unSpun_ Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation - Brooks Jackson [26]
That was literally true, but barely. The fried chicken breasts had 38 grams of total fat, just slightly less than the 43 grams in a Burger King Whopper. However, the chicken breasts also had three times more cholesterol (290 milligrams versus 85 milligrams), more than twice as much sodium (2,300 milligrams versus 980 milligrams), and slightly more calories (760 versus 710), according to the Federal Trade Commission. Not to mention that saying that something has less fat than a Whopper is like calling a plot of ground less polluted than your local landfill. The FTC charged KFC with false advertising, and KFC settled by agreeing to stop claiming that its fried chicken is better for health than a Burger King Whopper.
And of course, Clinton isn’t the only politician to tell a literally true falsehood. In 1975, the former CIA director Richard Helms told reporters, “So far as I know, the CIA was never responsible for assassinating any foreign leader.” That was true, but Helms didn’t mention that the CIA had attempted assassinations of Fidel Castro and a few other foreign leaders. As the then CBS reporter Dan Schorr later noted, “It turned out as Helms said, that no foreign leader was directly killed by the CIA. But it wasn’t for want of trying.” Another example: In 1987 interviews, then Vice President George H. W. Bush told reporters that he was “out of the loop” about the arms-for-hostages trade known as Iran Contra. Most of us would interpret “out of the loop” as “Nobody told me.” Bush once said in passing to CBS’s Dan Rather that he had a different definition: “No operational role.” A careful listener might have caught that Bush was denying only that he was running the operation, not denying that he knew of it or approved of it. Sure enough, years later a special prosecutor made public a diary entry by Caspar Weinberger, who was the U.S. secretary of defense at the time, saying that Bush was among those who approved a deal to gain release of five hostages being held by Iran in return for the sale of 4,000 wire-guided antitank missiles to Iran via Israel.
When you hear vague phrases or carefully worded claims, always ask, “Are they really saying what I think they’re saying? What do those words mean, exactly? And what might they be leaving out?”
TRICK #8: The Implied Falsehood
WHEN THE UNITED STATES WENT TO WAR AGAINST IRAQ IN 2003, most Americans believed that Saddam Hussein had something to do with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. And after the 2004 election, most Americans had the impression that President Bush had told them as much. The National Annenberg Election Survey’s postelection poll found that 67 percent of adults found the following statement to be truthful: “George W. Bush said that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 attacks.” Only 27 percent found it untruthful.
In fact, Bush never said in public (or anywhere else that we know of) that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks. The CIA didn’t believe Saddam was involved, and no credible evidence has ever surfaced to support the idea. “We have never been able to prove that there was a connection there on 9/11,” Vice President Dick Cheney said in a CNBC interview in June 2004. But he also said he still thought it possible that an Iraqi intelligence official had met lead hijacker Mohamed Atta in the Czech Republic in April 2001, despite a finding to the contrary by the independent 9/11 Commission. “We’ve never been able to confirm or to knock it down,” Cheney said. To many ears, Cheney was saying he believed there was a connection, and that he lacked only the proof. In fact, after an exhaustive effort to confirm the meeting, U.S. intelligence agencies had found no credible evidence.
Advertisers often try to imply what they can’t legally say. One marketer sold a product he called