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?

More Deceptive "Principles" from PolitiFact

PolitiFact supposedly has a "burden of proof" that it uses to help judge Political claims. If a politician makes a claim and supporting evidence doesn't turn up, PolitiFact considers the claim false.

PolitiFact Executive Director Aaron Sharockman expounded on the "burden of proof" principle on May 15, 2019 while addressing a gathering at the U.S. Embassy in Ethiopia:

If you say something, if you make a factual claim, online, on television, in the newspaper, you should be able to support it with evidence. And if you cannot or will not support that claim with evidence we say you're guilty.

We'll, we'll rate that claim negatively. Right? Especially if you're a person in power. You make a claim about the economy, or health, or development, you should make the claim with the information in your back pocket and say "Here. Here's why it's true." And if you can't, well, you probably shouldn't be making the claim.

As with its other supposed principles, PolitiFact applies "burden of proof" inconsistently. PolitiFact often telegraphs its inconsistency by publishing a 'Splainer or "In Context" article like this May 24, 2019 item:

PolitiFact refrains from putting Milano's statement on its cheesy "Truth-O-Meter" because PolitiFact could not figure out if her statement was true.

Now doesn't that sound exactly like a potential application of the "burden of proof" criterion Sharockman discussed?

Why isn't Milano "guilty"?

In this case PolitiFact found evidence Milano was wrong about what the bill said. But the objective and neutral fact-checkers still could not bring themselves to rate Milano's claim negatively.

PolitiFact (bold emphasis added):

Our conclusion

Milano and others are claiming that a new abortion law in Georgia states that women will be subject to prosecution. It actually doesn’t say that, but that doesn’t mean the opposite — that women can’t be prosecuted for an abortion — is true, either. We’ll have to wait and see how prosecutors and courts interpret the laws before we know which claim is accurate. 

What's so hard about applying principles consistently? If somebody says the bill states something and "It actually doesn't say that" then the claim is false. Right? It's not even a burden of proof issue.

And if somebody says the bill will not allow women to be prosecuted, and PolitiFact wants to use its "burden of proof" criterion to fallaciously reach the conclusion that the statement was false, then go right ahead.

Spare us the lilly-livered inconsistency.

PolitiFact gives "policy trajectory" a "False" rating

Earlier this week PolitiFact Executive Director Aaron Sharockman said PolitiFact does not rate opinions or predictions.

Also this week, PolitiFact Health Check, the PolitiFact partnership with Kaiser Health News, apparently contradicted Sharockman's claim.

Behold:

If it looks like PolitiFact is fact-checking a prediction, that's because PolitiFact is fact-checking a prediction.

More than one of PolitiFact's pool of four experts apparently saw it exactly that way (bold emphasis added):

But, Adler said, the structure of Trump’s claim — promising what his administration "will" do, rather than commenting on what it has done — leaves open the possibility of taking other steps to keep preexisting condition protections in place.

That’s true, other experts acknowledged. So far, the White House has postponed a legislative push until after the 2020 election — leaving a vacuum if the courts do wipe out the health law.

History shows that PolitiFact will not allow mere expert opinion to stand in the way of the hoped-for narrative. When experts offer opinions that do not fit comfortably with PolitiFact's conclusion, PolitiFact ignores them.

Hilariously, PolitiFact's conclusion uses language strongly suggesting an awareness that it is rating a prediction:

Our ruling

Trump said his administration will "always protect patients with preexisting conditions."

The White House’s policy trajectory does exactly the opposite.

What is "policy trajectory" if it is not a projection of what will happen tomorrow based on Trump administration policy today?

PolitiFact Health Check is not fact-checking Trump. It is rating a pledged policy position. PolitiFact could potentially address such cases with an expansion of its ratings of executive promises ("Trump-O-Meter" etc.).

But this so-called "fact check" makes Sharockman a liar if it isn't corrected somehow.

The Worst of PolitiFact's April 2, 2019 Reddit AMA

As we mentioned in a Feb. 2, 2019 post, we love it when PolitiFact folks do interviews. It's a near guarantee of generating material worth posting. In celebration of "International Fact-Checking Day," PolitiFact Director Aaron Sharockman and PolitiFact Editor Angie Drobnic Holan conducted a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" event.

I asked PolitiFact to describe why it advocates transparency while keeping the identities and votes of its "Star Chamber" secret. PolitiFact's "Star Chamber" votes on each "Truth-O-Meter" rating. The majority vote rules, though PolitiFact claims it achieves unanimity for most votes. My question wasn't answered (no great surprise there).

