Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Reader confusion on PolitiFact's Trump report card?

We have it from PolitiFact editor Angie Drobnic Holan that not much reader confusion exists about PolitiFact's candidate and network report cards. Readers supposedly know the report cards do not represent a scientific attempt to gauge the truthfulness of candidates.

We find Holan's claim laughable.

We often see PolitiFact's readers expressing their confusion on FaceBook. The Donald Trump presidential candidacy, predictably accompanied by PolitiFact highlighting Trump's PolitiFact "report card" offers us yet anther opportunity to survey the effects of PolitiFact's deception.
  • "65% False or Pants on Fire.
    He's a FoxNews dream candidate"
  • "admittedly, 14 is a small sample size but 0% true!"
  • "Only 14 % Mostly True ??? 86 % from Half true to Pants on Fire - FALSE !!! YES - THIS IS THE KIND OF PERSON WE NEED IN THE WHITE HOUSE."
  •  "0% true? Now, why doesn't that surprise me?"
  •  "True zero percent of the time - zero. Great word, zero. Sums up this man's essence well I think"
  • "I believe this is the worst record I've seen?"
  • "Wow 0% true"
  • "Not one single true . sounds right"
  • "Profile of a habitual LIAR !"
  • "Just what we need another republican that can't tell the truth !!"
  • "His record is better than I expected, but still perfectly abysmal."
  • "I realize that Politifact doesn't check everything politicians say, but zero percent true? That's outrageous."
  • "You'd think the GOP would disqualify him for never telling the whole truth."
  • "Zero percent "true"!"
  • "He should do well with a record like that, lol!"
  • "Not a great record in the accuracy department."
  • "Never speaks the truth!!!!"
  • "This looks like the record of a pathological liar."
Occasionally a Facebook commenter gives us hope:
People who believe these percentages are the fools. It's a well known thing called "selection bias". It refers to the FACT they have not checked every statement he has made just a very few. The percentages given are from those their [sic] selected. It's a well known way to lie about someone and is commonly used by left wing media and is meant to inflame their base to believe everything they read that agrees with their own beliefs.
"There's not a lot of reader confusion out there." Right. Sure.

3 comments:

  1. Arent there other sites that fact check as well? Arent they all coming to the same conclusion?? Lmao!! Theyre all biased....except you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Adaam Pitterson wrote:

    "Arent there other sites that fact check as well?"

    Sure.

    "Arent they all coming to the same conclusion??"

    What conclusion do you have in mind, Adaam? That fact checker "report cards" don't mislead people? No, not all the fact checkers agree on that. FactCheck.org doesn't use a rating system at all, and that's partly because it's realized that such systems mislead people. The method we showed in this post is one of them.

    Maybe if you return to comment again you can address that point.

    ReplyDelete
  3. http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump

    Just spend five minutes and you'll find your answer

    ReplyDelete

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