PolitiGnatStraining No. 573: Is natural immunity really a vaccination?

PolitiFact truly never ceases to amaze us with its forays into free interpretation of political claims. Perhaps President Trump deserves some of the credit for driving PolitiFact mad via Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Would you believe that Mr. Trump believes that immunity acquired through recovery from the coronavirus counts as a "vaccine"?

That's where PolitiFact went on Dec. 15, 2020:

This analysis will take some doing, because PolitiFact's fact check contains multiple layers of fact check lunacy.

First, we need to see what Trump actually said. PolitiFact covers that adequately in the fact check:

"You develop immunity over a period of time, and I hear we’re close to 15%. I’m hearing that, and that is terrific. That’s a very powerful vaccine in itself," said Trump, who was responding to a reporter’s question about what his message to the American people was as the holidays approach and levels of COVID cases in the U.S. continue to rise.

Immediately after, the fact check runs off the rails at about a 90 degree angle:

It wasn’t the first time Trump had given credence to the idea that if enough people in a population gain immunity to a disease by being exposed to it, the illness won’t be able to spread through the remainder of the population — a concept known as "herd immunity."

Assuming PolitiFact and fact checker Victoria Knight did not seek to deliberately mislead their readers, this looks like a likely case of confirmation bias. Knight and PolitiFact were looking for Trump to say something false and interpreted Trump's claim to create the falsehood they sought. Otherwise, it's a mystery how anyone could interpret Trump's claim as they did.

First, Trump is pretty obviously talking about natural immunity as a metaphorical vaccination. Natural immunity is not entirely unlike immunity acquired via a human-devised vaccination. We would hope that even liberal bloggers working as non-partisan fact-checking journalists would know about figures of speech such as metaphors.

Second, why take the 15 percent plateau as the notion Trump was comparing to a vaccine instead of the concept of naturally acquired immunity? We can't imagine a reason apart from either confirmation bias or premeditated deceit. Naturally acquired immunity has approximately the same role in achieving herd immunity as a vaccine. Both confer immunity, and both would contribute toward a population's potential for herd immunity. If that was Trump's point, as seems to reasonably be the case, he's right.

How does a mainstream fact checker get so far off course so quickly? And why isn't everybody blowing the whistle on this kind of fact-check shenanigan?

As for PolitiFact, it keeps chugging along on one of the sharpest tangents ever devised:

However, experts have warned that attempting to achieve herd immunity naturally, by allowing people to get sick with COVID-19, could result in more than a million deaths and potentially long-term health problems for many. A better way to achieve protection across the population, experts say, is through widespread vaccination.

Why do Knight and PolitiFact think this paragraph has any relevant relationship to Trump's claim? Do they suppose Trump calling natural immunity a "powerful vaccine in itself" represents an intent to change policy to forgo the use of man-made vaccines and seek to combat the virus with natural immunity alone?

This is fact-checking gone insane. The paragraph doesn't belong. PolitiFact could have talked about the role natural immunity plays in achieving herd immunity. Readers could benefit from that explanation. But they get hardly any of that explanation from PolitiFact. Instead, they get railroaded down PolitiFact's branching tree of tangent:

So, we thought it was important to check whether 15% is anywhere close to the herd immunity threshold, and whether this level of natural immunity could be considered "as powerful as a vaccine."

So PolitiFact fact checks whether Trump is right that 15 percent natural immunity could confer herd immunity, even though that really has nothing to do with what Trump said. And where does that "as powerful as a vaccine" line come from? PolitiFact puts it within quotation marks, as though it is quoting Mr. Trump. Is it supposed to be something Trump said?

It's not in the transcript of Trump's remarks that PolitiFact linked. And our Google search using "Trump" AND "as powerful as a vaccine" did nothing to encourage us to believe the quotation came from Trump.

Remember, a team of editors supposedly reviews each PolitiFact fact check. Apparently each of them gave some sort of okay to this dumpster fire of a fact check.

The PolitiFact team overlooked an obvious use of metaphor and then went circus clown on a balloon to turn Trump's claim into something it wanted to fact check.

PolitiFact North Carolina struggles with Twitter context

PolitiFact North Carolina's "Pants on Fire" rating awarded to the North Carolina Republican Party on Dec. 29, 2020 likely caps the data for our study of PolitiFact's "Pants on Fire" bias. And it gives us the opportunity to show again how PolitiFact struggles to properly apply interpretive principles when looking at Republican claims.

"Democrat Governor @RoyCooperNC has not left the Governor's Mansion since the start of the #COVID19 crisis," the party tweeted on Dec. 27.

Compared to similar claims and barbs, this particular tweet stood out.

That's PolitiFact's presentation of the GOP tweet. The only elaboration occurs in the summary section ("If Your Time Is Short") and later in the story when addressing the explanation from North Carolina GOP spokesperson Tim Wigginton.

Here's that section of the story (bold emphasis added):

Party spokesman Tim Wigginton told PolitiFact NC that the tweet is not meant to be taken literally.

"The tweet is meant metaphorically," Wigginton said, adding that it’s meant to critique the frequency of Cooper’s visits with business owners. He accused Cooper of living "in a bubble … instead of meeting with people devastated by his orders." 

The NC GOP’s tweet gave no indication that the party was calling on Cooper to meet with business owners.

The part in bold is the type of line that attracts a fact checker of fact checkers. 

Was there no indication the tweet was not intended literally?

It turns out that finding something worth widening the investigation merely took clicking the link to the GOP tweet.

I don't see how to embed the tweet, but here's the image accompanying the tweet:

It should strike anyone, even a left-biased fact checker, that the "Where's Cooper" comical graphic is a bit of a strange marriage for the claim Cooper hasn't left the governor's mansion.

That enough isn't enough to take Wigginton at his word, perhaps, but as we noted it does point toward a need for more investigation.

It turns out that the NCRP has tweeted out the image repeatedly in late December, accompanied by a number of statements.

Twitter counts as a new literary animal. Individual tweets are necessarily short on context. Twitter users may provide context a number of ways, such a creating a thread of linked tweets. Or tweeting periodically on a theme. The NCRP "Where's Cooper?" series seems to qualify as the latter. The tweets are tied together contextually by the "Where's Cooper" image, which provides a comical and mocking approach to the series of tweets.

In short, it looks like Wigginton has support for his explanation, and the PolitiFact fact checker, Paul Specht, either didn't notice or did not think the context was important enough to share with his readers.

