An out-of-context and prejudiced "In Context" feature from PolitiFact

PolitiFact advertises its "In Context" feature as a means of allowing readers decide, considering the surrounding context, the meaning of a politician's words.

The idea's fine in principle. But it takes principles to pull off an idea that's fine on principle and PolitiFact has a tough time with that. Consider PolitiFact's Nov. 1, 2024 feature about comments made by former President Donald Trump.

The third paragraph reminds readers of the ostensible purpose of the "In Context" feature:

With widespread interpretations of Trump’s remarks, we’re using our In Context feature to let voters review his comments in their original context and reach their own conclusions. 

We say this "In Context" passes better as a prejudiced anti-Trump editorial.

Why do we say that?

Even the part of the comment taken completely out of context puts PolitiFact's headline in question. 

Trump, appearing with Tucker Carlson (via PolitiFact's story):

Later, Trump added "I don’t blame (Dick Cheney) for sticking with his daughter, but his daughter is a very dumb individual, very dumb. She is a radical war hawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let's see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face."

What would support the conclusion that Trump describes a "firing squad"? Trump, after all, doesn't use that term in the out-of-context quote or elsewhere.

One element of the statement might reasonably support the "firing squad" idea: Trump describes a number of people (nine) aiming guns at Cheney's face.

What elements of the description fail to support the "firing squad" idea?

1. Cheney has a gun in Trump's description. What "firing squad" execution offers a gun to the target?
2. The guns are aimed at Cheney's face. Firing squads traditionally aim at the heart.
3. The alternative explanation, that Trump was talking about war hawks typically not needing to face battle themselves, has nothing that argues against it unless we count anti-Trump prejudice.

The text of PolitiFact's story links to an out-of-context version of Trump's comments. And though PolitiFact's source list includes a longer clip with the full context, PolitiFact left out what Trump said after "face":

"You know, they're all war hawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying 'Aw, gee, we'll, let's send, uh, let's send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.' But she's a stupid person." (transcript ours, comments start at 7:36)

Obviously, Trump expressed a common theme among politicians, that war hawks are not the ones facing the bullets.

So, even though PolitiFact gathered no reasonable evidence showing Trump was referring to Cheney facing a "firing squad," the fact checkers (actually liberal bloggers) put their own biased interpretation right in the headline to prejudice their readers.

Headlines often aren't written by the person who wrote the story, but we can blame biased journalist Amy Sherman directly because her story pushes the same conclusion: "Trump’s comments about Liz Cheney and a firing squad drew the most public attention."

There's no solid evidence Trump was referring to a firing squad and plenty to suggest he wasn't.

PolitiFact's story contains obvious signs of liberal bias and fails the supposed objective of the "In Context" feature by pushing a conclusion on readers.

PolitiFact's Humpty Dumpty act on 'abortion'

It was Lewis Carroll's fictional character Humpty Dumpty who gave us one of the classic quotes regarding word games:

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.’ 

Sadly, it's fact checkers who are doing their Humpty Dumptiest to play games with the term 'abortion.' A fact check by "Science Feedback" gave us a definition of abortion a few years ago that encompassed cesarean section, a procedure that regularly results in living babies. A July 10, 2024 fact check from PolitiFact in effect asked Science Feedback to "Hold my beer."

PolitiFact executed a "False" judgment on GOP senatorial candidate Tim Sheehy for saying "Elective abortions up to and including the moment of birth. Healthy, 9-month-year-old baby killed at the moment of birth. That's what Jon Tester and the Democrats have voted for."

Yes, the whole fact check was essentially bunk (we'll explain later), but we were particularly struck by PolitiFact's word game chutzpah in his concluding paragraph (bold emphasis added):

These statements are rooted in Tester’s support for the Women’s Health Protection Act. That bill, however, doesn’t open the door to abortion on demand later in pregnancy. Instead, it allows for the role of medical judgment. In addition, CDC data indicates that late-term pregnancies are rare. Also, the term "elective abortion" is a political rather than medical phrasing.

