Friday, January 31, 2014

Media Trackers: "Cleveland Plain Dealer Announces Death of PolitiFact Ohio"

Jason Hart and Media Trackers takes note of the Cleveland Plain Dealer shuttering its PolitiFact Ohio franchise:
Cleveland Plain Dealer parent Northeast Ohio Media Group (NEOMG) announced in a January 24 story that the Plain Dealer and Cleveland.com are ending their partnership with farcical “fact-checking” outlet PolitiFact.com.
Hart goes on to summarize PolitiFact's ignominious history.  It's recommended reading for those who missed Hart's (and PolitiFact Bias') earlier reporting on PolitiFact Ohio.

Writing on the same subject, former Plain Dealer editor John Kroll points up one of the problems that dogs PolitiFact nationally:
Even if one could parse out the differences, the Truth-O-Meter mixed apples and oranges. Its ratings are a combination of both whether a statement is true and whether it was misleading. Where the balance between those two values was struck in picking a rating was crucial. And as far as I could tell, looking at PolitiFact ratings from the national site as well as local ones, the final choices were coin flips. Much-debated coin flips conducted by honest journalists trying to be fair — but coin flips, nonetheless.
Kroll's piece is also worth a read.


Note, Feb 7, 2014:
Our thanks to William A. Jacobson and Legal Insurrection for making this the "Post of the Day" for Feb. 7, 2014.

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