On July 26, 2016, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly received some criticism after claiming black slaves who constructed the White House were “well-fed” and offered “decent” housing. O’Reilly was offering some background information after Michelle Obama, in her speech at the Democratic National Convention, brought up the topic of slavery and the construction of her current residence. O’Reilly said:

In 1800, President John Adams took up residence in what was then called the Executive Mansion — it was only later on they named it the White House. But Adams was in there with Abigail, and they were still hammering nails, the construction was still going on. Slaves that worked there were well fed and had decent lodgings provided by the government, which stopped hiring slave labor in 1802. However, the feds did not forbid subcontractors from using slave labor.

O’Reilly’s main point was that “there were others working as well,” not just slaves, to construct the White House, but his side note raised some eyebrows, including those of Abigail Adams, who promptly rose from her grave at United First Parish Church in Quincy, Massachusetts, and began floating in the direction of New York City.

“Oh, hell no,” the ghost of Adams snapped as she reentered the physical world, before leaving the church grounds, says lawn care specialist Hank Emerson.

Highway motorists reported various mutterings of profanities from the apparition during its journey, including “That Bill fuckface O’Reilly” and “Silly rabbit. Trix are…for kids.”

Before her arrival at the Fox News headquarters at Rockefeller Center, word had already spread that Adams was coming for Bill, according to a gaffer who asked to remain anonymous. “I heard one of his assistants say he was off to a last-minute 3 p.m. luncheon. I’ve never seen Bill move that fast.”

The source says that when the assistant insisted they wouldn’t be able to wrap up production in time if he left, he allegedly went ballistic, saying, “We’ll do it live. Fuck it! We’ll do it live!” before dashing across the parking lot.

Adams was miffed to have to leave a message for Bill, but the one she left was, objectively, pretty powerful — a verbatim quote from a letter she wrote to her friend Cotton Tufts on the conditions of the black slaves building the White House:

The effects of Slavery are visible every where; and I have amused myself from day to day in looking at the labour of 12 negroes from my window, who are employd with four small Horse Carts to remove some dirt in front of the house. the four carts are all loaded at the same time, and whilst four carry this rubish about half a mile, the remaining eight rest upon their Shovels, Two of our hardy N England men would do as much work in a day as the whole 12, but it is true Republicanism that drive the Slaves half fed, and destitute of cloathing…to labour, whilst the owner waches about Idle, tho his one Slave is all the property he can boast, Such is the case of many of the inhabitants of this place.

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Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian government agreed on Thursday to allow United Nations humanitarian aid into Madaya, Foua, and Kfarya, three towns where people are dying of starvation due to attacks from both sides of the Syrian civil war.

Assad has only allowed in about 10% of U.N. aid offered in the past year.

Assad’s forces, alongside the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, have held Madaya under siege for six months. Cutting off food supplies to the city of 40,000, the Syrian military also placed land mines on the outskirts to prevent residents from fleeing.

The situation has grown so grave, residents have eaten all the stray cats and dogs, and can now only make soup from water, flower petals, oil leaves, and grass. The head of the Madaya medical council reports two or three people, especially the elderly, children, and the sick, die each day.

According to The Independent:

The situation is so desperate that starving residents spend their days trying not to move in an attempt to conserve energy. With temperatures falling, the Red Cross says locals have been forced to burn plastic to keep warm, exposing themselves to fumes.

That was after doors were removed to burn for heat.

Foua and Kfarya, two villages totaling 30,000 people, have been under siege by Assad’s enemies, anti-government forces, for over a year. Residents there are also eating grass to survive, undergoing surgery without anesthesia, and dying in numbers currently unknown.

“People who need medication in the two villages often must take drugs that are expired, and…mothers must crush grains of rice – when available – and boil the mixture to make baby food.” Water in the two towns is about to run out.