It's okay for PolitiFact to nitpick whether Cooper had truly refrained from leaving the governor's mansion. The GOP tweets may have left a false impression on that point. But PolitiFact just as surely left a false impression that Wigginton's explanation had no grounding in fact. Specht didn't even mention the Waldo parody image.

"Pants on Fire"?

Hyperbole. Does PolitiFact have a license for hyperbole?

Does PolitiFact use consistent standards? No.

PolitiFact misleads when it tells its readers "we are applying the same standards to both sides." PolitiFact's methodology leaves open myriad ways to put fingers on the scale. The scale has fingerprints all over it.

In this article we'll focus on yet another example of uneven application of standards. We'll look at two PolitiFact fact checks in the category of health care, one from a Republican and one from a Democrat.

The Republican

On Nov. 30, 2020 PolitiFact published a fact check of Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) looking at her claim that her healthcare plan would protect Americans with preexisting conditions. PolitiFact issued a "False" judgment on Loeffler's claim.

Why the "False" rating?

PolitiFact's subheading suggested a lack of proof led to the rating: "No proof that Kelly Loeffler will ensure protections for preexisting conditions." 

Aside from the lack of proof, PolitiFact noted that Loeffler's plan proposed using something like high risk pools to help people get their preexisting conditions covered. PolitiFact's "If Your Time is Short" story summary gave Loeffler credit for protections that fall short of those offered by the Affordable Care Act (second bullet):

If Your Time is short

• The GOP Georgia senator’s new plan offers no details on how protections for people with preexisting health conditions would be ensured.

• Two provisions in the plan indicate protections will be less than those provided by the Affordable Care Act, experts say.

 

Why did the protections in Loeffler's plan count for nothing on PolitiFact's "Truth-O-Meter"? The special insurance groups designed for those with preexisting conditions couldn't even budget the rating up to "Mostly False"? Did PolitiFact assume that when Loeffler said "Americans" she meant "all Americans"? If so, that rationale failed to find its way into the fact check.

The Democrat

People these days tend to know (using that term advisedly) that President Obama's "You can keep your plan" pledge received PolitiFact's "Lie of the Year" in 2013. They've tended to forget, with help from PolitiFact, that the claim never received a Truth-O-Meter rating below "Half True." PolitiFact rated Obama's claim twice, in 2009 and in 2012. Both times it received a "Half True" rating. 

We'll use the 2012 rating to see how PolitiFact's application of standards compared to the ones it used for Loeffler.

PolitiFact's summary paragraphs encapsulate its reasoning:

Obama has a reasonable point: His health care law does take pains to allow Americans to keep their health plan if they want to remain on it. But Obama suggests that keeping the insurance you like is guaranteed.

In reality, Americans are not simply able to keep their insurance through thick and thin. Even before the law has taken effect, the rate of forced plan-switching among policyholders every year is substantial, and the CBO figures suggest that the law could increase that rate, at least modestly, even if Americans on balance benefit from the law’s provisions. We rate Obama’s claim Half True.

PolitiFact says Obama has a reasonable point. PolitiFact made no mention in its fact check of Loeffler to detect whether she had a reasonable point that her health care plan offered protections for preexisting conditions. Is that the same standard?

PolitiFact says Obama "suggested" that keeping one's preferred insurance is guaranteed. That might parallel the assumption that Loeffler was saying her plan guarantees coverage for preexisting conditions. PolitiFact's ruling suggests it made that assumption, though the fact check does not say so specifically. But if Obama was similarly making a guarantee, how did he skate with a "Half True" instead of the "False" rating Loeffler's claim received? Is that the same standard?

And speaking of guarantees, remember that PolitiFact docked Loeffler for not having proof that her plain would cover (all?) those with preexisting conditions. What proof did Obama's plan offer? Apparently none, as PolitiFact noted a Congressional Budget Office assessment saying the ACA would accelerate force churn of insurance plans. Is that the same standard?

We say the same standard did not apply to both. If Loeffler's "False" stems from her leading people to falsely believe her plan guarantees coverage for preexisting conditions then Obama's similar misleading would seem to equally earn a "False" rating. Or, both Loeffler and Obama could receive a "Half True" rating.

That they received quite different ratings shows the application of differing standards.

TDS symptom: PolitiFact fact checks jokes

 Sure, President Trump says plenty of false things. He truly does.

But that's actually a trap for left-leaning fact checkers who pretend to be nonpartisan. They have a hard time judging when they go too far. Like when they fact check jokes:

PolitiFact's Nov. 1, 2020 item fact-checking President Trump found "Pants on Fire" Trump's claim that his supporters were protecting challenger Joe Biden's campaign bus.

How do we know it was a joke?

We watched video of the Trump appearance where he made the statement. The claim comes in the midst of a segment of a speech done in the style of a classic stand-up comedy routine. Certainly Trump mixed in serious political claims, but many of the lines were intended to provoke laughter, and the one about protecting Biden's bus unquestionably drew laughter. In context, Trump was making a point about the enthusiasm of his supporters, and his story about cars and trucks surrounding the bus emphasized the number of vehicles involved.

PolitiFact played it completely straight:

"You see the way our people, they, you know, they were protecting his bus yesterday," Trump said Nov. 1 during a rally in Michigan. "Because they are nice. They had hundreds of cars."

The FBI’s San Antonio office said Nov. 1 that it is "aware of the incident and investigating."

Trump’s benevolent explanation lacks evidence.

How does a fact checker overlook/omit those contextual clues?

The left-leaning Huffington Post figured it out (bold emphasis added):

President Donald Trump on Sunday mockingly claimed that his supporters were “protecting” a campaign bus belonging to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden when a caravan of vehicles dangerously surrounded it on a Texas highway, leading to a vehicular collision.

“They were protecting their bus yesterday because they’re nice,” Trump said at a rally in Michigan to cheers, laughter and applause.

If PolitiFact noticed the audience laughing and intentionally suppressed evidence Trump was joking, then PolitiFact deceived its audience by omission.

When PolitiFact catches politicians doing that sort of thing a "Half True" rating often results.

PolitiFact does not hold itself to the same standard it applies to Republican politicians.

Correction 12/13/2020: We misspelled "PolitiFact" on the title line, omitting the first of two i's.

PolitiFact's 'Rubberstamps for Democrats' program

To be clear, PolitiFact has, as far as we know, no program it calls "Rubberstamps for Democrats." We invented that name for PolitiFact's propensity to put only enough effort into a fact check of a Democrat to find a result that reflects favorably on the Democrat.

