Even as they criticized the rest of his performance for its lies and a general incoherence on basic policy specifics, mainstream and conservative media personalities are largely in agreement that Republican nominee Donald Trump earned more style points than Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton during the first half of their presidential debate on September 26, which focused on the economy and international trade.

But as Vox editor-in-chief Ezra Klein argued in a September 27 blog, the belief among journalists and pundits that Trump “won” the opening economic portion -- or any portion -- of the debate only holds water if you grade the candidate’s braggadocious style as more important than his vacant substance (emphasis added):

This is how it felt to me, too. Stylistically, this section was Trump’s best portion of the debate. He kept slamming Clinton on NAFTA — "the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere” — and spoke with the confidence of a man who knew what he was talking about.

But he didn’t know what he was talking about.

What was stylistically Trump’s best portion of the debate was substantively among his worst (I say among his worst because it is hard to beat the section where he said he both would and would not honor the NATO treaty, and then said he both would and would not adhere to the first-strike doctrine on nuclear weapons). Trump was arguing the central economic theory of his campaign — and he was just wrong. In a section that began with him demanding solutions for our economic woes, he showed himself completely confused as to the nature of not just our economic problems, but the underlying labor market.

The tone of his voice and the confidence of his delivery shouldn’t distract us from the hollowness of his remarks.

From his introductory remarks, Trump unleashed a torrent of falsehoods during the first presidential debate of the general election. Journalists and commentators from across the political spectrum slammed the GOP nominee for his seeming lack of preparation and inability to execute a clear debate strategy. Focus groups of undecided voters conducted by CNN and by conservative pollster Frank Luntz agreed that Clinton trounced Trump on the stage, and a national poll fielded by CNN showed that debate viewers came away thinking Trump had lost “overwhelmingly.” Trump was even needled by reporters for revealing “his famously thin skin” and for failing to control his impulses and “los[ing] the battle against himself.”

And yet, somehow, numerous professional debate-watchers seemed to think Trump actually performed well during the opening portion of the debate, when he attacked Clinton and President Obama on the economy. Ignoring that the country Trump was describing doesn’t actually exist, journalists largely seemed to agree that Trump’s jeremiad was nonetheless effective.

Professional economists who watched the debate, on the other hand, savaged Trump for his repeated lies about the American economy. Trump falsely claimed the American labor market is being hollowed out by trade even when job creation is steady, he reiterated a false right-wing media claim that American incomes are stagnant when they are rising, he repeated his own false claim that the Federal Reserve is acting “politically” to prop up the economic recovery while claiming at the same time that the economy isn’t really recovering, and he lied about his impossible plan to pay down the national debt. And Trump did all of these things during a segment of the debate that commentators currently argue he won.

For months, media critics have lamented how Trump is often graded “on a curve” for his performances and public statements, noting that he is “held to a different standard than Clinton” and his other political counterparts. The widespread perception that Trump outdid himself during the opening minutes of the debate while spouting a laundry list of lies about the economy and trade, proves how persistent this problem remains.

In an August 31 article, National Review’s David French claimed pro-choice advocates support a “selective application of science” and suggested that science actually warrants recognition and protection of a so-called fetal personhood standard.

French’s argument has been a favorite of right-wing media. But taking the ideological stance that the concept of fetal personhood is based on credible science -- while pro-choice arguments aren’t -- ignores medical experts, legal precedents, and the material consequences such a measure would have.

To establish this argument, the National Review criticized a recent New York Times op-ed by a medical professional that called for laws that regulate abortion to be “based on the best available science.” The op-ed was authored by Ushma D. Upadhyay, an associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. Upadhyay also co-authored a recent study of the effects of a 2011 Ohio law that required patients to use an outdated protocol for medication abortions. In her August 30 op-ed, Upadhyay called for those pushing abortion restrictions to quit claiming such laws “protect women’s health and safety” without any “scientific research that evaluates these laws’ actual effects on women and their health.”

According to the National Review, however, Upadhyay’s argument that any abortion restrictions should be science-based is actually part of the left's “hocus pocus” that ignores the point that “from the moment of conception, a separate human being exists.” The article argued that the pro-choice community “can’t handle the reality of a human fetus, so it waves a magic wand and says that the child may be ‘human,’ but it’s not a ‘person.’” Furthermore, French accused Upadhyay and other medical professionals who support abortion access of engaging in “garbage thinking” by “refusing to grapple even for a moment with the single-most important scientific issue in the entire abortion debate, the humanity of the fetus.”