So far as we can see, PolitiFact fact checker Matt Volz relied entirely on one of his expert interviews for that judgment.

That expert was Katrina Kimport, yet another in a long line of PolitiFact-cited neUTRal experts who give heavily to Democratic Party politicians and causes. PolitiFact readers don't need to know that Kimport gives to the "pro-choice" group EMILY's List ($3,500 since 2020):

Kimport ... also criticized Sheehy’s use of  "elective abortion." In her view, that terminology reflects a political colloquialism that’s come to mean an abortion that is optional. That’s different from the medical definition, she said, in which an elective procedure is one that may be necessary but is not an emergency and can be scheduled for a particular date, such as knee surgery. 

She says it's her view, so PolitiFact just runs with it. PolitiFact didn't just run with it, they twisted it into the term being political and not medical as a matter of fact. That's despite many medical sources (textbooks, professional journals, etc.) using the term. Rather, the evidence suggests that the term has fallen into political disfavor, fostering a movement to stop its use.

Image from ACOG.org

PolitiFact is down with that.

"Elective abortion" means an abortion not done for therapeutic reasons. In the simplest terms, it's an abortion done because the patient doesn't want a baby. Politically, it's advantageous for the pro-choice movement to blur such distinctions.

Of course it's amusing to see fact checkers do their part to empty words of their meaning. The pro-choice movement would have us believe that the choice to have an abortion is automatically therapeutic and that "elective" is a misnomer. Review a few more words from Kimport:

Women have abortions later in pregnancy either because they find out new information or because of economic or political barriers, Kimport said. 

"I have never spoken to somebody whose abortion decision was not informed by deep thought and consideration," she said. 

Kimport's talking point doubtless has its genesis with information parallel to this:

The reasons people need third-trimester abortions are not so different from why people need abortions before the third trimester: 

1. They received new information—including that they were pregnant—that made the pregnancy not (or no longer) one they wanted to continue
2. They tried to obtain an abortion before the third trimester but faced insurmountable barriers (including policy restrictions and stigma) that delayed them into the third trimester.

Did Kimport and PolitiFact forget to tell you that the "new information" included patients learning they were pregnant? Oopsie! We are so sorry (not sorry!)!

At PolitiFact Bias we're not here to tell our readers whether to take a pro-choice or pro-life stance. We're here to show you how PolitiFact stops short of fully checking the facts when the facts don't favor the pro-choice view. And maybe the spin is intentional, which is naughty.

As For The Rest of This Steaming Pile of Fact Check ...

We might quibble with Sheehy's mention of abortion "at" the moment of birth. Other than that, it would seem he's right despite PolitiFact's protestations to the contrary.

Here's the key part of the (most recent version PolitiFact linked) of the bill Sheehy's prospective Democratic opponent signed:

After fetal viability, governments may not restrict providers from performing abortions when necessary to protect a patient's life and health. The same provisions that apply to abortions before viability also apply to necessary abortions after viability. Additionally, states may authorize post-viability abortions in circumstances beyond those that the bill considers necessary.

The federal bill has a somewhat narrower pathway to elective abortion than the Florida bill PolitiFact cited in this piece, but it's there. "After fetal viability" obviously doesn't have anything to do with abortion before viability. It's specifically addressing post-viability abortion.

The opening comes with the "health of the mother" language. When it isn't defined, it can mean nearly anything. And, as we have noted before, the medical profession can claim (Harvard.edu) that every pregnancy carries risk. If every pregnancy carries risk, then an abortion can be "necessary" to avoid that risk for any pregnant patient.

PolitiFact can't figure that out because it's inconvenient for the ideology PolitiFact favors. Plus by sticking with the opinions of liberal experts the inconvenient stuff gets suffocated with a pillow.

And of course there's the last line, explicitly allowing states to go as far as they wish in allowing post-viability abortion.

So, no truth at all to what Sheehy said. Or something.

Fact checkers. 

Meh.

Afterword

Gemini AI to the rescue?

I could not resist a follow up question. 