PolitiFact Wisconsin gave us a terrific example of the genre with its Nov. 17, 2020 article supporting a narrative promoted by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.).

During a television appearance, Sen. Baldwin said the Department of Homeland Security said the 2020 election was the most secure in the history of the United States.

PolitiFact offered no context to speak of for Sen. Baldwin's remark. See for yourself:

That was the claim from U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin, in a Nov. 15, 2020 appearance on WISN-TV’s "UpFront" program. 

"We heard from the Department of Homeland Security this week that this was probably the most secure election that’s ever been run in the United States," Baldwin said. 

Is it true that some of the nation’s own top cybersecurity experts disagree with Trump?

We're always curious about the context, even if PolitiFact isn't. In this case, we found that the journalist interviewing Sen. Baldwin, Matt Smith, led the senator toward her statement when he introduced her segment of the show (transcript ours, see starting at 1:05 of the video):

Trump has made unsubstantiated allegations of widespread voter fraud about an election the Department of Homeland Security this week called the most secure in American history.

While it's certainly possible Smith and Baldwin heard that report independently, the interview gives the impression Baldwin is just echoing back what Smith had said.

That's clue No. 1 that PolitiFact was looking to give Sen. Baldwin a rubberstamped positive rating. Do fact checkers truly wonder "Is that true?" when a politician echoes back what a journalist said just a couple of minutes before?

More importantly, did the Department of Homeland Security say what Sen. Baldwin and Smith claimed?

 

Fuzzy Math: (EIS-GCC)+SCC=DHS

Looking at the joint statement to which Sen. Baldwin referred, it is credited to members of the Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council (EIS-GCC) and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Committee (SCC).

PolitiFact, judging from its story and its source list, did no digging to find out the specifics of the relationship between the committees and the Department of Homeland Security. Instead, we get this:

On Nov. 12, 2020, officials from two Department of Homeland Security committees — the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council and the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council overseeing cybersecurity — released a joint statement debunking their own boss’s rampant misinformation campaign.

How did PolitiFact conclude that the people who signed the letter were DHS employees under the Trump administration, other than by jumping to conclusions based on similarly spotty reporting from one of its listed sources, Axios?

PolitiFact and Axios simply leave out relevant information. While the committees have members (at least one, anyway) who work under DHS, most, by far, are in the private sector or state government working in a partnership organized by DHS. DHS developed the partnership to improve election security infrastructure. So, when members of the committees release a statement telling us that our election was supremely secure, they are patting themselves on the back: Hey, we did a great job! How about that?!

It's not as if these committees were objectively examining this election compared to others to judge the level of security. If they had done that, we'd have it from them in a detailed report. Now, to be fair, the joint statement lists specific reasons for saying the 2020 election showed improved security. They mention the widespread use of paper ballot backups, allowing elections officials to go back and correct various types of mistakes. And they may have good reason to believe elections systems now have greater resistance to hacking than in the past. However, it is unlikely on its face that the signing members have any solid reason for judging this election more secure than any particular election in the past. If they had any such solid reason they didn't bother mentioning it in their letter.

When journalists like Smith or politicians like Baldwin say the statement came from the Department of Homeland Security they apply or echo misleading spin, implying that the statement has the direct backing of DHS. There is apparently no such backing. The strongest backing apparently comes from the decision of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency--directly under DHS--to publish the joint letter from members of the committees. 

ABC News reported President Trump fired the head of CISA, Christopher Krebs, on Nov. 17, 2020 after Krebs said there was no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election.

Krebs said on Nov. 12, 2020 (via the Washington Times) he expected Trump to fire him.

Did PolitiFact make any connection between these events? Not at all. Or if it did, it was deemed unimportant.

In short, the Department of Homeland Security kinda-sorta-but-not-really said what Smith and Baldwin claimed it said. Which is to say it wasn't really DHS but at least one DHS official along with others working in partnership with DHS.

Review: Who they are and what they do:

Election Infrastructure Subsector Government Coordinating Council

Sector Coordinating Councils

Finally, here's a link to a list of the active parties for the elections GCC and SCC. The SCC has representation by voting system companies including Dominion. See for yourself.

To reiterate, it is nothing short of deceptive to represent the joint statement of a GCC and SCC as coming from the Department of Homeland Security. DHS has a finger in the pie, but that's about it.

And it's important to note that it isn't clear at all the select members who put their names on the joint statement carry the authority of their respective councils.

Afters

We could do another article on this PolitiFact "fact check" noting that it provides no specific evidence to support its claim that the joint statement "debunks" claims from President Trump.

The statement notably debunks claims from President Donald Trump and others that have alleged massive fraud.

 Does it? Explain how, fact checkers.

PolitiFact spins Biden's position on forced busing

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden opposed forced busing to achieve racial integration in public schools.

That's obvious from PolitiFact's presentation of its June 29, 2020 of a Facebook meme, right?

PolitiFact Bias tips its hat to Newsbusters, which highlighted this item with a July 10, 2020 article of its own. Newsbusters correctly noted that PolitiFact applied plenty of spin to its article, producing an emphasis on Biden's progressive vision of "orderly integration"--whatever that was supposed to mean--while de-emphasizing the negative.

What is 'Orderly Integration'?

What was Biden's view of the "orderly integration" that was preferable to forced busing? PolitiFact relied on a secondary source, The New York Times, for that information:

Biden argued that housing integration was a better way to desegregate public schools though it would take much longer to implement than a busing plan, the (New York Times') story says.

That's one way to characterize what the Times' story said. Your mileage may vary (ours did):

In a television interview, Mr. Biden called busing an “asinine concept” and said he had “gotten to the point where I think our only recourse to eliminate busing may be a constitutional amendment.” As an alternative, he argued for putting “more money into the black schools” and opening up housing patterns, warning that otherwise “we are going to end up with the races at war.”

“You take people who aren’t racist, people who are good citizens, who believe in equal education and opportunity, and you stunt their children’s intellectual growth by busing them to an inferior school and you’re going to fill them with hatred,” he said in the interview.

We see nothing in the Times' article showing Biden predicted "white flight" as a result of forced busing.

Apparently "orderly integration" means "opening up housing patterns," whatever that means.

The Times mentioned a "television interview" of Biden as its source. The Times did not offer any detail regarding who produced or broadcasted the interview.

What was the Times' Source?