But pro-choice advocates and doctors like Upadhyay do not deny, or refuse to “grapple” with, the science of human fetuses. What’s really at issue are the cultural and, more importantly, legal ramifications of characterizing a fetus as a “person,” a reality the National Review ignored.

Fetal personhood refers to an extreme anti-choice position that posits an equivalency between fetuses and persons in order to accuse abortion providers or women of committing murder. In a 2015 fact sheet, NARAL defined personhood laws as measures that “typically change a state’s definition of the word ‘person’ to include a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus, with the intent of outlawing abortion.” Beyond criminalizing abortion, an expanded definition of personhood could also serve to outlaw stem cell research, fertility treatments, and certain forms of contraception.

In his National Review article, French called for a recognition of “the humanity of the fetus” -- promoting the anti-choice argument for redefining personhood to begin at conception. For example, French wrote:

And how does a fetus become a person, pray tell? By applying nothing more and nothing less than the first three rules of real estate: location, location, location. A baby isn’t a real baby, the reality-based community [pro-choice supporters] says, when it’s inside the mother. It’s only when it moves about 18 inches that it actually becomes a person. In other words, take the identical human organism, move it less than two feet outside of the mother, and voilà! A real-live person exists.

Calling this thinking “hocus-pocus” is too charitable. It’s murderous metaphysical mumbo jumbo. There is nothing scientific about it. It’s philosophically incoherent. It’s garbage thinking.

Medical institutions and experts have rejected the arguments promoted to support fetal personhood claims. For example, in 2012, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) denounced personhood measures on the basis that they “substitute ideology for science and represent a grave threat to women’s health and reproductive rights”:

ACOG firmly believes that science must be at the core of public health policies and medical decision-making that affect the health and life of women.

Like Mississippi's failed "Personhood Amendment" Proposition 26, these misleading and ambiguously worded "personhood" measures substitute ideology for science and represent a grave threat to women's health and reproductive rights that, if passed, would have long-term negative outcomes for our patients, their families, and society. Although the individual wording in these proposed measures varies from state to state, they all attempt to give full legal rights to a fertilized egg by defining "personhood" from the moment of fertilization, before conception (ie, pregnancy/ implantation) has occurred. This would have wide-reaching harmful implications for the practice of medicine and on women's access to contraception, fertility treatments, pregnancy termination, and other essential medical procedures.

Legal precedent has also established that the concept of fetal personhood is unconstitutional. As Rewire’s Imani Gandy noted, “At the outset, states cannot grant fetuses rights that infringe women’s constitutional privacy rights. That’s Supremacy Clause 101.” The Supreme Court also explicitly rejected fetal personhood when in Roe v. Wade the court found that “the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense.”

Expanding the legal definition of personhood to begin at conception, or even fertilization, could have wide-reaching and negative consequences.

In a briefing paper, the Center for Reproductive Rights explained that “because so many laws use the terms ‘persons’ or ‘people,’ a prenatal personhood measure could affect large numbers of a state’s laws, changing the application of thousands of laws and resulting in unforeseeable, unintended, and absurd consequences.” Already, women have been prosecuted for having miscarriages and stillbirths and for attempting to self-abort.

For example, in December 2015, Anna Yocca was arrested in Tennessee for attempted first-degree murder after she tried to self-induce an abortion. According to Rewire, Yocca’s legal battle “opens the constitutional question of whether or not general homicide laws" are applicable in the case of self-induced abortions, and it will likely serve as “a test case for anti-choice prosecutors who want to find a legal hook to charge women who abort with murder.” Vox added that Yocca’s case had "horrifying implications for all pregnant women, even those who don't want an abortion" by giving the government too much control over women's individual pregnancies.

In July, an Indiana court overturned the conviction of Purvi Patel, who was originally sentenced to 20 years in prison for “feticide and felony neglect” after a self-induced abortion. According to NBC’s Irin Carmon, the judges rebuked the basis for Patel’s conviction as improper, writing that “the legislature did not intend for the feticide statute to apply to illegal abortions or to be used to prosecute women for their own abortions.”

These cases demonstrate merely a fraction of the potential consequences of an expanded definition of personhood. The National Review claimed that pro-choice advocates haven’t grappled with the implications of their support for abortion access, but it is the National Review that has failed to acknowledge the effects of their claims. The sheer number of medical and legal objections to fetal personhood underscores the importance of what Upadhyay wrote: that without sound scientific evidence, “Claims that abortion laws will protect women’s health and safety are just that -- claims. … When policy is not based on science, American women pay the price.”