Find the abortion conversation with Gemini AI here. Gemini's got its own Humpty Dumpty going on.

PolitiFingers on the scale: Presidential debate edition

 As we have documented over the years, PolitiFact's supposedly objective system affords its writers and editors myriad ways of inserting political bias into their work.

One popular method employs story focus to skew fact check findings. If a political figure utters a compound statement, PolitiFact affords itself the flexibility of focusing on the whole statement, just one part of the statement, or by evaluating multiple parts of the statement and averaging out the results. That's not to rule out a random mixture of all three approaches. See this vintage version of PolitiFact's statement of principles.

It's a highly unscientific and non-objective process, and PolitiFact provided a good pair of examples in its analysis of the debate between President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump.

PolitiFact on Biden

Biden: While talking about a bipartisan border bill, "by the way, the Border Patrol endorsed me, endorsed my position."

Half True. The National Border Patrol Council — the U.S. Border Patrol’s union endorsed a bipartisan border security bill in February. But it didn’t endorse Biden.

Biden made a compound claim consisting of two parts. With part 1, Biden claimed to have the endorsement of the Border Patrol. With part 2, Biden claimed the Border patrol endorsed his position. PolitiFact allowed that Biden hadn't received the endorsement of the National Border Patrol Council, but gave Biden half credit because the border patrol union favored a failed bill Biden had said he would sign into law. As to why PolitiFact would come to rest on that instead of Biden's position on the border generally, perhaps the Texas sharpshooter fallacy explains it best.

The Texas sharpshooter fallacy involves taking note of where one finds a bullet hole and then drawing a target around it with the bullet hole at its center.

PolitiFact took a false statement and averaged it out with a vague statement that might have some truth to it to reach a "Half True" conclusion. But even that leaves out part of the story because many of these evaluations never become part of a politician's "Truth-O-Meter" record.

PolitiFact on Trump

Trump: "The problem (Democrats) have is they're radical, because they will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth."

False. Willfully terminating a newborn’s life is infanticide and is illegal in every U.S. state. 

 Here we have another compound claim, this one made up of three parts. Democrats, Trump claims, would permit abortion in the eighth or ninth month (part 1, part 2) or even after birth (part 3).

PolitiFact focuses entirely on part three, and rules solely on that basis.

To be fair in a twisted sort of way, PolitiFact tends to rule it "False" that various "Pro-Choice" laws permit abortion up until the moment of birth even though they would permit abortion up through the moment of birth. The explanation? Abortions up until the moment of birth don't happen. That's supposed to mean it's not legal to do one, we suppose.

Why It's PolitiFingers on the Scale

As noted above, no objective process accounts for this willy-nilly drift of story focus. PolitiFact focuses on what it pleases. And if the rulings fall more harshly on conservatives or Republicans, hey maybe Republicans just lie more, right?

That's a post hoc justification for a slanted fact-checking process.

And, a farcical "Pants on Fire" for Donald J. Trump

 As our "Pants on Fire" bias study regularly points out, PolitiFact's "Pants on Fire" rating counts as substantially if not wholly subjective. Surveying PolitiFact's "Pants on Fire" ratings serves as one of the most direct routes for finding flawed fact checks. And that brings us to April 1, 2024 and Donald J. Trump.

We'll grant that Trump lost the state of Wisconsin to Joe Biden in 2020. That doesn't make PolitiFact's rating or its reasoning correct, however. PolitiFact spent considerable effort trying to lump in Trump's claim that his campaign "did much better" in 2020 than in 2016. 

PolitiFact:

Let’s tackle the first part of Trump’s claim: That he performed better in Wisconsin in 2020 than he did in 2016. 

That is unequivocally false. And it’s something PolitiFact Wisconsin has checked on multiple occasions, including in 2021. 

Is it "unequivocally false" that Trump did better in Wisconsin in 2020 than he did in 2016?  What's false is that PolitiFact debunked the claim with the article linked in the second sentence. The link leads to a fact check examining whether Trump won Wisconsin in 2020.

