Tuesday, July 19, 2016

When Critics Axe I

We don't have quite enough brave antagonistic souls to have a Criticism of the Week, so we're settling on a "When Critics Axe" for occasions where we find a critic grinding an axe against us.

Without further ado, the criticism (from a message board):


Supposedly the first article on our site at the time said PolitiFact was wrong because it only used the available data to make its ruling. Sounds like our critic made a snap judgment.

Our article, about Clinton's defense of the "Half True" rating it at the time gave Clinton over her claims about never sending or receiving information marked as classified, actually just pointed out that PolitiFact's defense was nonsense. We explained how using the information available at the time makes sense where the facts can change with time, as with changes in poll data. But the same justification doesn't work when it's a matter of the fact-checker not having the information at the time. If Clinton was the one sending and receiving her emails, then she had the information available at the time she made the claim, even if PolitiFact was left in the dark.

PolitiFact came around to our way of thinking in a matter of hours, quietly dropping its defense of the "Half True" rating and changing the rating to "False."

So if we're wrong on that point, so is PolitiFact. But we're not wrong.

1 comment:

  1. Recommend edit: "Our article about Clinton's defense of the "Half True" rating"

    should be "Our article about Politifact's defense of the "halt True" rating.

    :D

    ReplyDelete

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