Sunday, January 3, 2016

"Not a lot of reader confusion" in San Luis Obispo

The Tribune of San Luis Obispo, California, published a reader's letter touching on our favorite topic, PolitiFact. The letter provides yet more evidence of reader confusion about PolitiFact's candidate report cards. PolitiFact editor Angie Drobnic Holan insists that little reader confusion exists about the report cards.
A Dec. 13 New York Times column (“All politicians lie. Some lie more than others”) indicated that the percentages of claims in these categories for candidates Ben Carson, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are 84 percent, 76 percent and 66 percent, respectively.
The reader doesn't bother to say whether he believes those percentages reasonably extrapolate to generalizations about the candidates. But there was hardly a need for that, thanks to the headline provided by the Tribune:

GOP presidential front-runners lie the most

Do they?

Well, the editors of the Tribune read it in The New York Times via the editor of Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact, so it must be true, right?

That's PolitiFact and the mainstream press running their own deceptive political messages while flying the banner of truth overhead.

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