 

We found a Vox story mentioning a 1975 television interview featuring Biden and touching on the subject of busing. But the supporting link led to a Washington Post archive of a Congressional Record entry of TV News--The People Paper's print interview with Biden. We found no evidence that interview ever aired on television. We suspect Vox and The New York Times' concluded from the newspaper's name that the interview was aired on television. We had little luck finding information about the publication. But the text of the interview supports that it served as the Times' source:

"It ls true that the white man has suppressed the black man, and continues to suppress the black man. It is harder to be black than to be white. But you have to open up avenues for blacks without closing avenues for whites; you don't hold society back to let one segment catch up. You put more money into the black schools for remedial reading programs, you upgrade facilities, you upgrade opportunities, open up housing patterns."

The interview fails to tell us what "open up housing patterns" means. We hoped Googling the phrase would help, but discovered that searching for the specific phrase while excluding "Biden" returned zero hits. Perhaps one day a journalist will think to ask Biden what he was talking about.

Did Biden use 'coded language'?

We were struck by the fact that the fact checkers could not find an expert to denounce Biden's reference to the "racial jungle" as a racist "dog whistle" or "coded language."

To be clear, we hold that any labeling of something as "coded language" or a "dog whistle" needs solid evidence in support. But journalists tend to find it easy to dispense with such formalities when they can find experts or activists willing to make the charge.

Biden's Words Turned on Their Head

PolitiFact's skillfully twisted subheading makes it look like Biden's feared a "racial jungle" would occur without ill-defined "orderly integration." That wording suggests to readers that Biden would have used racial integration to avoid that "racial jungle."

But Biden was saying using forced busing to achieve integration was not orderly and would backfire.

PolitiFact could have avoided the definitional muddle by summarizing Biden using well-understood phrases: Biden believed racial integration using forced busing would lead to his children growing up in a "racial jungle."

PolitiFact avoided using plain speech to communicate Biden's position to its readers.

We got forced busing. Did we get a "racial jungle"?

It looks like PolitiFact was trying to do Biden a favor.

Trump again tries using hyperbole without a license

President Donald Trump said nobody had heard of "Juneteenth," the name given to a day many use to commemorate the end of U.S. slavery, until he popularized it. So PolitiFact fact-checked whether it was true that nobody had heard of it.

The result was a "Pants on Fire" rating. PolitiFact said millions of people knew about Juneteenth before Trump scheduled a campaign rally for that day.

PolitiFact cited the Wall Street Journal for its quotation of Trump. Here's how PolitiFact presented it to readers:

President Donald Trump took credit for boosting awareness of Juneteenth, a day that marks the end of slavery in America.

"I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous," Mr. Trump said, in a Wall Street Journal interview. "It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it."

PolitiFact claims in its statement of principles it recognizes the literary technique of hyperbole (bold emphasis added):

In deciding which statements to check, we consider these questions:

• Is the statement rooted in a fact that is verifiable? We don’t check opinions, and we recognize that in the world of speechmaking and political rhetoric, there is license for hyperbole.

Hyperbole involves the use of exaggeration to make a particular point. Hyperbole works as hyperbole when the audience understands that the exaggeration was not meant literally.

It's as though PolitiFact has caught Mr. Trump red-handed, trying to use hyperbole without a license.

We think Trump's statement certainly bears the obvious signs of hyperbole. If literally nobody had heard of Juneteenth before Trump scheduled his campaign rally, then Trump did not merely make Juneteenth very famous. He helped create it by inspiring others. But Trump's words, in fact, suggest that Juneteenth existed as "an important event, an important time" before that. Those words from Trump cue the average reader that "nobody had ever heard of it" was not meant literally but instead meant that Juneteenth was not well known.

Vice President Joe Biden illustrated what Trump likely meant. A (user-created) video clip from C-SPAN shows Biden on June 11, 2020 apparently expressing the belief that "Juneteenth" was the anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre. The massacre happened on June 1, 1921. Trump's rally was originally scheduled on "Juneteenth,"--June 19, 2020--but was moved back one day to June 20, 2020. The rally took place in Tulsa, which of course was the location of the Tulsa Race Massacre.

If Biden did not know about it then perhaps others did not know about it as well.

Maybe the problem is that PolitiFact does not set partisanship aside when it issues hyperbole licenses.

(Note: we'll add the full complement of tags after publishing, thanks to Blogger's new interface that only remembers one assigned tag when first publishing)

Does PolitiFact deliberately try to cite biased experts? (Updated)

If there's one thing PolitiFact excels at, it's finding biased experts to quote in its fact checks.

Sometimes there's an identifiable conservative, but PolitiFact favors majority rule when it surveys a handful of experts. It seems to us that PolitiFact lately is suppressing the appearance of dissent by not bothering to find a representative sample of experts.

How about a new example?

For this fact check on President Trump's criticism of President Obama, PolitiFact cited three experts, in support of its "Truth-O-Meter" ruling.

Two out of the three were appointed to Mr. Obama's "Task Force on 21st Century Policing." All three have FEC records showing they donate politically to Democrats:

• Sean Smoot (Police Benevolent etc., task force)
• David Kennedy (CUNY + "John J")
• Laurie Robinson (George Mason University, task force)

The first two on the list, in fact, specifically donated to Mr. Obama's presidential campaign.  Thus making them perfect experts to comment on Mr. Trump's criticism of Mr. Obama?

Seriously, isn't this set of experts exactly the last sort of thing a nonpartisan fact-checking organization that declares itself "not biased" should do?

As bad as its selection of experts looks, the real problem with the fact check happens when PolitiFact arbitrarily decides that the thing Trump said President Obama did not try to do was "police reform" when Trump said "fix this." Plenty of things can fit under "police reform," and PolitiFact proves it by citing how "the Justice Department did overhaul its rules to address racial profiling."

Other evidence supposedly showing Trump wrong was the task force's (non-binding!) set of recommendations. The paucity of the evidence comes through in PolitiFact's summary:

The record shows that is not true. After the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson and related racial justice protests, Obama established a task force to examine better policing practices. The Obama administration also investigated patterns or practices of misconduct in police departments and entered into court-binding agreements that require departments to correct misconduct.

So putting together a task force to make recommendations on police reform is trying to "fix this."

And, for what it's worth, the fact check offered no clear support for its claim "The Obama administration also investigated patterns or practices of misconduct in police departments." PolitiFact included a paragraph describing what the administration supposedly did, but that paragraph did not reference any of its experts and did not cite either by link or by name any source backing the claim.

