Friday, January 21, 2011

Federal Review: "Politifact: The Selective Ignorance of Meaning"

"Winston" at a conservative blog called "Federal Review" fires off a blistering review of two PolitiFact fact checks:
Create a website purporting to “fact check” politicians, win a Pulitzer Prize. That’s a short history of Politifact, an operation of the St. Petersburg Times. Complete with fun little “Truth-o-meter” graphics that range from True to Pants-on-Fire, illustrated with, you guessed it. Flames.

I’ve been reading this for some time and have always come away uneasy. Often because they try to fact-check political opinion and not-unreasonable-predictions about the results of policy proposals. But today, I have discovered two good, illustrative examples.
Winston deals with the fact check of an ad attacking congressional candidate Zack Space and another concerning Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).  The former contains the more damaging observations.  Winston gets to the point quickly and gets in some damaging shots.  Worth reading, so get busy.

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