took a single sentence Franklin said at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 out of context – while completely ignoring that Franklin also called for “the regular punishment of the Executive where his misconduct should deserve it, and for his honorable acquittal when he should be unjustly accused.” “Franklin would be horrified,” Holly Brewer, University of Maryland professor and legal historian, said in an X thread.  Brewer was an author of an amicus brief penned by the nation’s preeminent historians in the immunity case, which said “no plausible historical case” supports Trump’s contention that the original meaning of the Constitution infers his argument for “permanent immunity from criminal liability for a President’s official acts.”  “Once again, Trump’s lawyers are trying to turn a president into a king,” she said. “That …

“Real embarrassment”: Trump lawyer apologizes after judge called him out for “misleading” jury

“Real embarrassment”: Trump lawyer apologizes after judge called him out for “misleading” jury

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] It was a pretty good day for Donald Trump and his defense team. David Pecker, the former National Enquirer publisher, was seen by jurors as being a little fuzzy on the details of a key moment: an August 2015 meeting where prosecutors say he, Michael Cohen and the former president conspired to break campaign finance laws by cementing an agreement to “catch-and-kill” potentially damning stories about the Republican candidate. During cross examination, Trump attorney Emil Bove pressed the witness on why he was now testifying that Hope Hicks — then-director of the Trump campaign’s communications team — was “in and out” of that Trump Tower meeting when he had previously told federal investigators that she was not there. Bove then handed Pecker a document that the attorney said would refresh his memory. But that document appears to have been more of a prop than a piece of evidence. After jurors left the room Thursday, and following objections from the prosecution, Judge Juan Merchan accused Bove of leaving the jury with a false impression. “If there wasn’t …

Minister Roasted Over ‘Misleading’ Defence Spending Pledge

Minister Roasted Over ‘Misleading’ Defence Spending Pledge

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Presenter Stig Abell clashed with a minister on Thursday morning over the government’s recent pledge to increase defence spending. Tory MP James Cartlidge went on Times Radio to discuss Rishi Sunak’s new pledge that the UK will spend 2.5% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defence by the end of the decade. The government has repeatedly said this would equate to an extra £75 billion for the ministry of defence over the next six years – but this figure has caused significant confusion. Abell asked the defence minister: “Was your government trying to con us yesterday? “Were you trying to con the British people when you said you were going to spend £75 billion extra on defence? It’s not 75 billion extra.” He pointed out that chancellor Jeremy Hunt had explained it was only £20 billion more when compared with the current spending of 2.3% of GDP. The presenter added: “That number was, it was an untruth, was it not, yesterday?” The minister said, “not at all”, and said the cash amount the …

US politics is awash with crude and misleading attack ads. Now it’s the UK’s turn | Jonn Elledge

US politics is awash with crude and misleading attack ads. Now it’s the UK’s turn | Jonn Elledge

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] One of my favourite jokes in The Simpsons concerns the unhinged nature of US political advertising. “Mayor Quimby supports revolving-door prisons,” a growly voice narrates over footage of exactly what you imagine. “Mayor Quimby even released Sideshow Bob, a man twice convicted of attempted murder.” And then, a final disclosure at a noticeably faster pace: “Vote Sideshow Bob for Mayor.” This was a great joke – but it wasn’t entirely a joke. The real revolving door ad, which featured similar imagery, had been used by the George HW Bush campaign to tar his 1988 opponent, Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, as soft on crime. That in turn was a sort of sequel to the “Willie Horton” ad, in which other Republican operatives had tried to pin the violent crimes of the eponymous African American on Dukakis, governor when Horton was released on furlough. The entire campaign was widely condemned as one long racist dog-whistle intended to terrify white people into voting Republican. It also, upsettingly, worked. If we ever believed British politics was above such …

Fake, misleading visuals of Iran’s attack on Israel spread on X

Fake, misleading visuals of Iran’s attack on Israel spread on X

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] A billboard in central Tehran, Iran, depicts named Iranian ballistic missiles in service, with text in Arabic reading “the honest [person’s] promise” and text in Persian reading “Israel is weaker than a spider’s web,” on April 15. Iran attacked Israel over the weekend with missiles, which it said was a response to a deadly strike on its consulate building in Damascus, Syria. Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images A billboard in central Tehran, Iran, depicts named Iranian ballistic missiles in service, with text in Arabic reading “the honest [person’s] promise” and text in Persian reading “Israel is weaker than a spider’s web,” on April 15. Iran attacked Israel over the weekend with missiles, which it said was a response to a deadly strike on its consulate building in Damascus, Syria. Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images After Iran sent more than 300 drones and ballistic missiles toward Israel on Saturday, Iranian state television showed purported damage on the ground with video of a fire under a hazy, …

White Rural Rage Is an Utterly Misleading Book

White Rural Rage Is an Utterly Misleading Book

Published by Sam

[ad_1] Rage is the subject of a new book by the political scientist Tom Schaller and the journalist Paul Waldman. White Rural Rage, specifically. In 255 pages, the authors chart the racism, homophobia, xenophobia, violent predilections, and vulnerability to authoritarianism that they claim make white rural voters a unique “threat to American democracy.” White Rural Rage is a screed lobbed at a familiar target of elite liberal ire. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the authors appeared on Morning Joe, the book inspired an approving column from The New York Times’ Paul Krugman, and its thesis has been a topic of discussion on podcasts from MSNBC’s Chuck Todd and the right-wing firebrand Charlie Kirk. The book has become a New York Times best seller. It has also kindled an academic controversy. In the weeks since its publication, a trio of reviews by political scientists have accused Schaller and Waldman of committing what amounts to academic malpractice, alleging that the authors used shoddy methodologies, misinterpreted data, and distorted studies to substantiate their allegations about white …