PolitiFact itself provides the evidence that Trump's claim is not unequivocally false (bold emphasis added):

We noted then, and we’ll repeat here, that President Joe Biden won Wisconsin in 2020. Biden took 1,630,866 votes compared to Trump’s 1,610,184 in the state, so Trump lost by 20,682 votes. 

Trump did win the state in 2016, taking more than 22,000 votes over Democrat Hillary Clinton. He netted 1,405,284 votes in Wisconsin in 2016.

So, according to PolitiFact, Trump received 1.4 million votes in Wisconsin in 2016 and 1.6 million votes in 2020 but he "unequivocally" did not do better in 2020 than in 2016.

That's 2+2=5 level logic.

Trump's vote total in Wisconsin was better in 2020 than in 2016. That means that in a real sense Trump did better in Wisconsin in 2020 than in 2016 even if he lost the state in 2020. By analogy, it's like a sprinter winning the 100 meter dash at one meet with a time of 9.99 seconds but subsequently losing the event with a time of 9.97 seconds. The runner performed better in terms of time but worse in terms of the competition.

The runner did not "unequivocally" perform worse in the second meet.

If PolitiFact wanted to fairly call Trump's claim false, let alone "Pants on Fire," it should have stuck with the claim Trump won Wisconsin in 2020.

How does a fair and objective fact checker make an error like that?

We say it doesn't.

PolitiFact isn't fair and objective.

PolitiFact's how-to primer on improperly fact-checking an analogy

There's so much wrong with this Feb. 22, 2024 PolitiFact fact check that I'm bound to go way beyond the scope of the title.

How To Wrongly Fact Check an Analogy

PolitiFact's summary/quotation of Trump's statement counts as reasonably accurate. He drew an analogy between the fine imposed in the New York fraud case to the political persecution of Alexei A. Navalny, who notably opposed Vladimir Putin in Russian.

At its most basic level, the analogy says Navalny and Trump were treated unfairly in court over politics. But PolitiFact affords nearly zero attention to the basic comparison. Instead, PolitiFact focused on differences as though differences can erase similarities.

Karl Malden's nose remains Karl Malden's nose even if you put it on Emma Stone. And Emma Stone with Karl Malden's nose is Emma Stone having a point of similarity with Karl Malden.

PolitiFact classed Trump's statement (wrongly, we think) as hyperbole, but then justified revoking Trump's license for hyperbole because "we determined there were enough factual elements at play to rate his statement on the Truth-O-Meter."

We're not sure how that's supposed to work. As we noted on X, PolitiFact could use a similar approach to find a vegetarian "Pants on Fire" for comparing vegetarian bacon to regular bacon. The bacon example came straight from a dictionary definition of "analog."

Here We Go Again: "Experts"

Part of PolitiFact's schtick comes from its interviews of experts. Typically the pool of experts leans left, and often has a record of giving politically to Democrats. For some reason PolitiFact doesn't see that as a mark against its own credibility.

Let's take a look, shall we?

Harley Balzer

Highly partisan political giving. One of the most partisan records we've encountered, and that's really saying something.

Erik Herron

We found no political giving under Herron's name. But we did find an X post by Herron that appears to acknowledge the legitimacy of analogies where the comparison may seem strained.

I have spent today being inspired by students. First by WVU students fighting for THEIR university at the BoG meeting. Later by Fulbright applications from Ukrainian students fighting for their country. Both face powerful forces trying to crush them and they refuse to surrender.

— Erik Herron (@erikherron) September 15, 2023

Ric Simmons 

Simmons (employed at The Ohio State University) has two political donations listed. One was to Democrat Joe Biden and the other to the anti-Trump group "The Lincoln Project."

Scott Gehlbach

Gehlbach's partisan political giving fails to challenge that of Balzer, but it's solidly behind Democrats with the exception of one nonpartisan figure, now a (liberal) judge in the Wisconsin court system.

Stephen Sestanovich

Sestanovich has six donations, minimum $250, all going to Democrats.