Most of the interactions were boilerplate answers to boilerplate questions. But there were a few items of special interest.

Observing the PolitiFact Code?

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Though Holan flatly said "Everything that gets a correction or an update gets tagged (see all tagged items)," we were ready with two recent cases contradicting her claim. And we let that cat out of the bag.

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PolitiFact makes statements giving readers the impression that it scrupulously follows its code of principles. In fact, PolitiFact loosely follows its code of principles, as in this example. How do Holan and Sharockman not know this?

One of the examples we used was corrected on approximately March 16, 2019. Most of the uncertainly about the correction date comes from PolitiFact Virginia's decision not to mark the date of the correction. As of April 3, 2019 PolitiFact Virginia had not added the "Corrections or Updates" tag and the story did not appear on PolitiFact's supposed list of all of its corrected or updated stories.

Mythical Truth-O-Meter Consistency

One participant asked a question suggesting PolitiFact does not rate statements consistently (suggesting contemporary ratings of Trump make past ratings look far too harsh). Sharockman implied PolitiFact has kept its system consistent over the years:

But beyond the sheer volume [of Trump ratings--ed.], the standards we use to use [sic] to issue our ratings really hasn't [sic] evolved in the 11 years we've been doing this. In that sense, a Pants on Fire in 2009 should still be a Pants on Fire claim today, and vice versa.

There are two big problems with Sharockman's claim. First, PolitiFact itself announced a change to its rating methodology back in 2012.

Second, PolitiFact has admitted that its ratings are pretty much subjective. Sharockman's chosen example, the dividing line between "False" and "Pants on Fire" is perhaps the most sensational example of that subjectivity. How does Sharockman not know that?

The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy Against PolitiFact?

Someone (not me!) asked "Who fact checks you [PolitiFact--ed.]?"

We found Sharockman's response fascinating and very probably false:

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Sharockman's answer paints PolitiFact as the focus of a concentrated group of hostile editors. With all those people combing PolitiFact material for hours on end, it's amazing that PolitiFact makes mistakes so rarely.

Right?

But is there any evidence at all supporting Sharockman's supposition that "a lot of people are reading everything we write looking for mistakes"? We at PolitiFact Bias announced long ago that we could not do a thorough job vetting PolitiFact's body of work:

As PolitiFact expands its state operations, the number of stories it produces far exceeds our capacity to review and correct even just the most egregious examples of journalistic error or bias.  We aim to encourage an army of Davids to counteract the mistakes and bias in PolitiFact's stories.

Who else could Sharockman have had in mind? Media Matters For America? The (defunct) Weekly Standard?

(We asked Sharockman via Twitter the other day whom he had in mind but received no immediate reply)

We suspect Sharockman of Trumpian exaggeration. He knows at least some people look at some of PolitiFact's work for errors. So to convey his point he turns that into "a lot of people" looking at "everything" PolitiFact publishes looking for errors. It's likely the only organization combing over PolitiFact's entire body of work looking for errors is PolitiFact itself.

And look how many times it fails, without swallowing the fiction that this represents the entire number.

***

Holan and Sharockman are politicians advocating for PolitiFact. It appears we cannot trust PolitiFact to hold its own to account.

PolitiFact's sample size deception

Is the deception one of readers, of self, or of both?

For years we have criticized as misleading PolitiFact's selection-bias contaminated charts and graphs of its "Truth-O-Meter" ratings. Charts and graphs look science-y and authoritative. But when the data set is not representative (selection bias) and the ratings are subjective (PolitiFact admits it), the charts serve no good function other than to mislead the public (if that even counts as a good function).

One of our more recent criticisms (September 2017) poked fun at PolitiFact using the chart it had published for "The View" host Joy Behar. Behar made one claim, PolitiFact rated it false, and her chart make Behar look like she lies 100 percent of the time--which was ironic because Behar had used PolitiFact charts to draw false generalizations about President Trump.

Maybe our post helped prompt the change and maybe it didn't, but PolitiFact has apparently instituted some sort of policy on the minimum number of ratings it takes to qualify for a graphic representation of one's "Truth-O-Meter" ratings.

Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.) has eight ratings. No chart.

But on May 6, 2018 Gaetz had six ratings and a chart. A day later, on May 7, Gaetz had the same six ratings and no chart.

For PolitiFact Florida, at least, the policy change went into effect in May 2018.

But it's important to know that this policy change is a sham that would hide the central problem with PolitiFact's charts and graphs.

Enlarging the sample size does not eliminate the problem of selection bias. There's essentially one exception to that rule, which occurs in cases where sample encompasses all the data--and in such cases "sample" is a bit of a misnomer in the first place.

