How fake is the PolitiFact fact check about Jack Posobiec's police detention in Davos?
PolitiFact gets ***** five stars for lies.
On May 25 PolitiFact reported, “No, Jack Posobiec was not arrested or detained in Davos,” and labeled Donald Trump Jr.’s claim on Facebook that “American Journalist [Jack Posobiec was] arrested at World Economic Forum” as false.
PolitiFact reported Swiss police said Posobiec was neither arrested nor detained. The so-called factcheck accurately described some of what can be seen in a video taken by reporter Savanah Hernandez and posted to Twitter by Posobiec.
It did not show him being physically restrained and police refused to explain why they were talking to him. But it left out the most important detail from the video and the very important information about what happened before the video.
The video shows multiple police officers, one of whom was holding an MP5 submachine gun, surrounding Posobiec. Hernandez asked a male uniformed police officer, “Can I ask you why you are detaining this journalist?” He responded, “Can you put the phone away please? I don’t answer your question. Please put your phone away.”
A non-uniformed woman, presumably a police detective, walked up and said, “Can you please stop filming and then we can talk…” Hernandez turned the camera away and said, “I would like to know why this journalist is being detained on public property. How come he’s being surrounded right now? Is he allowed to leave the area?”
The detective didn’t deny Posobiec was being detained and did not say he was free to leave. She said, “We are doing a normal police control…There is a reason. We have to have a reason to control a person…I don’t have to tell you [why.]” Swiss police were admittedly controlling Posobiec.
PolitiFact erroneously quoted the first part of that statement with the word “patrol” instead of “control” and left out the second part.
It’s illogical to say police controlling a person is not police detaining a person. There is no more relevant word choice in that conversation than “control” and the fact that PolitiFact misrepresented it as “patrol” shows their dishonest intent. Even if the PolitiFact reporter honestly misheard control as patrol, wouldn’t the statement that police need to have a reason to “patrol a person” be noteworthy? There was no mention of it.
According to Nolo.com, “An officer’s ‘brief and cursory’ holding and questioning of someone is a detention.” According to Collinsdictionary.com, “When police detain someone, they keep them in a place under their control.”
Nobody would know better than Posobiec whether or not he was detained. He told The Post Millenial, “Two minivans roll up with a quick response force of fully armed officers…They said we were being detained and they needed to question us and we were not allowed to leave…The first thing they did was take us one-by-one around the corner of the building and frisk us…going into our bags, checking out our equipment, checking out our van. So the detective shows up and asks us why we were filming…”
On Twitter Posobiec said, “Hi @Politifact liars. This video is only the end of our detention from when Sav Says arrived. You did not do any reporting or even reach out to my team, who were frisked and detained for an hour.”
He also said, “The police at the WEF surrounded us with rifles, held us for an hour, refused to let us leave, and stuck their hands down our pants one by one. If that isn’t being detained, I’d really love to hear your definition @Politifact.”
It's obvious from the evidence that PolitiFact did not want to know the truth and didn’t make an effort to find it. Or they knew the truth but lied anyway. PolitiFact gets five stars for blatant lies.