PolitiFact Editor: "Most of our fact checks are really rock solid as far as the reporting goes"

Why do we love it when PolitiFact's principals do interviews?

Because it almost always provides us with material for PolitiFact Bias.

PolitiFact Editor Angie Drobnic Holan, in a recent interview for the Yale Politic, damned her own fact-checking organization with faint praise (bold emphasis added):

We do two things–well, we do more than two things–but we do two things that I want to mention for public trust. First, we have a list of our sources with every fact check. If you go into a fact check on the right-hand rail [of the PolitiFact webpage], we list of all of our sources, and then we explain in detail how we came to our conclusion. I also wrote a recent column on why PolitiFact is not biased to try to answer some of the critique that we got during the latest election season. What we found was that when a campaign staffer does not like our fact check on their candidate, they usually do not argue the facts with us– they usually come straight at us and say that we are biased. So, I wrote this column in response to that. And the reason that they don’t come straight out and dispute the facts with us is because the fact checks are solid. We do make some mistakes like any other human beings, but most of our fact checks are really rock solid as far as the reporting goes. And yet, partisans want to attack us anyway.

We find Holan's claim plausible. The reporting on more than half of PolitiFact''s fact checks may well be rock solid. But what about the rest? Are the failures fair game for critics? Holan does not appear to think so, complaining that even though the reporting for PolitiFact's fact checks is solid more than half the time "partisans want to attack us anyway."

The nerve of those partisans!

Seriously, with a defender like Holan who needs partisan attacks? Imagine Holan composing ad copy extolling the wonders of PolitiFact:

PolitiFact: Rock Solid Reporting Most of the Time

Holan's attempt to discredit PolitiFact's critics hardly qualifies as coherent. Even if PolitiFact's reporting was "rock solid" 99 percent of the time criticizing the errors should count as fair game. And a 1 percent error rate favoring the left would indicate bias.

Holan tries to imply that the quality reporting results in a lack of specific criticism, but research connected to Holan's predecessor at PolitiFact, Bill Adair of Duke University, contradicts that notion:

Conservative outlets were much more likely to question the validity of fact-checks and accuse fact-checkers of making errors in their research or logic.

It isn't that conservatives do not criticize PolitiFact on its reporting. They do (we do). But PolitiFact tends to ignore the criticisms. Perhaps because the partisan critiques are "rock solid"?

More interviews, please.