What does that mean?

It means that PolitiFact, by acting as though small sample size is a good enough reason to refrain from publishing a chart, is giving its audience the false impression that enlarging the sample size without eliminating the selection bias yields useful graphic representations of its ratings.

If PolitiFact does not realize what it is doing, then those in charge are dangerously ignorant (in terms of improving public discourse and promoting sound reasoning).

If PolitiFact realizes what it is doing wrong and does it regardless, then those in charge are acting unethically.

Readers who can think of any other option (apart from some combination of the ones we identified) are encouraged to offer suggestions in the comments section.



Afters


When do the liberal bloggers at PolitiFact think their sample sizes are big enough to allow for a chart?

Sen. George Allen has 23 ratings and a chart. So it's between 8 and 23.

Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn has 10 ratings and a chart. We conclude that PolitiFact thinks 10 ratings warrant a chart (yes, we found a case with 9 ratings and no chart).

Science. And stuff.

PolitiFact's Magic Math on 'Medicare For All' (Updated)

Would you believe that PolitiFact bungled an explainer article on the Democratic Party's Medicare For All proposal?

PolitiFact's Feb. 19, 2019 PolitiSplainer, "Medicare For All, What it is, what it isn't" stumbled into trouble when it delved into the price tag attached to government-run healthcare (bold emphasis added):

How much would Medicare for All cost?

This is the great unknown.

A study of Medicare for All from the libertarian-oriented Mercatus Center at George Mason University put the cost at more than $32 trillion over 10 years. Health finance expert Kenneth Thorpe at Emory University looked at Sanders' earlier version during the 2016 campaign and figured it would cost about $25 trillion over a 10-year span.

Where would the money come from?

Sanders offered some possibilities. He would redirect current government spending of about $2 trillion per year into the program. To that, he would raise taxes on income over $250,000, reaching a 52 percent marginal rate on income over $10 million. He suggested a wealth tax on the top 0.1 percent of households.

PolitiFact introduces the funding issue by mentioning two estimates of the spending M4A would add to the budget. But when explaining how Sanders proposes to pay for the new spending PolitiFact claims Sanders would "redirect current government spending" to cover about $20 trillion of the 25-to-32 trillion increase from the estimates.

Superficially, the idea sounds theoretically possible. If the defense budget was $2 trillion per year, for example, then one could redirect that money toward the M4A program and it would cover a big hunk of the expected budget increase.

But the entire U.S. defense budget is less than $1 trillion per year. So what is the supposed source of this funding?

We looked to the document PolitiFact linked, sourced from Sanders official government website.

We found no proposal from Sanders to "redirect current government spending" to cover M4A.

We found this (bold emphasis added):

Introduction

Today, the United States spends more than $3.2 trillion a year on health care. About sixty-five percent of this funding, over $2 trillion, is spent on publicly financed health care programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs. At $10,000 per person, the United States spends far more on health care per capita and as a percentage of GDP than any other country on earth in both the public and private sectors while still leaving 28 million Americans uninsured and millions more under-insured.

Nothing else in the linked document anywhere near approaches PolitiFact's claim of $2 trillion per year "redirected" into M4A.

It's a Big ($2 trillion per year) Mistake

We do not think Sanders was proposing what PolitiFact said he was proposing. The supposed $2 trillion over 10 years, or $20 trillion, cannot help pay for the $25 trillion cost Thorpe estimated. Nor can it help pay for the $32 trillion cost that Charles Blahous (Mercatus Center) estimated.

Why? The reason is simple.

Both of those estimates pertained to costs added to the budget by M4A.

In other words, current government spending on healthcare programs was already accounted for in both estimates. The estimates deal specifically with what M4A would add to the budget on top of existing costs.

Need proof? Good. The expectation of proof is reasonable.

Mercatus Center/Blahous

M4A would add approximately $32.6 trillion to federal budget commitments during the first 10 years of its implementation (2022–2031).

Clear enough? The word "add" shows that Blahous is talking about costs over and above current budget commitments to government health care programs.

Page 5 of the full report features an example illustrating the same point:

National health expenditures (NHE) are currently projected to be $4.562 trillion in 2022. Subtracting the $10 billion decrease in personal health spending, as calculated in the previous paragraph, and crediting the plan with $83 billion in administrative cost savings results in an NHE projection under M4A of $4.469 trillion. Of this, $4.244 trillion in costs would be borne by the federal government. Compared with the current projection of $1.709 trillion of federal healthcare subsidy costs, this would be a net increase of $2.535 trillion in annual costs, or roughly 10.7 percent of GDP.