Some anti-Assad forces bombing and starving Foua and Kfarya are armed and supported by the United States and other Western powers. For example, Jaysh al-Fattah (the “Army of Conquest”) is participating in the siege; the Army of Conquest is made up of both Al Qaeda groups and “more moderate rebel factions” (New York Times) that are covertly armed by the U.S.

In 2015, internal Pentagon documents and admissions by the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency revealed the U.S. knowingly supported extremist terror groups like Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria.

Over 250,000 Syrians have died in the civil war and 4 million refugees have fled the country. Despite a massive death toll and conditions as horrific as starvation, many Americans do not want to allow Syrians to resettle in the United States.

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When comedian Jon Stewart was asked what he read online, he replied:

When I look at the Internet, I feel the same as when I’m walking through Coney Island. It’s like carnival barkers, and they all sit out there and go, “Come on in here and see a three-legged man!” So you walk in and it’s a guy with a crutch.

He was referencing one of several kinds of clickbait, defined as web content of a provocative or sensational nature designed to attract readers. This subset uses exaggeration or outright lies in headlines to get more views, versus a more benign subset of clickbait that uses headlines with annoying subjectivity and grandiose promises of reaction (i.e., “You Won’t Believe What Happens Next”).

Both forms stand apart from satire (i.e., “Obama To Limit Gun Owners to One Mass Shooting Each”), which is its own subset.

When considering the relationship between news, clickbait, and the truth, I see little point in addressing at any length clickbait headlines injected with annoying subjectivity and big promises.

Take Tuesday’s Upworthy story, “A Ballet Company’s Response to One Football Fan’s Sexist Insult on Facebook Was Epic.” The bait here is opinion-based. Is it sexist to say a football team played like they were wearing tutus? A ballet company and an Upworthy writer certainly thought so. Was the company’s response truly “epic”? Or was it just “great”? How is epicness (epicity?) measured?

Headlines that use lies and misrepresentation are substantially more dangerous, at least to any person who values the truth, wants others to know the truth, and despises witnessing falsities shared on social media.

Bear in mind, the headline for this article is both misleading and satirical. First, I’m not addressing headlines of annoying subjectivity and promises of reaction like “The Answer May Shock You.” How would I know if you’ll be shocked?

Second, who does clickbait “better” is a matter of opinion. Who does it most convincingly would be an interesting scientific study (Fox News viewers are less informed than consumers of other news media). Who does it more often would too, and as I spend much time reading far left websites (Socialist Worker, Mother Jones, Alternet, Think Progress, The Nation, etc.) and face-palming after seeing some things conservative friends share on social media, I would say more outright lies appear in rightwing headlines. But I’m biased; that is my perspective, not a conclusion produced by the scientific method.

But without further ado, let’s look at some case studies, and the degree of exaggeration and lies found in both liberal and conservative news headlines. You can click on the images to read the full stories.

DIFFERENCES IN DEFINITIONS

“A Terrorist Just Fire-Bombed a California Mosque While People Were Inside,” U.S. Uncut (liberal), 12/11/2015

As liberals and conservatives debate the definition of “terrorist,” some on the Right may find this a misleading headline worthy of one of the harsher labels used below. Terrorism is usually defined as violence or the threat of violence to coerce or intimidate, especially for political purposes.

If terrorism often includes political purposes but not always, U.S. Uncut is justified in using “terrorist.” (“Fire-Bombed” is acceptable, as a molotov cocktail falls neatly with the bounds of that descriptor.) If political purposes must be involved, it becomes trickier. Some attacks, such as the almost yearly firebombing of abortion clinics or murder of doctors, can rightly be called terrorism using conservatives’ definition. But others, like an attack on a mosque, may be more controversial.

An attack on a mosque can safely be characterized as a hate crime stemming from racial and religious hatred. But how cleanly can that be divorced from the political atmosphere in which the attack takes place, for example a time of widespread debate over whether Muslims should be president, be forced to carry religious-based identification (see below), or be allowed to enter the U.S. at all? How easy is it to say both “the attack was due to hatred and bigotry” and “the attack was not a statement on what U.S. policy toward Muslims should be”?