Kathryn Hendley

Hendley has only one political donation listed, with a Democrat listed as the recipient of the $200 gift.

Mark Osler

Osler has given exclusively to Democrats, with six donations in the range of $50-$250.

What are the chances a fact checker can find seven expert sources and six out of seven have given exclusively to Democrats? It's as though PolitiFact intentionally seeks out Democrats to serve as its experts.

Of course, the mere fact that the experts give to Democrats should not discredit their expertise. But PolitiFact simply uses the experts to underscore that the Navalny case is different than the Trump case. We don't need experts to prove that, and as we pointed out above, differences are irrelevant to the similarities, The former cannot erase the latter.

PolitiFingers on the Scale

As if distracting from the point of Trump's argument and using partisan experts wasn't enough, we have PolitiFingers on the scale of this fact check.

PolitiFact omits all mention of two significant aspects of the fraud case against Trump. Both aspects tend to support the Navalny analogy.

First, the trial judge found that Trump's fraud did not damage anyone financially. That makes the prosecution and the judgment unusual. The fine represents higher conjectured interest charges from lower valuations of Trump properties. We doubt such a basis has ever before been used in the United States to support a fraud penalty.

USAToday:

(Gregory) Germain, the Syracuse professor, said the government did a good job of showing Trump inflated the value of his properties, but noted that sophisticated financial institutions didn't require a third-party appraisal like they do for a typical mortgage on a home.

"There are no cases like it," Germain said.

An Associated Press story makes a related point:

And though the bank offered Trump lower interest rates because he had agreed to personally guarantee the loans with his own money, it’s not clear how much better the rates were because of the inflated figures. The bank never complained, and it’s unclear how much it lost, if anything. Bank officials called to testify couldn’t say for sure if Trump’s personal statement of worth had any impact on the rates.

“This sets a horrible precedent,” said Adam Leitman Bailey, a New York real estate lawyer who once successfully sued a Trump condo building for misrepresenting sales to lure buyers.

Second, PolitiFact's fact check misrepresents the ease of appealing the ruling. 

CNBC:

Former President Donald Trump is gearing up to fight a massive fine in the New York business fraud case that threatens to erase most of the cash he says he has on hand.

But first, he has to secure a bond — and that might not be so easy.

Why doesn't PolitiFact tell you any of that?

Because they're biased.

They make sure there are no observations from a conservative such as Andrew C. McCarthy:

Trump’s Appellate Prospects after Ruinous Civil Fraud Judgment - me @NRO Corner ... https://t.co/6PosPxf3Px

— Andy McCarthy (@AndrewCMcCarthy) February 21, 2024

Afters:

PolitiFact is on a real tear against Trump early in 2024. It's almost like they're trying to retroactively make true their false claims about Trump's "Truth-O-Meter" record.

In fact it was Louis Jacobson, listed first on the byline of PolitiFact's fact check, who recently endured two corrections from Slate after it published an interview with him. Jacobson made two flatly false claims about Trump's record on the "Truth-O-Meter."

One wonders whether publicly making false claims about Trump should disqualify Jacobson from working on fact checks involving Trump.

Note: Huh--Looks like Slate botched its editor's note: "It has also been updated to clarify that among major politicians frequently fact-checked by PolitiFact, Trump has the highest percentage of Pants on Fire ratings." I gave them the example of Michele Bachmann, who has had 72 "Truth-O-Meter" ratings.

Hmm. Looks like it's time for another correction request, if there's no clear justification for that claim.

PolitiFact Wisconsin, Glenn Grothman and uncharitable interpretation

 The principle of charitable interpretation is pretty simple. It consists of offering a claim the interpretation that best favors the speaker or writer without undue acrobatics.

Mainstream media fact checkers, when not reviewing the claims of Democrats, often experience difficulty with the concept. And that brings us to PolitiFact Wisconsin and Wisconsin Republican Glenn Grothman.

Grothman's statement offers two readily apparent interpretations. He may think the United States Constitution does not afford birthright citizenship on persons in the country illegally. Or, he may think that the birthright citizenship the Constitution affords to illegal residences counts as a bad policy due for a change.

