Friday, May 16, 2014

More on PolitiFact's deceptive Rubio/climate correction

We've uncovered a bit more evidence of PolitiFact's dishonest correction of its climate-change hit piece on Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

For review, here's the correction notice PolitiFact attached to its amended article:
CORRECTION: This story was updated on May 15 to clarify that 97.1 percent of the studies that took a position on global warming agreed that there's been a negative human impact on the atmosphere; more than half the studies did not take a position. Also, the story clarifies that the 2013 report looked at studies, not individual scientists.
The original article wasn't unclear about the 2013 report. It flatly said the report indicated 97.1 percent of scientists disagree with Rubio's supposed claim (PolitiFact blew and continues to blow the reporting on what Rubio said) that humans do not contribute to climate change.

Here's how PolitiFact was publicizing the Rubio fact check on its list of stories (red oval added to draw attention to the false reporting):


PolitiFact's clarification is not a clarification.  It's a gloss on a reporting error.

Here's how the Rubio blurb appears today:


PolitiFact's original article encouraged readers to conclude that 97 percent of scientists agree the Antarctic ice shelf is collapsing because of human-caused climate change.  That's a deception far worse than the Jeep ad from the Romney campaign that PolitiFact awarded its 2012 "Lie of the Year."  And the current version remains more misleading than that Romney ad.

2 comments:

  1. PolitiFact can't even get its corrections correct. Nothing in the cited report finds that studies "agreed that there's been a negative human impact on the atmosphere." The matter under examination was global warming, not "impact on the atmosphere." Also, "negative impact" is spin imparted by PolitiFact. Such judgments appear nowhere in the original paper.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah, that fact check is riddled with errors and sloppy thinking.

    As I wrote elsewhere, the competition for worst fact check of the year is looking pretty intense already. This one of Rubio's another strong contender.

    ReplyDelete

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