Media Matters Daily Summary

Here are today's news items from Media Matters for America, click on the title or 'read more' to read the entirety of each story. McCaughey returns to CNBC with another false health care attack On CNBC, serial misinformer Betsy McCaughey again advanced a falsehood about health care reform, claiming that the "legislation that's now in Congress will force everyone under age 65 to buy the same one-size-fits-all government plan" and that "Page 16" of the House bill "says you must be enrolled in a qualified plan." In fact, McCaughey's claims are false; the provision she referred to does not require anyone to give up their private individual health insurance plan. Read More Wash. Post claim that KSM "cooperated after waterboarding" undermined by reporting from same article An August 29 Washington Post article charged that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed "cooperated" with the CIA "after waterboarding" and that this occurred "to an extraordinary extent, only when his spirit was broken in the month after his capture March 1, 2003, as the [CIA] inspector general's report and other documents released this week indicate." However, these claims are undermined by reporting elsewhere in the article, which notes that Mohammed gave false information during waterboarding and that the CIA inspector general who investigated the CIA's interrogation programs could not "reach definitive conclusions about the effectiveness of particular interrogation methods." Read More Following Wash. Post article, conservative media advance falsehood that CIA documents prove interrogation techniques worked Citing a misleading Washington Post article that stated that alleged 9-11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed became cooperative after being subjected to waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and other interrogation techniques, conservative media have advanced the falsehood that three recently released 2004 CIA documents prove that these enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) were necessary to gain valuable intelligence. In fact, two CIA memos on the value of intelligence obtained from detainees do not discuss interrogation techniques, and a CIA inspector general's (IG) report of the CIA's interrogation program stated that "[t]he effectiveness of particular interrogation techniques in eliciting information that might not otherwise have been obtained cannot be easily measured." Read More You can help support our work; become a volunteer media monitor, or donate to Media Matters for America.