PolitiFact opted for the first interpretation.

Why did PolitiFact opt for the first interpretation instead of the second one? That's the part that's of interest to those of us who want to see fact checkers do a better job of fact-checking. We looked for PolitiFact to give reasons to prefer one interpretation over the other but this was the best we could find:

Grothman didn’t respond to our inquiry seeking clarification and backup for the claim, which is known as "birthright citizenship." But his statement aligns with that of some other conservatives, who argue birthright citizenship does not apply to children of people living in the country illegally. 

PolitiFact later points out that some other conservatives propose changing the Constitution to disallow birthright citizenship for illegals, but fails to note that Grothman's ambiguous statement aligns with both positions. It depends on whether Grothman used "wrongly" to mean "unconstitutionally" instead of it representing a moral wrong even if in accord with the meaning of the Constitution.

A fact checker ought to iron out that question before proceeding with the fact check. PolitiFact didn't do that. Instead, PolitiFact asked Grothman's office what he meant, received no reply and took it on themselves to supply Grothman's meaning without apparently considering one of the two main alternatives. 

PolitiFact's fact check thus counts as journalistic malpractice.

Double Helping of Afters

PolitiFact invented the context of Grothman's speech (bold emphasis added):

During his speech Dec. 1, 2023, Grothman expressed contempt for ways foreign nationals and their children are illegally getting into and living in America.

When listing legal ways migrants can become U.S. citizens, Grothman pivoted and said citizenship is incorrectly granted to their children born in America.

Check the audio. Grothman did not list ways migrants can become U.S. citizens (3:25 transcript ours).

"I, one more time, attended a ceremony in Milawaukee of over 250 people in one day in one city, who were sworn in to be new citizens. We are now swearing in over a million people a year that do things right. Taht are vetted, we know they're not breaking the law, that, uh, they almost always have jobs, sometimes have opened up businesses by themselves. So it's not like America is saying you can never get into America, or we're so xenophobic that we're no longer a country of immigrants. No, we have, uh, over 1 million people every year coming here are sworn in. And that's not including children who are born here to parents who are not immigrants because right now our government wrongly is saying that if you're born in this country you're automatically an American citizen."

Second Helping

Refer again to the second sentence from PolitiFact we highlighted in the "afters" section. PolitiFact said Grothman "said citizenship is incorrectly granted to their children born in America." That's before PolitiFact's paragraph about reaching out to Grothman to ask what he meant. We see in PolitiFact's choice of words that it already decided what Grothman meant. What did Grothman mean by "wrongly"? Not a moral wrong in PolitiFact's eyes. PolitiFact switches to the term "incorrectly," fitting with their interpretation that Grothman said the government applies the Constitution incorrectly.

Last Word

As for whether PolitiFact's legal experts settled the question correctly regarding the Constitution, it seems PolitiFact's work was again careless. PolitiFact said the cases setting precedent disregarded immigration status in affirming birthright citizenship. Yet the English Common Law cases on which the U.S. court relied in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark places some importance on the alien offering allegiance to the sovereign. Thus the children of enemies of the Crown were not accepted as natural born citizens regardless of their place of birth.

 PolitiFact's fact check offers no whiff of that sentiment from the decision. That aspect of the common law throws a potential spanner in the works of PolitiFact's simplistic explanation.

Here find more about the "certificate of residence" expects of Chinese migrants, which in the late 19th century lacked a clear concept of illegal immigration. The Ark case was from 1898.

PolitiFact appears to count Plyler vs. Doe as a birthright citizenship case ("The issue came up again in the Supreme Court's 1982 Plyler v. Doe case"), but we could find no evidence in support of that notion. That decision hinged on residence within the state affording the resident equal protection under the 14th amendment, regardless of citizenship:

Held: A Texas statute which withholds from local school districts any state funds for the education of children who were not "legally admitted" into the United States, and which authorizes local school districts to deny enrollment to such children, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.