September 16, 2010 06:53 PM UTC

Reporters should correct Buck when he says media found Bennet ad untrue

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• by: Jason Salzman

( – promoted by ClubTwitty)

The BIG Newspaper yesterday referenced an exchange between U.S. Senate candidates Ken Buck and Michael Bennet over a Bennet TV ad showing Buck making a series of statements.

The Post reports Buck as saying Colorado media determined the Bennet ad to be untrue.

Assuming Buck is referring to the fact checkers at CBS4, 7News, and 9News (and I don’t know other news outlets that have checked the ad), this statement is false.

Those fact checkers found numerous portions of the ad to be true.

For exmaple, CBS4 and 9News deemed it true that, according to the ad, “Buck wants to privatize Social Security.”  9News website states: “Further, he told 9NEWS during a debate with his Republican primary opponent Jane Norton, ‘We’ve got to peg Social Security to individuals so those individuals have the ability perhaps to invest in various funds that are approved by the government. But those individuals also own that fund.’ (Source: 9NEWS YOUR SHOW Debate, July 22)” And Buck is quoted on The Fix as saying Wall Street historically gets a higher rate of return than Social Security.

9News found it true, as the ad stated, that “Buck even questioned whether social security should exist at all.” Also on its website, 9News stated: “Buck has said numerous times, including at the Constitutionalist Today forum in March, that the ‘the idea the federal government should be running health care or retirement or any of those programs is fundamentally against what I believe and that is that the private sector runs programs like that far better.’ (Source: Constitutionalist Today Forum, March 9)”

7News and 9News found it true, as asserted in the ad, that Buck opposes abortion, even in the case of rape and incest. 7News on its website quoted this Buck radio interview:  “If you believe that life begins at conception, which I do, then the exception of rape or incest, you’re taking a life as a result of the crime of the father, and even though I recognize that it’s a terrible misery that that life was conceived under, it is still taking a life in my view, and it’s wrong.”

7News and 9News (on the video version) also found the ad’s statement, “Buck wants to ban common forms of birth control,” to be true.  9News website states: “Buck believes life ‘begins at conception,’ so birth control methods that don’t impact that (i.e. condoms, some forms of the pill) are fine with him. Others that would keep a fertilized egg from implanting like hormone-based birth control methods, some other forms of the pill, IUDs, RU-486 and what’s known as the morning-after pill, are not supported by him. (Source: E-mail from Buck spokesman Owen Loftus to 9NEWS, Aug. 26)  As you can see from my blog post on this topic, featuring an interview with the Chair of the Obstetrics Department at the University of Colorado Medical School, all forms of the pill could potentially prevent a fertilized egg from implanting. And that’s also the view of the folks at the Personhood Amendment, which Buck endorsed. (See “It will ban chemical abortifacients,” which is movement jargon for the Pill and other homone-based methods)

As the TV fact checkers would say, here’s the bottom line: Aspects of the ad were found to be true, others true but out of context or misleading, and two were deemed false. Sometimes the stations themselves disagreed.

The fact checkers did not say the Bennet ad was untrue, and reporters should correct Buck if he tells them so.