It’s safe to say that if a Muslim firebombed a Christian church, many conservatives would be quick to call it terrorism, even if the perpetrator’s hatred of Christians was distinctly separate from his views on government policy toward Christians, Muslims, Muslim nations, etc.

EXAGGERATION

“Donald Trump Says Muslims Should be Forced to Wear ‘Special ID Badges,’” Counter Current News (liberal), 11/19/2015

Donald Trump is a truly despicable human being, and has said worse about Muslims, but he didn’t say this precisely. If you see a headline like this, the article had better back up exactly what it claims with evidence.

Sadly, Counter Current News doesn’t do this. The article itself says, “Trump refused to rule out a government requirement for Muslims to carry special identification cards or patches that would identify them by their faith.”

Basically, a reporter asked Trump if his plans for tracking Muslims might involve registering them in a database or “giving them a form of special identification,” to which the heartless ogre replied, “We’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely. We’re going to have to look at a lot of the mosques.”

So Trump refused to condemn such a notion, he didn’t “say” it himself. Nowhere in the article does the writer provide evidence that the special identification would be worn, that it would be a “badge.”

DISTORTION

“2,000 White Teens Brawl at Kentucky Mall, No Arrests,” Black Talk Radio Network (liberal), 12/27/2015

“Media Fails to Identify the Race of 1,000-2,000 Black Teens that Shut Down a Kentucky Mall,” Right Wing News (conservative), 12/28/2015

What a difference a day makes. This is an interesting case study of two articles, one liberal and one conservative, saying completely opposite things.

When you read the article under a headline claiming the teens were white, you find no mention of race whatsoever!

Thank God we have Right Wing News to set the record straight.

Yet despite the fact that Right Wing News’ headline boldly declares 1,000-2,000 black teens created the chaos, it offers little evidence for the racial makeup of the group. “The teenagers involved in this incident were black,” it says, beside a photo of black shoppers, some running, from the local news station.

Is that all we get? No source other than a single photo? No estimates from local authorities on the percentage of the teens who were black? No quotes from witnesses or participants? Were 100% of the teenagers black? Or only 90%? The headline certainly seems to imply each and every troublemaker was black, yet this isn’t backed up with any actual evidence.

Remember, I’m not examining directly the truthfulness of articles, but rather if bold claims in a headline are supported by evidence in the article itself. Perhaps all the teens involved in fights were black. But if an article offers no evidence in support of a provocative headline, it is clickbait.

Instead, this author focuses his time on castigating CBS and even Fox News for being “corrupt media machine[s]” that hide facts that fail to “fit their agenda.” “Minorities behaving badly will always be unreported as much as possible.”

Would this writer grow so upset if the media didn’t report the racial breakdown of fights involving many whites, say, during Black Friday riots or after a national championship? Well, they don’t and likely not.

Apparently, calling out the young people’s race in order to highlight racist myths about the innate criminality, aggressiveness, and deviancy of blacks doesn’t quite fit the media “agenda.”

LIES

“Germany: Mass Sexual Assault by Muslim Migrants Reported New Year’s Eve; Coward Officials Accused of Cover-Up,” Wounded American Warrior (conservative), 1/5/2016

Who wouldn’t trust a wounded American warrior?

Comparing this headline to the article that accompanies it, there’s clearly distortion similar to our case study above. The headline claims Muslims attacked people in Cologne, Germany. Yet the sources used never characterize the attackers as Muslim, only “Arab or North African men.”

Believe it or not, not all Arabs and North Africans are Muslim.

While the headline emphasized mass sexual assaults, the article states 30% of the complaints during the chaos sown by Arab or North African men were of sexual assault. The majority of problems, including but not limited to robbery, were not sexual in nature, so perhaps a more accurate headline could have been crafted.

