Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Draw conclusions with caution, Data Lounge

We say PolitiFact's report cards mislead people.

PolitiFact counters with "There's not a lot of reader confusion out there."

Who's right? We turned to the Data Lounge (a discussion board) for help:

Fact-Checking Site Finds Fox News Only Tells the Truth 18 Percent of the Time

Huh. We wonder what fact-checking site that might be?
Punditfact, a branch of Politifact, has put together profiles for CNN, MSNBC and Fox News detailing just how honest each of these networks are. And while it’s obviously not a completely comprehensive profile (it would be nearly impossible to fact check every single thing said on each network) it’s a decent measure of the honesty of each. And what do you know, Pundifact found Fox News to have only told the truth 18 percent (15 of 83) of the time for the statements they checked. And even of that 18 percent, only 8 percent of what they said was completely “True.” The other 10 percent was rated as “Mostly True.” A staggering 60 percent (50 of 83) comments were found to be either “Mostly False,” “False,” or “Pants on Fire.” The other 22 percent were rated “Half True.” Essentially well over half of what Punditfact has fact-checked on Fox News has been a lie and only 18 percent has been deemed factual. To compare, CNN was found to have been honest about 60 percent of the time, while only having 18 percent of their comments found to be false. As for MSNBC, they were found to have been honest about 31 percent of the time, while 48 percent of the comments they had fact-checked were deemed untrue. So while MSNBC’s numbers aren’t exactly worth bragging about, they’re still far better than the “fair and balanced” Fox News.
Is this one of the careful conclusions PolitiFact cautions its readers to draw about report card data?

It's the same story at Forward Progressives. Literally.

PolitiFact does not randomize its story selection. Its ratings contain at least some subjectivity (we say it's a high degree of subjectivity). Conclusions like these from Data Lounge don't follow. The report card stories mislead people.

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