Mr. Trump was not specific about what he meant by "fix this." Rather than granting fact-checkers license for free interpretation, that type of ambiguity in a statement makes it nearly impossible to fairly fact check the statement. Put simply, a fact checker has to have a pretty clear idea of what a claim means in order to fact check it adequately. Trump may have had in mind his administration's move to create a record of police behavior that would make it hard for officers with poor records to move to a different police department after committing questionable conduct. It's hard to say.

Here's Mr. Trump's statement with some context:

Donald Trump: (11:32)
Under this executive order departments will also need a share of information about credible abuses so that offers with significant issues do not simply move from one police department to the next, that's a problem. And the heads of our police department said, "Whatever you can do about that please let us know." We're letting you know, we're doing a lot about it. In addition, my order will direct federal funding to support officers in dealing with homeless individuals and those who have mental illness and substance abuse problems. We will provide more resources for co-responders, such as social workers who can help officers manage these complex encounters. And this is what they've studied and worked on all their lives, they understand how to do it. We're going to get the best of them put in our police departments and working with our police.

Donald Trump: (12:33)
We will have reform without undermining our many great and extremely talented law enforcement officers. President Obama and Vice President Biden never even tried to fix this during their eight-year period.

We can apparently credit the Obama administration with talking about doing some of the things Trump directed via executive order.

In PolitiFact's estimation, that seems to fully count as trying to actually do them.

And PolitiFact's opinion was backed by experts who give money to Democratic Party politicians, so how could it be wrong?


Update June 21, 2020:

The International Fact-Checking Network Code of Principles

In 2020 the International Fact-Checking Network beefed up its statement of principles, listing more stringent requirements in order to achieve "verified" status in adhering to its Code of Principles.

The requirements are so stringent that we can't help but think that it portends lower standards for applying the standards.

Take this, for example, from the form explaining to organizations how to demonstrate their compliance (bold emphasis added):

3. The applicant discloses in its fact checks relevant interests of the sources it quotes
where the reader might reasonably conclude those interests could influence the
accuracy of the evidence provided. It also discloses in its fact checks any commercial
or other such relationships it has that a member of the public might reasonably
conclude could influence the findings of the fact-check.

Is there a way to read the requirement in bold that would relieve PolitiFact from the responsibility of disclosing that every one of the experts it chose for this fact check has an FEC record showing support for Democratic Party politics?

If there is, then we expect that IFCN verification will continue, as it has in the past, to serve as a deceitful fig leaf creating the appearance of adherence to standards fact checkers show little interest in following.

We doubt any number of code infractions could make the Poynter-owned IFCN suspend the verification status of Poynter-owned PolitiFact.

Note: Near the time of this update we also updated the list of story tags.



Edit 2050 PDT 6/21/20: Changed "a" "to" and "police" to "of" "for" and "officers" respectively for clarity in penultimate sentence of paragraph immediately preceding Trump 11:32 quote - Jeff

PolitiFact: A peaceful protest is a peaceful protest is a peaceful protest

When President Trump said he supports peaceful protestors, the protectors of democracy at PolitiFact jumped into their batmobile and sprang into action, ready and willing to confront Trump's rhetoric with conflations of constitutional right to assembly with other forms of peaceful protest.

Trump has said before that peaceful protests are the hallmark of democracy.

...

But Trump has also pushed back against protests, especially the Black Lives Matter movement. We reviewed his record.

Did Trump push back against the right to protest or was it against the content of the protest? Do we even care?

To illustrate Trump's pushback against protests, especially Black Lives Matter protests, PolitiFact led with a lengthy subsection on former NFL player Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick, while doing his job for an NFL football team, knelt during the National Anthem in support of the Black Lives Matter cause. The performance of the National Anthem precedes the start of NFL games.

It's not a freedom of assembly issue. But if Kaepernick assembled with others peacefully in public to take a knee during a performance of the anthem and Trump opposed the assembly and not the point of the protest, then PolitiFact would have Trump dead to rights.

That's a big "if."

Strike one.

Next up, PolitiFact presented the example of Rep. Maxine Waters, who called for U.S. society to shun and harass the members of Mr. Trump's cabinet. Presumably refusing service and generally harrassing Trump's cabinet on ideological grounds passes as some sort of peaceful pubic protest. PolitiFact made no particular effort to associate Waters' recommended protest with the Black Lives Matter movement, instead attaching it to border policy.

It doesn't seem certain that trying to totally exclude Trump's cabinet from conducting any type of business in public, including dining and grocery shopping, properly counts as a peaceful protest. If everyone followed Waters' prescription the Cabinet would need to grow its own food or else starve unless it met the demands of the peaceful protestors.

Needless to say, PolitiFact doesn't delve into that.

Strike two.

Apparently PolitiiFact finished with Trump's focus in opposition to Black Lives Matter, moving on to Mr. Trump's intolerance of heckling at his campaign rallies.

PolitiFact does not point out that heckling at a private rally open to the public is not a good example of the exercise of the right to free assembly.

Leading up the 2016 election, then-candidate Trump reserved harsh words for protesters who popped up at his rallies, including those whose actions were peaceful.

For PolitiFact, there is no important distinction between showing up to heckle at a campaign rally held in a private venue and the right to public assembly. Peaceful protest is peaceful protest is peaceful protest. I wonder how long I could peacefully protest in Jon Greenberg's office before seeing the issuance of a trespass order?

Greenberg opposes peaceful protest.

See how that works?

Strike three.

But PolitiFact lacks the good grace to return to the dugout after merely three strikes:

When opponents of placing Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court marched and rallied, Trump referred to them as "a mob" and tagged all Democrats in the midterm elections as "too extreme and too dangerous to govern." 

"Republicans believe in the rule of law — not the rule of the mob," Trump tweeted Oct. 11, 2018.

We're not sure how PolitiFact deduced that Trump was talking about peaceful protests in his tweet. He wasn't responding to anybody else's tweet. We suppose that PolitiFact's sole evidence was the date of the tweet plus Trump's use of the word "mob." Because fact-checking?

Here's the tweet:

You don’t hand matches to an arsonist, and you don’t give power to an angry left-wing mob. Democrats have become too EXTREME and TOO DANGEROUS to govern. Republicans believe in the rule of law - not the rule of the mob. VOTE REPUBLICAN!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2018

Are we playing "Pin the Context on the Tweet" or what?