Vox’s Matthew Yglesias used the example of former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s charitable organization to show that journalists need to properly contextualize their reporting on Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation because such scrutiny “can be misleading” in a media environment where Clinton is presumed to be corrupt and “every decision she makes and every relationship she has is cast in the most negative possible light,” while others who pursue similar actions are given “the presumption of innocence.”

Over the past few weeks, new information about Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation has been scandalized by the media, with coverage focused on “optics” when outlets find no evidence of wrongdoing, and misrepresenting stories that lack proper context. The sensationalist reporting on Clinton has sparked serious criticism of the media coverage, illustrating double standards and flawed reporting.

In an August 30 article, Yglesias argues that the media must properly contextualize stories about Hillary Clinton, because while “it’s natural to assume that where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” in the instance of the Clinton Foundation, “the smoke … is not a naturally occurring phenomenon” but rather “the result of … editorial decisions by the managers of major news organizations to dedicate resources to running down every possible Clinton email lead.” He criticizes the media for extending the “presumption of innocence” to politicians like Colin Powell, who turned his charity -- which accepted corporate donations -- over to his spouse while he served as secretary of state, while they depict Hillary Clinton as “a uniquely corrupt specimen operating with wildly unusual financial arrangements and substantive practices” because “people ‘know’ she is corrupt”:

The value of the presumption of innocence

Because Colin Powell did not have the reputation in the mid- to late ’90s of being a corrupt or shady character, his decision to launch a charity in 1997 was considered laudable. Nobody would deny that the purpose of the charity was, in part, to keep his name in the spotlight and keep his options open for future political office. Nor would anybody deny that this wasn’t exactly a case of Powell having super-relevant expertise. What he had to offer was basically celebrity and his good name. By supporting Powell’s charity, your company could participate in Powell’s halo.

But when the press thinks of you as a good guy, leveraging your good reputation in this way is considered a good thing to do. And since the charity was considered a good thing to do, keeping the charity going when Powell was in office as secretary of state was also considered a good thing to do. And since Powell was presumed to be innocent — and since Democrats did not make attacks on Powell part of their partisan strategy — his charity was never the subject of a lengthy investigation.

[...]

The perception that Clinton is corrupt is one of her most profound handicaps as a politician. And what’s particularly crippling about it is that evidence of her corruption is so widespread exactly because everyone knows she’s corrupt.

Because people “know” that she is corrupt, every decision she makes and every relationship she has is cast in the most negative possible light. When she doesn’t allow her policy decisions to be driven by donors, she’s greeted by headlines like “Hillary Blasts For-Profit Colleges, But Bill Took Millions From One.”

[...]

Hillary Clinton is running for president. Her opponent, Donald Trump, is unusually weak and will probably lose. Scrutinizing her, her activities, and her associations is appropriate, and it’s difficult for any responsible citizen to argue that the likely next most powerful person on the planet is under too much scrutiny.

But the mere fact of scrutiny can be misleading.

It’s natural to assume that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. But the smoke emanating from the Clinton Foundation is not a naturally occurring phenomenon. It is the result of a reasonably well-funded dedicated partisan opposition research campaign, and of editorial decisions by the managers of major news organizations to dedicate resources to running down every possible Clinton email lead in the universe.

Whatever one thinks of that decision, it’s at least appropriate to ask editors and writers to put their findings on these matters into some kind of context for readers’ benefit. To the extent that Clinton is an example of the routinized way in which economic elites exert disproportionate voice in the political process, that’s a story worth telling. But it’s a very different story from a one in which Clinton is a uniquely corrupt specimen operating with wildly unusual financial arrangements and substantive practices.

Much of what we’ve seen over the past 18 months is journalists doing reporting that supports the former story, and then writing leads and headlines that imply the latter. But people deserve to know what’s actually going on.

Glenn Beck's conservative news site TheBlaze published a column using U.S. Olympic medalist Simone Biles’ background and success to prop up a conservative fringe talking point alleging Planned Parenthood “specializes in killing humans just like Simone,” from low-income, often black and brown communities.

At the 2016 summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Simone Biles led the United States gymnastics team to a gold medal before securing multiple individual accolades.

After Biles’ historic performance, TheBlaze’s Matt Walsh used her family history as an adopted child and her subsequent success as evidence that abortion was “a devastating tragedy” perpetrated by Planned Parenthood disproportionately against black women.

According to Walsh, “if Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry had their way, she would have never made it to the podium … seen the light of day … [and] wouldn’t even have a name, let alone Olympic gold medals.” He argued that Biles’ success was in opposition to the efforts of Planned Parenthood to target “single black women” and predominately operate clinics in economically disadvantaged communities. Walsh further lauded Biles’ adoptive parents and said without their intervention Biles “would be one of the untold million … decomposing in a medical waste dumpster behind an inner city abortion clinic.”