Performing similar calculations for each year results in an estimate that M4A would add approximately $32.6 trillion to federal budget commitments during the period from 2022 through 2031, with the annual cost increase reaching nearly 12.7 percent of GDP by 2031 and continuing to rise afterward.

The $1.709 trillion in "federal healthcare subsidy costs" represents expected spending under Medicare, Medicaid and other federally supported health care programs. That amount is already accounted for in Blahous' estimate of the added cost of M4A.

Kenneth Thorpe

Thorpe's description of his estimate doesn't make perfectly clear that he is estimating added costs. But his mention of the Sanders' campaign's estimate of $1.377 trillion per year provides the contextual key (bold emphasis added):

The plan is underfinanced by an average of nearly $1.1 trillion per year. The Sanders campaign estimates the average annual financing of the plan at $1.377 trillion per year between 2017 and 2026. Over the same time period, we estimate the average financing requirements of $2.47 trillion per year--about $1.1 trillion more on average per year over the same time period. 

When we look at the estimate from the Sanders campaign we find that the $1.377 trillion estimate pertained to added budget costs, not the gross cost of the plan.

Friedman's Table 1 makes it plain, listing 13,773 (billions) as "added public spending":

It's magical math to take the approximately $27 trillion in "continued government spending" to pay down the $13.8 trillion in "new public spending." But PolitiFact seems to suggest Sanders would use current spending to pay for his program's new spending.

Again, we do not think that is what Sanders suggests.

The liberal bloggers at PolitiFact simply botched the reporting.

Our Eye On Corrections

We think this PolitiBlunder clearly deserves a correction and apology from PolitiFact.

Will it happen?

Great question.

As part of our effort to hold PolitiFact (and the International Fact-Checking Network) accountable, we report PolitiFact's most obvious errors through the recommended channels to see what happens.

In this case we notified the author, Jon Greenberg, via Twitter about the problem. We also used Twitter (along with Facebook) to try to draw PolitiFact's attention to the mistake. When those outreach efforts drew no acknowledgement we did as PolitiFact recommends and emailed a summary of the problem to "truthometer@politifact.com."

Should PolitiFact continue to let the error stand, we will report the error to the International Fact-Checking Network (under the auspices of the Poynter Institute, just like PolitiFact) and track whether that organization will hold PolitiFact to account for its mistakes.

We will update this section to note future developments or the lack of future developments.

Update Feb. 27, 2019

A full week after we started informing PolitiFact of the mistake in its Medicare PolitiSplainer, the bad reporting in the financing section remains unchanged.

PolitiFact and the Contradiction Fiction

We consider it incumbent on fact checkers to report the truth.

PolitiFact's struggles in that department earn it our assessment as the worst of the mainstream fact checkers. In our latest example, PolitiFact reported that President Donald Trump had contradicted his claim that he had never said Mexico would pay for the border wall with a check.

We label that report PolitiFact's contradiction fiction. Fact checkers should know the difference between a contradiction and a non-contradiction.

PolitiFact (bold emphasis added):

"When during the campaign I would say ‘Mexico is going to pay for it,’ obviously, I never said this, and I never meant they're going to write out a check," Trump told reporters. "I said they're going to pay for it. They are."

Later on the same day while visiting the border in Texas, Trump offered the same logic: "When I say Mexico is going to pay for the wall, that's what I said. Mexico is going to pay. I didn't say they're going to write me a check for $20 billion or $10 billion."

We’ve seen the president try to say he never said something that he very much said before, so we wondered about this case.

Spoiler: Trump has it wrong.

We found several instances over the last few years, and in campaign materials contradicting the president’s statement.

PolitiFact offers three links in evidence of its "found several instances" argument, but relies on the campaign material for proof of the claimed contradiction.

We'll cover all of PolitiFact evidence and show that none of it demonstrated that Mr. Trump contradicted himself on this point. Because we can.

Campaign Material

PolitiFact made two mistakes in trying to prove its case from a Trump Campaign description of how Trump would make Mexico pay for the border wall. First, it ignored context. Second, it applied spin to one of the quotations it used from the document.

PolitiFact (bold emphasis added):

"It's an easy decision for Mexico: make a one-time payment of $5-10 billion to ensure that $24 billion continues to flow into their country year after year," the memo said.

Trump proposed measures to compel Mexico to pay for the wall, such as cutting off remittances sent from undocumented Mexicans in the U.S. via wire transfers.