Further, the headline calls German officials “cowards,” but the writer presents no evidence of a cover-up, only mentioning others have accused officials of trying to hide the truth when it took days for the attacks to be officially confirmed. (Is there no other possible explanation, say, taking time to gather the facts? Also, does covering up information automatically make one a coward? Why not “evil”? Or “sinister”? Or “biased”?)

But this article crosses the boundary from distortion into blatant lies. The headline claims the attackers were “migrants,” which is sure to stoke anti-immigrant hatred. Does the article offer any evidence the men were migrants?

No. In fact, the only word on the matter is the complete opposite!

But the police have also insisted that many of the men had been known to them for some time and that they were not a group of newly-arrived refugees.

It’s fine if Wounded American Warrior doesn’t believe the German police. But if it is to claim the attackers are migrants, it had better have good evidence to support it.

LAUGHABLE LIES

“Obama Wants to Shut Them Down for Sharing Their Faith on TV…And Then THIS Happen,” American News (conservative), 11/5/2015

That’s no typo. The headline literally ends with “Then THIS Happen,” if that gives you any indication of the quality of the report you’re about to read.

Here American News breaks the story: the President of the United States wants to shut down HGTV’s “Fixer Upper” because the hosts are Christians.

Yet the article and the accompanying video merely talk about how the hosts became Christians. There is no mention of Obama whatsoever, no peep about perceived persecution!

Also on the site: a picture of Obama the Muslim, who redecorates the White House and dons a turban in preparation for his jihad.

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The door is opening in Kansas for the wholesale elimination of art, literature, and discussion containing any hint of sexual material. These things will not be banned, they will be discarded through coercion and threats.

Under a Republican bill approved by the Kansas Senate in 2015, and now under consideration by a Kansas House committee, teachers would be stripped of protections currently in place, facing fines or up to six months in prison for using materials that implicitly or explicitly mention sex acts.

A Democratic congressman asked the bill’s sponsor, Republican Senator Mary Pilcher-Cook,

whether a teacher could be prosecuted for showing an image of Michelangelo’s sculpture David, which depicts male genitalia. He quoted sexual puns in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” and asked whether teaching the play could be a criminal offense.

Pilcher-Cook said that would have to be decided by individual prosecutors and juries, an ignorant statement expressing how vague and poorly-defined such a law would inevitably be (“What counts as a criminal offense? You’ll find out after you’re arrested”). It reminds one of what Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said of “hardcore pornography” in 1964:

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…

Proponents of the measure insist children must be protected from “harmful material,” defined as that with “any description, exhibition, presentation or representation, in whatever form, of nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement or sadomasochistic abuse.”

The bill, which can be read here, sets the stage for explosive controversy over the definition of terms, a nightmare of subjectivity inherent with a law devoid of clear boundaries. The text says materials (“any book, magazine, newspaper, pamphlet, poster, print, picture, figure, image, description”) or performances (“any motion picture, file, video tape, played record, phonograph, tape recording, preview, trailer, play, show, skit, dance or other exhibition”) fit such a description if the “average adult,” a “reasonable person,” determines it should, applying “contemporary community standards.”

No chance of subjectivity there.

The bill was fueled by conservative hysteria over a poster at Hocker Grove Middle School in the Shawnee Mission School District, outside Kansas City. The poster was in a sex education classroom, but nevertheless drew a conservative backlash for its straightforward, “explicit” wording:

How Do People Express Their Sexual Feelings?

Oral sex

Sexual fantasy

Caressing

Anal sex

Dancing

Massage

Masturbation

Holding hands

Talking

Cuddling on the couch

Hugging

Touching each other’s genitals

Kissing

Vaginal intercourse

Saying “I like you”

Grinding

Heaven forbid a sex education classroom contain a poster listing sexual habits. According to Pilcher-Cook, a poster like this causes great harm to children because it “affects their brains.”

Yes, knowledge often does.

