We live in a time when misinformation is rampant. Politicians lie. Cable news pundits twist the truth to fit their agenda. And citizens use the wild west of social media to either consciously or inadvertently spread conspiracies that simply are not true.
For the past 13 years, Poynter’s PolitiFact has sifted through all the lies of the year to come up with the lie of the year. It’s never an easy choice. Sadly, the year is full of them.
This year’s “Lie of the Year” has been told for virtually all of 2021. Published just this morning, PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year” is:
Lies about Jan. 6.
PolitiFact’s Angie Drobnic Holan, Bill McCarthy and Amy Sherman write:
We picked these lies for two reasons. First, the attack was historically important; a federal judge called it “the most significant assault on the Capitol since the War of 1812.” While some members of Congress lodged protests when the Electoral College count was close, as in 2000, or when individual states had close margins, like Ohio in 2004, never before had Americans overtaken the Capitol to hold up electoral proceedings and threaten lawmakers. In fact, “the peaceful transfer of power” has long been a hallmark phrase in describing, with pride, the American experience.
Second, the events of Jan. 6 were widely broadcast on that day and many days afterward, allowing the public to see for themselves exactly what happened. The body of evidence includes direct video documentation and many eyewitness accounts. So efforts to downplay and deny what happened is an attempt to brazenly recast reality itself.
Certainly, the horrific events of Jan. 6 have been made even more dangerous by those who have downplayed or dismissed what actually happened that day. One of the darkest days in the history of this country continues to haunt us, and might be only a preview of what could easily happen again.
The lies about Jan. 6 weren’t the only lies of 2021.
What about all the misinformation surrounding COVID-19, especially the vaccines? That, too, was incredibly prominent and harmful. Couldn’t that have been a “Lie of the Year?” We’re also still dealing with climate change deniers and those who continue to wrongly believe that the 2020 election was rigged
So, I reached out to PolitiFact editor-in-chief Angie Drobnic Holan to get the lowdown on this year’s choice for “Lie of the Year.” Here’s our conversation:
Tom Jones: Angie, I’ve asked you this before, but can you take readers through the process of selecting the “Lie of the Year?”
Angie Drobnic Holan: We look back at everything we’ve fact-checked since the beginning of the year, and we ask ourselves, what was the most important or significant or harmful falsehood? We usually end up with two or three choices. Then we have a long discussion about which was the worst, and what the most important things are to tell our readers about it. It’s a team process, but we’re usually all satisfied with where we end up.
Jones: There was so much going on in 2021, particularly as it related to COVID-19 — masks, vaccines and so forth. Was any consideration given to the “Lie of the Year” being about the misinformation surrounding COVID-19?
Holan: Definitely, we especially considered misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine. People all over the world spent most of 2020 hunkered down in their homes, hoping and waiting for something that could prevent them from getting COVID-19. When vaccines became widespread in 2021, they were followed by a trail of lies. Over and over again, the vaccines have been shown to be effective and safe. Yet some people won’t take the vaccines and will die of COVID as a result. That’s very discouraging for people who trust science and facts.
Jones: Ultimately, you chose the lies about the Jan. 6 insurrection as the “Lie of the Year.” What swayed you to make that decision?
Holan: We chose it because the day was really important, it was well-documented, and there have been so many lies told about it. From the people who minimized Jan. 6, it really was a case of “don’t believe your lying eyes.”
We know what happened that day, but the denial is trying to deflect attention from getting to the bottom of the causes and conditions that set up Jan. 6. The public still needs to know that, so it can continue the peaceful transfer of power that’s been the hallmark of American democracy.
Jones: Usually, when it comes to a lie of the year, one person is most responsible for that lie. But this year, it’s different. It wasn’t just one person. There were many. But if you had to point to who was most responsible for downplaying the Jan. 6 insurrection, who would it be? Politicians? Fox News? Other right-wing cable networks? All of the above?
Holan: I think it was all of the above, but some people really do deserve special recognition. Above all was Donald Trump, who repeatedly said that he won the election when it was pretty clear he didn’t. Tucker Carlson at Fox News really went above and beyond the average dissembling, especially with his “Patriot Purge” Fox Nation series, which was full of misinformation. Among House Republicans, Madison Cawthorn, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene said some truly ridiculous things. But the silence of the mainstream Republican leadership was also a huge and surprising development. Our story details what that looked like. It was a lot of, “move along, nothing to see here.”
Jones: Your selection for “Lie of the Year” was made before the news came out that several Fox News personalities — including Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade — were texting White House chief of staff Mark Meadows during the riot to urge Donald Trump to tell his supporters to stop what they were doing. What was your reaction to that news as you were in the final stages of editing the “Lie of the Year” piece?
Holan: It was basically another piece in the puzzle of what we were already seeing — that people across the board knew Jan. 6 was a big deal, but it wasn’t in their own interest to say so publicly.
Jones: Last year’s “Lie of the Year” was coronavirus downplay and denial. Do you see any similarities to how this year’s lie was perpetuated as compared to last year?
Holan: The biggest similarity is the tactic of throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. It’s not like there was just one or two lies about the coronavirus last year. There were a bunch, all different, all claiming to represent some other reason why the coronavirus wasn’t a serious pandemic. With Jan. 6, it was similar: a lot of different distortions and excuses, but all in service of trying to convince people that the insurrection either wasn’t what it looked like or it wasn’t worth paying attention to.
There really is a playbook now for trying to confuse and deceive the public about important issues. And while reality has its own ways of pushing back — like journalism and fact-checking — it tends to be a long and sometimes painful process.
Jones: Finally, Angie, tell us why you think it’s important for PolitiFact to choose a “Lie of the Year,” and what do you want readers to take from it?
Holan: We pick it because it’s so easy to experience information overload and get bombarded by news. The story is our way of telling our readers, stop, this is really important. We need to pay attention to this.
My hope is that people who care about democracy, people who believe in evidence and facts, people who think we need a well-informed public — that all of them will read our work and come away with a little more knowledge and a little more wisdom.
My thanks to Angie Drobnic Holan for taking us behind the scenes of this year’s “Lie of the Year.” Be sure to check out the detailed and informative story on PolitiFact.com. Now onto the rest of today’s newsletter …
Are we at all surprised?
