Ezra Klein praises a Washington Post article on Rudy Giuliani’s health care dissembling:

This is the headline and first paragraph of an article in The Washington Post:

Giuliani Is Still Standing By Questionable Figures

The former New York mayor would have us believe that he was off by one percentage point at most in calculating his chances of surviving prostate cancer in Britain. In fact, he was spectacularly wrong the first time and equally wrong the second time. Epidemiologists say that his claim rests on a faulty statistical methodology that would not earn a passing grade at top medical schools in the United States.

The first graf of the article is pretty good work. Indeed, the whole article is pretty good work. I’d like to see it on A1 rather than A6, and I’d like to see Giuliani’s lies get mentioned in everyday coverage of the candidate, but baby steps.

That said, most people will still only real the headline. And the headline does not accurately convey the article’s conclusions. Giuliani is not “standing by questionable figures.’ He’s continually “lying about American health care.” There’s a big difference.

The media really has to get comfortable saying the “L” word.

Klein is right to call for more prominent and frequent coverage of Giuliani’s dissembling, but he should be careful what he wishes for in terms of the word “lying.” The problem is that the word implies an intention to mislead that can never be proven (that’s why we avoided using it in All the President’s Spin).

More importantly, speculation about motives is one of the worst features of the modern political journalism and not something we should be requesting more of. Reporters and pundits love to attribute motives to actions taken by politicians based on prevailing narratives about the candidates. As a result, the statements recognized as “lies” tend to be those that reinforce narratives of candidate dishonesty (see Gore, Al), which have been disproportionately attached to Democrats in recent years.

In short, calling for more denunciations of “lies” is, in practice, a call for more narrative-based speculation about motives. There’s an easier way: the media needs to state, flatly, that Giuliani is wrong in the context of regular news coverage. It’s that simple.