And how would opposing giving in to protestors' demands oppose their right to protest? Is it appropriate to conflate opposition to protestors' demands with opposition to their right to peacefully protest?

Isn't that exactly what PolitiFact is doing?

It appears to us that PolitiFact argues that one cannot support peaceful protest without supporting the specific demands of the peaceful protestors.

But that's insane isn't it?

A fair examination of the topic must draw the distinction between supporting the right to protest and supporting the specific cause of the protestors.

Strike four. Go sit down, PolitiFact.

PolitiFact builds straw man for PolitiSplainer on unmasking

If PolitiFact's one-sided PolitiSplainer on the Justice Department's reversal on Gen. Michael Flynn's prosecution was not enough, now we have a PolitiSpainer on the Obama administration's unmasking efforts on Flynn and others.

The new PolitiSplainer could win awards for the way it buries the fundamental problem of the unmasking efforts--evidence that knowledge of Russia/Trump collusion falsehood went to the top of the Obama administration and included Vice President Biden--to focus instead on making the unmasking sound like a normal everyday thing at the top of an administration.

But our favorite PolitiMisfire involves PolitiFact's straw-manning of the Republicans' side of the story.

You don't get a taste of Andy McCarthy's expert analysis. And you don't get Jonathan Turley's view. You don't get a host of stories written by well-known and experienced conservative pundits or experts.

No, you get a Facebook post from Diamond & Silk.

No, we're not making this up.

Does the unmasking list show that top officials "knew" that concerns about Flynn were a "lie"?

The pro-Trump social media personalities Diamond and Silk drew this conclusion in a Facebook post that featured images of the list of Obama administration officials:

"Obama knew. Clinton knew. Biden knew. Comey knew. Brennan knew. McCabe knew. Strzok knew. Clapper knew. Rosenstein knew. FBI knew. DOJ knew. CIA knew. State knew. They all knew it was a lie, a witch-hunt, a scandal, a plot, a conspiracy, a hoax. #ObamaGate #SubpoenaObama."

Partisans have an easy time jumping to conclusions. And that tendency represents our best guess as to why PolitiFact assumed Obama, Clinton, Strok, Clapper, Rosenstein, FBI, CIA and State all knowing "it" was a lie referred to the Flynn unmasking all by itself.

That's the beauty of picking on a short Facebook post. The "fact checker" (liberal blogger) can see a set of dots and then freely connect them to construct an understanding that fits a preconceived narrative.

There's nothing in Diamond & Silk's Facebook post explaining that the list follows solely from the Flynn unmasking disclosure. PolitiFact invented that and presented it to readers as fact.

PolitiFact can do that, you see, because it does not apply to itself the "Burden of Proof" principle it applies (on occasion) to others.

It's a shameful example of fact-checking. It qualifies as the straw man fallacy, in fact.

It's likely Diamond & Silk were talking about the Trump/Russia collusion narrative being a lie. not "concerns about Flynn."

Fact checkers, if you want the conservative argument about some aspect of executive office procedures try Andrew McCarthy sometime:

This week’s revelations about unmasking are important and intriguing. They should be thoroughly examined. In fact, they are only a snapshot of the unmasking issue — involving just one U.S. person (Flynn) over a period of less than three months. It is highly irregular for government officials on the political side of the national-security realm to seek the unmasking of Americans. It is eye-opening to learn that Vice President Biden and President Obama’s chief-of-staff (McDonough) unmasked the incoming Trump administration’s national security advisor. It is downright scandalous that Samantha Power, Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, who had little reason to seek unmasking, reportedly requested 260 unmaskings . . . and then told Congress that she did not make the vast majority of requests attributed to her — though it remains unclear, years later, who did make them.

But let’s not miss the forest for the trees. This is not just about unmasking. It is about how pervasively the Obama administration was monitoring the Trump campaign.

PolitiFact's left-leaning fan base was spared any in-depth analysis from the right in favor of PolitiFact's straw man version of Diamond & Silk's Facebook post on the topic. And it got standard talking points from the left (unmasking is so totally normal!).

That kind of fact-checking qualifies as a disservice to readers who are interested in the truth.

Update May 17, 2020: clarified language in the second paragraph

PolitiFact's Michael Flynn case PolitiSplainer (Updated & Corrected)

We almost titled this post "PolitiFact's Michael Flynn case PolitiSplainerainerainerainer" in honor of way PolitiFact reinforces the liberal echo chamber effect surrounding the Michael Flynn prosecution and reversal.

This week the Justice Department filed a motion declaring it would no longer prosecute the case against Flynn, citing recent document releases that drew into serious question the materiality of the statements over which Flynn was prosecuted. The Washington Post published a piece in 2018 by Phillip Bump that helps explain the importance of materiality:

Clearly, telling an FBI agent something untrue during an interview at FBI headquarters as you face criminal charges subjects you to charges of making false statements. Equally clearly, if an FBI agent friend of yours asks to borrow a dollar and you lie and say you don’t have any cash, that’s not going to get you taken away in handcuffs. But where is the line drawn between the two?

The Justice Department's filing says it believed it could no longer prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Flynn communicated a material falsehood to the FBI. The main key to that reversal stemmed from the disclosure that the FBI had an investigation specific to Flynn ("Crossfire Razor") and that the FBI had recommended closing that investigation for lack of evidence before deciding to interview Flynn.

Adding insult to injury, prosecutors never revealed that exculpatory evidence during trial or via disclosure to the defense. That failure deprived Flynn of a valuable tool that might have aided his defense.

In what we would take as an astonishing move if PolitiFact was an objective and impartial fact checker, its PolitiSplainer explains none of that.

Here's the whole of the case for Flynn, by PolitiFact's telling:

After Attorney General William Barr asked Jeff Jensen, the U.S. attorney in St. Louis, to review the case, Jensen concluded that a dismissal of the case was warranted. Barr agreed.

In its filing, the Justice Department argued that the FBI had no basis to continue investigating Flynn after failing to find illegal acts. Flynn’s answers during the interview were equivocal, not false, and weren’t relevant to the investigation, the department said.

"A crime cannot be established here," the attorney general told CBS, saying "people sometimes plead to things that turn out not to be crimes."

 Sure, PolitiFact reports the Department said Flynn's answers "weren't relevant to the investigation" but it does not explain that answer in terms of the law.

None of the experts PolitiFact quoted for the story had anything to say about it, either. Only two of the four had records of giving to Democrats this time (Barbara McQuade, James Robenalt). Open Secrets had no record of political giving from the other two.