Walsh’s argument echoed a frequent right-wing media attack on Planned Parenthood and its role as an essential provider in underserved communities.

For example, Fox News commentator and Donald Trump surrogate Dr. Ben Carson has claimed that Planned Parenthood engages in racist population control by placing “most of their clinics in black neighborhoods.”

Similarly, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh has claimed that “the original goal of Planned Parenthood was to abort various minorities out of existence.” Limbaugh has even alleged that “Planned Parenthood [is] doing the job the [Klu Klux] Klan could never finish” and that supporters of the organization support the abortion of “60 percent of black babies.”

In his August 15 article, Walsh went a step further and hijacked Biles’ Olympic success as a platform to spread similar misinformation about Planned Parenthood:

Reports have confirmed that the abortion conglomerate specifically targets poor black babies for extermination. Granted, this is probably more a marketing decision than racism. Planned Parenthood concentrates its abortion enterprise in poor areas with heavy minority populations simply because it knows it can make a fast buck off of scared and desperate women like Simone’s mother. Planned Parenthood has centered its entire business around killing babies like Simone Biles.

[...]

It’s very fortunate that Simone’s life was not vacuumed away before she had the opportunity to show us what incredible things she could do with it. If only the 50 million other babies the abortion industry has stolen from the world had been given the same opportunity. Think of how much brighter the world might be.

Despite Walsh’s bombast, the evidence to support his attack is lacking.

According to a recent Guttmacher Institute fact sheet, women of color do experience higher rates of unintended pregnancy and more frequently elect to abort. Think Progress’ Kira Lerner explained these numbers simply reflect “the difficulties that many women in minority communities face in accessing high-quality contraceptive services and in using their chosen method of birth control consistently and effectively.” Lerner noted black women also experience a “racial disparity … for other health measures including rates of diabetes, breast and cervical cancer and sexually transmitted infections.”

In an earlier fact check of “the claim that most abortion providers are located in black or Hispanic neighborhoods” Guttmacher found the argument demonstrably false as “6 in 10 abortion providers are located in majority-white neighborhoods.”

Walsh wrote that Planned Parenthood is “not in the business of supporting and helping the Simones of the world” because it was “murdering them” through abortion. Groups representing women of color and reproductive rights advocates have strongly rejected this specious claim.

In reality, women of color are left particularly vulnerable and without a health care provider when Planned Parenthood clinics are forced out of communities. As Planned Parenthood’s associate director of global communications noted, “Planned Parenthood is often the primary health care provider for Latinos and African Americans in this country.” In 2015, the National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda reported that “black women have more than double the unintended pregnancy rate of white women,” which is particularly concerning given “the risk of death from pregnancy complications was nearly three and a half times higher for Black women than for white women.”

NARAL board member Renee Bracey Sherman wrote after the Supreme Court’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby -- which enabled certain employers to deny contraception coverage benefits to their employees -- that because of these higher rates of unintended pregnancy and maternal mortality, “when employers deny access to birth control, they are actually putting Black women’s lives in danger.”

Despite this, anti-choice groups have long attempted to curtail access to necessary reproductive health services by attacking Planned Parenthood and women of color who rely on the health care provider. For example, clinic escort Pearl Brady told Vox that protestors outside abortion clinics “often target young women of color” by shouting things like “Black babies’ lives matter” even if a woman is seeking care “for birth control or an STI screening rather than an abortion.” Other anti-choice groups like the Radiance Foundation have run entire campaigns arguing that Planned Parenthood is “the number one killer of black Americans.”

Aside from the lack of evidence to support such arguments, Rewire’s Imani Gandy summarized how positions like Walsh’s shame and ignore the experiences of black women and mothers:

To put it bluntly, this country was a hostile birthing environment for Black women during slavery, and remains so for many Black women today. But rather than take steps to make it easier for women to have and raise children, the anti-choice community simply grows more extreme and ridiculous in their rhetoric, and dials up to 11 its efforts to shame and demonize Black women.

Anti-choicers clutch their collective pearls about the high rate of abortion in the Black community, but have no interest in talking about the root cause of that abortion rate. Anti-choice advocates, conservatives in particular, don’t want to talk about the never-ending war they are waging against contraception access; comprehensive sexual education; and social programs like public assistance, food benefits, health care, sex education, and fair pay that would permit Black women to not only choose motherhood when the time is right for them, but also to raise healthy children.