Bill Adair: "I lied because I was trying to show that we were impartial"

 At PolitiFact Bias we never believed that the liberal bloggers at PolitiFact didn't keep score by party. We were willing to believe that PolitiFact didn't keep a physical or digital tally showing the GOP got the worst of the "Truth-O-Meter" but we simply didn't buy the notion that staffers weren't keeping score in their heads. And we would count that as a factor likely to influence bias effects such as confirmation bias.

PolitiFact's founding editor Bill Adair has been making the rounds stumping for his new book, and has now admitted he was lying about not keeping score.

We created a shortened clip to emphasize his confession and the context.

 

 Readers may view Adair's full appearance here.

Adair:

Well, I was lying. We did keep score. And, uh, we didn't keep score by party but we kept score and still do, PolitiFact does, um, by individual. So you could easily look through the prominent Republicans and compare them to the prominent Democrats and see that (2012 C-SPAN caller) Brian was right.

Um, but I lied, um, and I lied because I was trying to show that we were impartial.

Of course Adair has also said that part of his original vision for PolitiFact was giving readers the ability to compare politicians' fact-checking records. That accords with what we have said all along here at PolitiFact Bias: PolitiFact treats political fact-checking as anti-Republican editorial. Subjective ratings are editorials, and aggregating the ratings magnifies the editorial effect.

Afters:

I belatedly tried to get through to C-SPAN to ask Adair a question. I wanted his comment on the fairly rapid decline in "Pants on Fire" ratings given to Democrats. Should PolitiFact take credit for making Democrats more honest over time, or is this just one more evidence that PolitiFact fact checkers lean left?

As the chart shows, in 2012 under Adair PolitiFact identified 26 "Pants on Fire" claims from Democrats. In the past five years PolitiFact has only given out 11 total. "Republicans lie more" doesn't explain it. This is Democrats lying less and less according to the "Truth-O-Meter."