You might know the Poynter Institute better as the organization behind the tendentious partisan "International Fact-Checking Network" which has been rolled into Facebook to push its agenda on your feed. Fact checking used to mean that the media verified its facts before publishing. Now it's just another way to describe partisan media attacks on political opponents to the right.
So Poynter's take on Sarah Palin's lawsuit against the New York Times for accusing her of inciting the Giffords shooting is predictably misleading.
The lawsuit comes after a June 14 New York Times editorial, titled "America’s lethal politics," that argued the recent shooting of U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise was a product of America's fraught political and policy climate.
To illustrate the connection between Scalise's and Giffords' shooting, the original editorial noted that, before Giffords was shot, a political action committee associated with Palin "circulated a map that showed the targeted electoral districts of Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs."
Poynter is very deliberately cutting out the most damning part of that paragraph.
…In 2011, when Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl, the link to political incitement was clear. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin’s political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs.
That reads rather differently than Poynter's version. As it's meant to.
"The link to political incitement was clear" is the part that's left out. And it's the most damning part as it directly accuses Palin of inciting the murder with the map. But the Poynter Institute and its managing editor have an agenda. Which is why they should not be in a position of fact checking anyone except themselves.