A picture worth a thousand words?

PolitiFact's executive director, Aaron Sharockman, sent out a mass email earlier today. One of those emails asking for reader support.

The image at the top of Sharockman's email was revealing, even if it happened to reveal what we already know about PolitiFact.

In journalism school we learned the importance of images. Journalists pay a great deal of attention to images and the messages they send.

So take a look. Break it down.

It's an image of protesters in front of the White House. We can see signs that say "No Justice No Peace" and "Black Lives Matter." The photo does not place the protestors in the distance as a third party. The image is taken from the midst of the protest. The point-of-view is from among the protestors. The protestors, and presumably their protests, are aimed at the White House.

The appeal makes sense, given that PolitiFact's fan base leans left and opposes Trump. The photo slyly (and with "plausible deniability!) sends an anti-Trump protest message those readers on the left will likely appreciate, even if many only appreciate it subconsciously.

The photo's an ideological tell.

But There's More

Before the fundraising email went out, we noticed PolitiFact's editor-in-chief, Angie Drobnic Holan, tweeting out an article blaming President Trump for violence directed against journalists.

Has anyone bothered to fact check that supposed cause-and-effect relationship?

From @TomWJones at @Poynter: Attacks on media covering the protests are simply following the president’s rhetoric https://t.co/0xm0Sv115M via @Poynter

— Angie Drobnic Holan (@AngieHolan) June 1, 2020

We say that if a journalist truly believes Mr. Trump is responsible for violence against journalists, the journalist who thinks that should be presumed biased against Mr. Trump. Bias against Trump does not necessarily make PolitiFact's fact checks of Trump wrong. We emphasize these examples of bias mainly because PolitiFact falsely represents itself as unbiased.

Stop wearing the mask and we'll stop repeatedly peeling it away. Deal?

We want Bill Adair subjected to the "Flip-O-Meter"

It wasn't that long ago we reported on Bill Adair's article for Columbia Journalism Review declaring "Bias is good" along with a chart indicating fact-check journalism has more opinion to it than either investigative reporting or news analysis.

Yet WRAL, in announcing its new partnership with PolitiFact North Carolina, quoted Adair saying PolitiFact is unbiased:

“What is important about PolitiFact is not just that it’s not biased,” Adair said, “but that we show our work and that we show all of our sources.”

Naturally we cannot allow that to pass. We used WRAL's contact form to reach out to the writer of the article, Ashley Talley.

We pointed out the discrepancy between what Talley reported from Adair and what Adair wrote for Columbia Journalism Review. We suggested somebody should fact check Adair.

Next we'll be contacting Paul Specht of PolitiFact North Carolina over this quotation:

“One thing I love about PolitiFact is that the format is very structured and it's not up to me to decide what is or isn't true,” said Paul Specht, WRAL’s PolitiFact reporter who has been covering local, state and national politics for years. “It's up to me to go do the research and then it's up to the research to tell us what is true.”

We're not sure how that's supposed to square with Adair's declaration from a few years ago that "Lord knows the decision about a Truth-O-Meter rating is entirely subjective."

What changed?

In addition to its "Truth-O-Meter" PolitiFact publishes "Flip-O-Meter" items.

We'd like to see Adair on the Flip-O-Meter.

PolitiFact founder: "Bias is good"

It was wasn't even a year ago that PolitiFact pompously announced it isn't biased, but now PolitiFact founder Bill Adair has muddied the waters by announcing from his lofty perch at Duke University that bias is good.

Doubtless it is important to make take Adair's words in context.

We'll certainly try.

Here's the Columbia Journalism Review headline:

Op-ed: Bias is good. It just needs a label.

In context so far: Adair appears to say bias is good if the reader understands it (hence the need for a label).

Adair repeated the same point in the article and then used a graphic to spell out what he's saying:

It's hard not to notice that Adair's graphic appears to concede what we have argued for years here at PolitiFact Bias. Fact-checking is not some kind of objective and scientific pursuit even if we set aside the subjective linear-scale truth ratings. Adair understands fact-checking contains more opinion than does "news analysis," with no other form of journalism closer to "opinion."

Unfortunately Adair does little to distinguish the desirable types of bias he's probably talking about--bias toward truth and democracy, for example--from unhealthy cognitive biases. But at least he gives clear guidance that journalists should appropriately label their work.

Now we just need to find the appropriate label at PolitiFact, right?

PolitiFact is not biased -- here’s why

Okay, great. No problem, right?

Seriously, we're not aware of any prominent acknowledgement of bias labeling at PolitiFact.com.

If such a thing existed, perhaps we should expect to find it on PolitiFact's statement of principles. But we get this instead:

Our ethics policy for PolitiFact journalists

PolitiFact seeks to present the true facts, unaffected by agenda or biases. Our journalists set their own opinions aside as they work to uphold principles of independence and fairness.

Anybody see an expression of the idea "bias is good" in there? We don't.

PolitiFact over its history has encouraged readers to take its biased reporting as objective reporting.

It deceived and continues to deceive its readers by the standard Adair advocates.