Astonishingly, “The bill would remove…protection for teachers at public, private and parochial schools.” One might wonder if a bill requiring an in-depth, detailed sex education at Kansas private and religious schools would be tolerated for one moment by the religious right.

At Kansas public schools, parents have the right to withdraw their child from sex education courses (there is a Republican push to require parental consent).

In a free and decent society, it is right that parents worried over their child’s exposure to sexual knowledge have such an option; that does not encroach on the freedom of others.

But prosecuting teachers for using classic or modern literature and art that happen to have sexual themes confines and limits the education of others, children with parents more secular or simply less hysterical about biological, reproductive functions. One must see the difference.

Such a law has potential to do immense harm to different groups of people.

Teachers would have less freedom to use materials they like and think students will take interest in; they will stand on the edge of a knife while considering each poem, painting, quote, book. Is X harmful? Within the boundaries of the law? A single mistake could not only mean fines and time in prison, but also legal fees to battle in court.

“It makes me feel like I need to self-censor,” [Marcus] Baltzell, who is a certified teacher, said. “Now I have to consider anything that would have any kind of text or imagery or anything that would be remotely questionable by say one individual I can be brought up on charges for that.”

Pilcher-Cook thinks the list of sex acts being “posted without fear is a problem”; an activist said after he read that statement, “I took out my Sharpie and I wrote it down real big because it struck me: fear. This bill is to strike fear into the hearts of teachers.”

Students could find themselves without their teacher for up to two-thirds of the school year, an absurd and unnecessary disruption (which can hurt academic performance). Schools will have to scramble to find long-term substitute teachers, or perhaps hire new teachers. Kansas children from kindergarten to high school will experience an education devoid of many of the most beautiful works created by human hands throughout world history.

Worst, Kansas politicians would plant in student minds the idea that sex and nakedness are so dangerous that the very mention of it in school will see their teacher locked up with criminals.

The reason behind a teacher’s absence will be no secret. Do we really assume students won’t wonder where he or she is? That they cannot connect the dots between Monday’s introduction to adultery-themed The Scarlet Letter and their teacher’s disappearance on Tuesday? That more secular, rational, or honest parents won’t tell their children precisely why their biology, art history, or English teacher is gone?

Underlying all this is, of course, is the conservative myth that avoiding or delaying detailed discussions of sex with youths is an effective method of preventing sexual experimentation (and, seemingly less important than preventing the high crime of sex itself, preventing STDs, teen pregnancies, and abortions).

Yet decades of research confirms abstinence-only education simply does not work: students in such programs begin exploring their sexuality just as early (often earlier) and with as much enthusiasm as control groups.

But, unsurprisingly, they are one-third less likely to use contraceptives. Thus, one recent study showed teens who received safe-sex education were 50% less likely to become pregnant than teens who received abstinence-only education.

Studies show sex education can essentially accomplish what conservatives most desire: a longer delay in becoming sexually active, fewer partners, less unprotected sex, lower pregnancy and STD rates, fewer abortions.

Teaching sex not only broadens students’ scientific knowledge, giving them a firmer grasp of how life recreates itself, it helps them understand what’s happening to them if they ever fall into an unimaginable nightmare: attempted rape or molestation. Students learning about and accepting homosexuality and transgender identity can prevent the bullying (and thus depression and suicide) of countless kids.

When sex is not discussed openly and in a natural manner, it is discussed in secret. Due to the actions of parents, sex is seen as a dark secret, a taboo, and what could be more fascinating to young boys and girls? Do we want the main disseminators of sexual information (often misinformation) to be our children’s peers? Or rather mature, knowledge adults? This writer has heard kindergartners talk of their gay dads and second graders form a “sex club,” in which they touched themselves during movie time in class.

No matter what conservatives blame for this–a “moral decay,” the decline of Christianity, R-rated movies and neglectful parenting, loud and gossipy older siblings–teachers are dealing with the effects, and must be allowed to openly discuss sexual matters in a mature, positive manner.

Anything less is a disservice to teachers and learners alike.

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