Topic: WorldNetDaily
Ben Kinchlow's Dec. 20 WorldNetDaily column is a list of what he presents as the "top 20 facts" abvout the "immigration crisis." It includes dubious things like "As many as 12,000 gang members would vanish out of Denver" and :"Nearly one million sex crimes are committed by illegals in the U.S. every year." Kinchlow rather convolutedly credits thte list to "Richard Corbeil, a popular columnist for Florida newspaper The Apopka Chief" and "attributed to freelance reporter Tina Griego."
Just a couple problems with the list: It's bogus, has been circulating for years, and the person Kinchlow "attributed" it to didn't write it.
As the TruthOrFiction.com website points out, that list has been circulating in one form or another since at least 2007. Griego, now a columnist for the Denver Post, has stated that she did not write it, and that a reference to a separate column she wrote that appeared in the original somehow got twisted into authorship for the whole thing. She goes on to point out that the numbers in the list as they relate to Denver and Colorado are mostly unverifiable -- "It is impossible to know how many gang members in the city [of Denver] are illegal immigrants" -- adding that "The numbers are a prop, arranged to support a larger argument and, in this case, it's a cultural one," raising questions that "no amount of drummed-up statistics and wishful thinking will answer."
This information was not hard to find, yet it appears Kinchlow didn't bother to verify it before sticking it in his column. Instead, he presents it as undisputed "facts," adding: "Maybe you can articulate the shock value better than I. Believe it or not, the above information actually left me speechless; all I could do was shake my head. It’s time to make a statement in the voting booth in the next national election."
(The Apopka Chief doesn't put much of its content online, apparently, so it's unclear where Richard Corbeil did any fact-checking of his own before copy-and-pasting the bogus list -- guessing from Kinchlow's blind acceptance of his work, were guessing he didn't.)
We know WND doesn't bother to fact-check much of anything on its website -- editor Joseph Farah exhibits a perverse pride that the opinion columns he publishes contain misinformation. But Kinchlow is not big on facts either, so his bogus column is a match made in WND heaven.
