Friday, November 10, 2017

'Not a lot of reader confusion' VI

PolitiFact editor Angie Drobnic Holan has claimed she does not notice much reader confusion regarding the interpretation of PolitiFact's "report card" charts and graphs.

This series of posts is designed to call shenanigans on that frankly unbelievable claim.

Rem Rieder, a journalist of some repute, showed himself a member of PolitiFact's confused readership with a Nov. 10, 2017 article published at TheStreet.com.
While most politicians are wrong some of the time, the fact-checking website PolitiFact has found that that [sic] Trump's assertions are inaccurate much more frequently than those of other pols.
When we say Rieder showed himself a member of PolitiFact's confused readership, that means we're giving Rieder the benefit of the doubt by assuming he's not simply lying to his readers.

As we have stressed repeatedly here at PolitiFact Bias, PolitiFact's collected "Truth-O-Meter" ratings cannot be assumed to reliably reflect the truth-telling patterns of politicians, pundits or networks. PolitiFact uses non-random methods of choosing stories (selection bias) and uses an admittedly subjective rating system (personal bias).

PolitiFact then reinforces the sovereignty of the left-leaning point of view--most journalists lean left of the American public--by deciding its ratings by a majority vote of its "star chamber" board of editors.

We have called on PolitiFact to attach disclaimers to each of its graphs, charts or stories related to its graphs and charts to keep such material from misleading unfortunate readers like Rieder.

So far, our roughly five years of lobbying have fallen on deaf ears.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks to commenters who refuse to honor various requests from the blog administrators, all comments are now moderated. Pseudonymous commenters who do not choose distinctive pseudonyms will not be published, period. No "Anonymous." No "Unknown." Etc.