PolitiFact also curiously failed to either link to or quote from the DOJ filing in the Flynn case. We wonder if anyone from PolitiFact bothered to read it.

Oh, for what might have been!:

FBI executives decided to keep open an investigation into whether Flynn was a Russian asset based on a conversation that was innocuous save for its interpretation as a violation of the (virtually ignored) Logan Act.

It's as though PolitiFact's PolitiSplainer was designed to keep people in the dark, or at least support a rapidly eroding media narrative.

Update/Correction May 12, 2020: PolitiFact Bias asserted that PolitiFact failed to quote from the DOJ filing. We fixed that with a pair of strikethroughs. PolitiFact used a pair of very short snippets near the beginning of its PolitiSplainer (bold emphasis added):

The filing said that a key interview of Flynn did not have "a legitimate investigative basis" and therefore the department does not consider Flynn’s statements from the interview to be "material even if untrue."

We still say PolitiFact's 'Splainer fails to explain the legal importance of materiality. If Flynn's alleged falsehoods were not relevant (material) to the active investigation then they were not illegal.

We also note that this part of PolitiFact's article undercuts the "expert" testimony discussed in our critique. If only "a key interview of Flynn" did not have the legitimate investigative basis then what of the other parts of the Flynn investigation? PolitiFact's Louis Jacobson should have noticed the discrepancy.

 

'Objective' PolitiFact Uses Biased Framing

Though PolitiFact absurdly tries to claim it is unbiased, its work shows bias in a multitude of ways.

One bias that popped out this week was in PolitiFact's PolitiSplainer about Tara Reade and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Reade has accused Biden of sexual harassment to the point of rape. Her description of the alleged incident would technically meet at least one statutory definition of "rape."

But get a load of PolitiFact introductory paragraph concerning Reade and Biden:

More than two dozen women have accused President Donald Trump of sexual assault, and many of the allegations emerged not long before his election in November 2016. In October of that year, multiple women said he forced himself on them. A few months earlier, another woman who worked with Trump in the 1990s claimed he once pushed her against a wall and put his hand up her skirt.

There's not a word in there about Reade or Biden. The focus is entirely on sexual assault accusations against President Trump.

Why would an explainer on Reade and Biden start out focusing on allegations made against Trump, readers may wonder?

It's journalistic framing. That is, telling a story in a way to convey a particular message. The message in this case is "both sides do it" but Trump did it worse (so if it's between Biden and Trump vote Biden).

This is from the fact-checking organization that in 2018 published an article assuring readers it is unbiased. Because we could not see their faces as they published it we cannot say they published it with straight faces.

Blasey Ford/Kavanaugh, Hill/Thomas

How did PolitiFact treat parallel allegations against Justice Kavanaugh when Christine Blasey Ford accused him of attempted rape? Both sides do it?

Not quite:

As senators weigh the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh amid allegations of sexual misconduct, many Americans are thinking back to a previous example of accusations against a Supreme Court nominee.

Instead of "both sides do it" PolitiFact offered us a frame telling us that Republicans are doing it again. Clarence Thomas, though black, represented male power, which back in the olden days could easily dismiss accusations from women such as Thomas' accuser, Anita Hill:

The 1991 hearing "exposed critical fault lines in the lived-experience of those at the crossroads of race and gender," said Deborah Douglas, a journalist and visiting professor at DePauw University. "Thomas, a black man, could evoke the image of a ‘high-tech lynching’ to plead both innocence and male privilege, trumping the lived experience of a woman who represents a class of woman, the black woman, arguably, the last thought in the American public imagination."

Though Ford is white, gender has played out similarly in both cases, said Douglas, who is African-American.

What's missing from PolitiFact's PolitiSplainer on Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh? PolitiFact offers no assessment of the strength of the evidence. The article notes Anita Hill supposedly had corroborating witnesses, but does nothing to emphasize that point of contrast with the Blasey Ford allegations. Blasey Ford had no helpful corroboration from the time period the incident allegedly occurred. And PolitiFact somehow fails to mention it.

PolitiFact's Reade/Biden story, in contrast, puts focus on the evidence, albeit with signs of bias against Reade.

Spinning the Reade Evidence

Regarding the Larry King Live episode where Reade's mother apparently talked to King about an incident regarding her daughter, PolitiFact left out details supporting Reade's account. PolitiFact allowed excessive doubt to hang over the idea that it was Reade's mother who called:

On April 24, the Intercept reported on an August 1993 Larry King Live episode in which a woman calls into the CNN show to discuss her daughter’s "problems" with a senator. Reade says that caller was her mother, who has since died.

So all we have is Reade's word for it?

No.

Circumstantial evidence PolitiFact left out strongly supports Reade's account. The time frame (1993) matches. PolitiFact mentions the call occurred in 1993 but does not remind readers how this helps support Reade's account.

More importantly, the show identified the caller with the town San Luis Obispo. That's where Reade's mother lived (The Tribune, San Luis Obispo).

The woman who says former Vice President Joe Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993 used to live in Morro Bay and apparently returned here shortly after the alleged incident.

Video uncovered over the weekend and first reported by The Intercept shows an August 1993 segment on CNN’s “Larry King Live” in which a caller from San Luis Obispo County later confirmed by media outlets to be the mother of former Biden staffer Tara Reade appears to confirm that Reade had told her mother of an alleged sexual assault by Biden, who is the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for president.

Read more here: https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/article242343826.html#storylink=cpy

PolitiFact saw no reason for its readers to know that.

Note the story we quoted from The Tribune ran on April 28, 2020. PolitiFact's fact check published on April 30, 2020. In fact, CNN had reported the San Luis Obispo connection on April 25, 2020. And PolitiFact doesn't have it figured out by April 30?

Can an unbiased source leave out something like that?

When PolitiFact assures its readers it is unbiased it is lying to them, if not to itself.

PolitiFact claims, without evidence, Trump touted chloroquine as a coronavirus cure

Should fact checkers hold themselves to the standards they expect others to meet?

We say yes.

Should fact checkers meet the standards they claim to uphold?

We say yes.

What does PolitiFact say?

(President Donald) Trump has touted chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus cure in more than a half-dozen public events since March 19.

PolitiFact published the above claim in an April 8, 2020 PolitiSplainer about hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug doctors have used in the treatment of coronavirus patients.

