Angie Drobnic Holan: "Find news organizations that have a demonstrated commitment to the ethical principles of truthfulness, fairness, independence and transparency."

PolitiFact, thy name is Hypocrisy.

The editors of PolitiFact Bias often find themselves overawed by the sanctimonious pronouncements we see coming from PolitiFact (and other fact checkers).

Everybody screws up. We screw up. The New York Times screws up. PolitiFact often screws up. And a big part of journalistic integrity comes from what you do to fix things when you screw up. But for some reason that concept just doesn't seem to fully register at PolitiFact.

Take the International Fact-Checking Day epistle from PolitiFact's chief editor Angie Drobnic Holan:

Find news organizations that have a demonstrated commitment to the ethical principles of truthfulness, fairness, independence and transparency. (We adhere to those principles at PolitiFact and at the Tampa Bay Times, so if you’re reading this, you’ve made a good start.)

The first sentence qualifies as great advice. The parenthetical sentence that follows qualifies as a howler. PolitiFact adheres to principles of truthfulness, fairness and transparency?

We're coming fresh from a week where PolitiFact published a fact check that took conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt out of context, said it couldn't find something that was easy to find, and (apparently) misrepresented the findings of the Congressional Budget Office regarding the subject.

And more to the issue of integrity, PolitiFact ignores the evidence of its failures and allows its distorted and false fact check to stand.

The fact check claims the CBO finds insurance markets under the Affordable Care Act stable, concluding that the CBO says there is no death spiral. In fact, the CBO said the ACA was "probably" stable "in most areas." Is it rightly a fact checker's job to spin the judgments of its expert sources?

PolitiFact improperly cast doubt on Hewitt's recollections of a New York Times article where the head of Aetna said the ACA was in a death spiral and people would be left without insurance:

Hewitt referred to a New York Times article that quotes the president of Aetna saying that in many places people will lose health care insurance.

We couldn’t find that article ...

We found the article (quickly and easily). And we told PolitiFact the article exists. But PolitiFact's fact check still makes it look like Hewitt was wrong about the article appearing in the Times.

PolitiFact harped on the issue:

In another tweet, Hewitt referenced a Washington Post story that included remarks Aetna’s chief executive, Mark Bertolini. On the NBC Meet the Press, Hewitt referred to a New York Times article.

We think fact checkers crowing about their integrity and transparency ought to fix these sorts of problems without badgering from right-wing bloggers. And if they still won't fix them after badgering from right-wing bloggers, then maybe they do not qualify as "organizations that have a demonstrated commitment to the ethical principles of truthfulness, fairness, independence and transparency."

Maybe they're more like liberal bloggers with corporate backing.



Correction April 3, 2017: Added a needed apostrophe to "fact checkers job."