Friday, September 26, 2014

Left Jab: Rachel Maddow and the presidential salute

MSNBC television host Rachel Maddow is probably the highest-profile critic of PolitiFact from the left. We've panned a number of her criticisms of PolitiFact as weak, but her Sept. 25 blog scores a palpable hit:
So, what I wrote is true. Punditfact found it to be true. They published an amusing presidential speechmaking anecdote that not only shows that it’s true, but makes you feel all warm-hearted about its being true.  And then gave their rating:  “Mostly False”.  Ta-daa!

Usually, I ignore these guys.  Yesterday, I made the mistake of responding to their letter, which I regret. Don’t feed the trolls.  They included a line from my response to them in their rating, which I realize now may create the impression that I participated in this enterprise as if it was a real thing.  It’s not a real thing: it’s Politifact.  It’s terrible.
We appreciate the absence in Maddow's post of any partisan whining. She just makes the justifiable assertion that PolitiFact does fact checking badly, and supports it with a pretty good anecdote. PolitiFact uses some sort of Associative Property of Quotations to blame Maddow for the questionable claim of a blogger who cited her book.

We'll repeat our position there's nothing inconsistent between PolitiFact treating liberals or Democrats unfairly and our position that PolitiFact displays an anti-conservative and anti-Republican bias. Maddow has a legitimate example of PolitiFact treating her unfairly.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks to commenters who refuse to honor various requests from the blog administrators, all comments are now moderated. Pseudonymous commenters who do not choose distinctive pseudonyms will not be published, period. No "Anonymous." No "Unknown." Etc.