Yesterday, NPR's "Morning Edition" did some "fact checking" on Tuesday's presidential debate. Alas, NPR's fact checking requires some checking of its own. To wit, consider this part of the program (quoted from Lex/Nex):

[NPR Host Steve] INSKEEP: Let's move on now to another subject that was debated. Taxes. There was a lot of back and forth including this claim by Senator McCain.

Senator MCCAIN: Senator Obama's secret that you don't know is that his tax increases will increase taxes on 50 percent of small business revenue. Small businesses across America will have to cut jobs and will have their taxes increase and won't be able to hire because of Senator Obama's tax policies.

INSKEEP: David Wetzel of the Wall Street Journal, a regular on this program, was listening in and David is Obama planning to raise taxes on 50 percent of small businesses?

DAVID WETZEL: Well, it depends what your definition of small is. Senator Obama is planning to raise taxes on the top income tax brackets and it is true that many small businesses pay taxes at ordinary income tax rates. But the majority of small businesses simply don't make enough money to be covered by Senator Obama's proposed tax increases.

INSKEEP: So most won't be affected?

WETZEL: Correct.

INSKEEP: That's David Wetzel of the Wall Street Journal.

Actually it's David Wessel of the WSJ, the transcript has his name wrong. But here's what McCain actually said during the debate (transcript here):

The only bright spot is that over 300,000 jobs have been created by small businesses. Sen. Obama's secret that you don't know is that his tax increases will increase taxes on 50 percent of small business revenue.

McCain was not talking about the number of small firms but about firms taking in half of small business revenue. These measures may sound to some like the same thing but they are not. McCain's statement may or may not be true, but NPR did not check the accuracy of what McCain really said. It's like deciding that a piece of fruit is not an apple by saying that it's not a pear.

Here are two statements--both of which I suspect are not true--that I wish NPR had examined. The quotes come from the debate transcript linked above.

First one from McCain: "Meg Whitman was CEO of a company that started with 12 people and is now 1.3 million people in America make their living off eBay." I guess this one all depends on how one defines "make their living" but I'm skeptical.

Now one from Obama: "So we're going to have to make some investments, but we've also got to make spending cuts. And what I've proposed, you'll hear Sen. McCain say, well, he's proposing a whole bunch of new spending, but actually I'm cutting more than I'm spending so that it will be a net spending cut." This is complete bunk--there's not a snowball's chance in you-know-where that spending will go down in an Obama (or a McCain) presidency. I'm confident in predicting (I should be--it's like predicting the Globetrotters will defeat the Washington Generals) that there won't even be a single year in which spending is lower than the previous year.