We were familiar with instances where Mr. Trump mentioned hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for coronavirus sufferers. But we had not heard him call it a cure. Accordingly, we tried to follow up on the evidence PolitiFact offered in support of its claim.

The article did not contain any mention of a source identifying the "half-dozen public events since March 19," so we skipped to the end to look at PolitiFact's source list. That proved disappointing.

We tweeted at the article's authors expressing our dismay at the lack of supporting documentation. Our tweet garnered no reply, no attempt to supply the missing information and no change to the original article.

Of note, when co-author Funke tweeted out a link to the article on April 8 his accompanying description counted as far more responsible than the language in the article itself:

"Here's what you need to know about hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug that President Trump has repeatedly touted as a potential COVID-19 treatment."

Does "cure" mean the same thing as "potential treatment" in PolitiFactLand?

We've surveyed Mr. Trump's use of the terms "cure" and "game changer" at the White House website and found nothing that would justify the language PolitiFact used of the president.

What else does PolitiFact say?

The burden of proof is on the speaker, and we rate statements based on the information known at the time the statement is made.

 What if the speaker says "Trump has touted chloroquine or hydroxycloroquine as a coronavirus cure"? Does the speaker still have the burden of proof? If the speaker is PolitiFact, that is?

It looks like the fact-checkers have yet again allowed a(n apparently false) public narrative to guide their fact-checking.

PolitiFact Wisconsin: Real wages increasing but not keeping up with inflation

PolitiFact Wisconsin published a fact check of a claim by Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.) that says real wages for Americans have gone up in the past 30 years, yet the increase fails (by a long shot!) to keep up with inflation.

We hope that red flags went up for every person reading that sentence.

"Real Wages" takes inflation into account. If real wages stay perfectly flat, then wages are keeping even with inflation. If real wages increase then wages are increasing faster than inflation.

The fact check is something to behold. It may perhaps be the early leader for worst fact check of 2020.

We faulted this fact check right away for failing to link to the source of the Pocan quotation.

Here's the source:



We're seeing the failure to link to the primary source of claims all too often from PolitiFact lately.

As the image above the video embed shows, PolitiFact Wisconsin focused on Pocan's wage comparison involving the Amazon distribution center in Kenosha.

Ignore Illogical Spox?

It didn't take long for us to find a second reason to fault PolitiFact Wisconsin. As PolitiFact related in its fact check, Pocan's communications director, Usamah Andrabi, said Pocan was talking about pay in the auto industry in the 1990s.

PolitiFact Wisconsin blew Andrabi off, in effect:

Andrabi said Pocan often uses auto worker pay to make his point, because auto manufacturing was the dominant industry in Kenosha when he was growing up there.

But Pocan did not mention auto pay in his claim, and pay in that industry historically is far higher than many other jobs. So, we focused on the weekly and hourly earnings data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Instead of looking at the comparison Andrabi specified, PolitiFact Wisconsin decided to look at whether real wages were flat nationally over the past 30 years.

Just $3 in Thirty Years?

Before we knew it, we had a third reason to fault PolitiFact Wisconsin. After reporting the wage difference over 30 years without adjusting for inflation, PolitiFact tried to show the insignificance of the increase by adjusting for inflation. But PolitiFact used misleading language to make its point:

But using the Bureau’s inflation calculator, the 1990 weekly wage translates to $800.88 per week in today’s dollars, or $20.02 an hour. So, that’s a roughly $3 increase in 30 years.

To communicate clearly, a journalist would express the increase to the weekly wage in dollars and the increase in the hourly pay in dollars per hour.

PolitiFact Wisconsin used dollars to refer to the increase in dollars per hour, leaving readers with the impression that weekly pay increased from about $800 to $804.

Here's what one fix of that misleading error of ambiguity might look like (bold emphasis to highlight the change):

But using the Bureau’s inflation calculator, the 1990 weekly wage translates to $800.88 per week in today’s dollars, or $20.02 an hour. So, that’s an increase of roughly $3 an hour in 30 years.

Using the same language as in the preceding sentence ("an hour") tips the reader to connect the $3 change to the hourly rate instead of the weekly rate.

The Coup de Grace

Finally, we encountered the gigantic error we highlighted at the beginning.

PolitiFact admitted Pocan was literally wrong for (supposedly) suggesting that real wages were flat. Real wages have gone up. PolitiFact National had underscored that fact with a 2017 fact check of a claim from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Ah, but that literal untruth only came to light by looking narrowly at Pocan's claim. PolitiFact said Pocan's true point, Andrabi notwithstanding, was "that wage growth has been largely stagnant."

PolitiFact cited a Pew Research Study that supposedly showed that the growth of real wages for groups below the top 10 percent of earners were "nearly flat" from 2000 through 2018.

All of them went up noticeably (look), but PolitiFact said they were "nearly flat."

We call that spin.

And it quickly got worse:

What’s more, the cost of living has undergone a much steeper hike: from 1983 to 2013, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a roughly 3% annual increase in rent and food prices, and a 1.3% annual increase in new vehicle prices.

So, a small growth in median wages is dwarfed next to the rise in cost of other goods.

That's fact check baloney.

It's true the BLS reported annual increases in rent, food and vehicle prices between 1983 and 2013, but those were inflationary changes, not inflation-adjusted changes.

It's wrong to say that inflation outpaced wage growth if real wages increased. It's startling that a fact checker could commit that error.

To be sure, real wages are calculated in a way that counts as arbitrary in a sense, totaling the price of a "basket of goods" where the goods in the basket vary over time. But still, it's ludicrous to say wages that have gone up after adjusting for inflation--that's what "real wages" are--failed to keep pace with inflation. Some items in the "basket of goods" might see higher inflation than others, but would it be proper to cherry pick those to claim that wages generally weren't keeping pace with inflation?

We don't think so.

PolitiFact Wisconsin wildly altered Rep. Pocan's point and after that completely blew its fact check of what it had decided he must be saying.


Afters

We alerted PolitiFact Wisconsin about these problems by responding to its tweet of its fact check and followed that up with a message to truthometer@politifact.com in the late afternoon of March 3, 2020.

We noticed no attempt to correct the flawed fact check through March 4, 2020.

We won't be surprised if PolitiFact never corrects its mistakes in the Pocan fact check.

But we will update this item if we see that PolitiFact Wisconsin has updated it.


Correction Feb. 13, 2021: Fixed three instances where we misspelled Usamah Andrabi's last name as "Adrabi." Our apologies to Andrabi and our readers for the errors.