Then, the memo says, if and when the Mexican government protested, they would be told to pay a lump sum "to the United States to pay for the wall, the Trump Administration will not promulgate the final rule, and the regulation will not go into effect." The plan lists a few other methods if that didn’t work, like the trade deficit, canceling Mexican visas or increasing visa fees.

We placed bold emphasis on the part of the memo PolitiFact mentioned but ignored in its reasoning.

If the plan mentions methods to use if Mexico did not fork over the money directly, then how can the memo contradict Trump's claim he did not say Mexico would pay by check? Are fact checkers unable to distinguish between "would" and "could"? If Trump says Mexico could pay by check he does not contradict that claim by later saying he did not say Mexico would pay by check.

And what's so hard to understand about that? How can fact checkers not see it?

To help cinch its point, PolitiFact quotes from another section of the document, summarizing it as saying Mexico would pay for the wall with a lump sum payment: "(Mexico) would be told to pay a lump sum 'to the United States to pay for the wall'"). Except the term "lump sum" doesn't occur in the document.

There's reason for suspicion any time a journalist substitutes for the wording in the original document, using only a partial quotation and picking up mid-sentence. Here's the reading from the original:

On day 3 tell Mexico that if the Mexican government will contribute the funds needed to the United States to pay for the wall ...

We see only one potential justification for embroidering the above to make it refer to a "lump sum." That's from interpreting "It's an easy decision for Mexico: make a one-time payment of $5-10 billion to ensure that $24 billion continues to flow into their country year after year" as specifying a lump sum payment. We think confirmation bias would best explain that interpretation. It's more reasonable to take the statement to mean that paying for the wall once and having it over with is an obvious choice when it helps preserve a greater amount of income for Mexico annually after that. And the line does not express an expectation of a lump-sum payment but instead the strength (rightly or wrongly) of the bargaining position of the United States.

In short, PolitiFact utterly failed to make its case with the example it chose to emphasize.

... And The Rest

 (these are weak, so they occur after a page break)

PolitiFact misses obvious evidence in Broward recount fact check

On Nov. 13, 2018 PolitiFact's "PunditFact" brand issued a "Pants on Fire" rating to conservative Ken Blackwell for claiming Democrats and their allies were manufacturing voters in the Florida election recount.

The problem?

PolitiFact somehow overlooked obvious evidence reported in the mainstream media. The Tampa Bay Times, former owner of PolitiFact before it was transferred to the nonprofit Poynter Institute, published a version of the story:

Broward's elections supervisor accidentally mixed more than a dozen rejected ballots with nearly 200 valid ones, a circumstance that is unlikely to help Brenda Snipes push back against Republican allegations of incompetence.

The mistake — for which no one had a solution Friday night — was discovered after Snipes agreed to present 205 provisional ballots to the Broward County canvassing board for inspection. She had initially intended to handle the ballots administratively, but agreed to present them to the canvassing board after Republican attorneys objected.

The Times story says counting the 205 provisional ballots resulted in at least 20 illegal votes ending up in Broward County's vote totals.

The Times published its story on Nov. 10, 2018.

PolitiFact/PunditFact published its fact check on Nov. 13, 2018 (2:24 p.m. time stamp). The fact check contains no mention at all that Broward County included invalid votes in its vote totals.

Instead, PolitiFact reporter John Kruzel gives us the breezy assurance that neither he nor the state found evidence supporting Blackwell's charge.

Our ruling

Blackwell said, "Democrats and their allies (...) are manufacturing voters."

We found no evidence, nor has the state, to support this claim. Blackwell provided no evidence to support his statement.

We rate this Pants on Fire.

Inconceivable, you say?



via GIPHY

PolitiFact: One Standard For Me and Another For Thee 2

PolitiFact executed another of its superlative demonstrations of hypocrisy this month.

After PolitiFact unpublished its botched fact check about Claire McCaskill and the affordability of private aircraft, it published a corrected (?) fact check changing the rating from "False" to "Half True." Why "Half True" instead of "True"? PolitiFact explained it gave the "Half True" rating because the (Republican) Senate Leadership Fund failed to provide adequate context (bold emphasis added).

The Senate Leadership Fund says McCaskill "even said this about private planes, ‘that normal people can afford it.’"

She said those words, but the footage in the ad leaves out both the lead-in comment that prompted McCaskill’s remark and the laughter that followed it. The full footage makes it clear that McCaskill was wrapping up a policy-heavy debate with a private-aviation manager and with a riff using the airport manager’s words. In context, he was referring to "normal" users of private planes, as opposed to "normal" Americans more generally.

We rate the statement Half True.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that PolitiFact is exactly right (we don't buy it) in the way it recounts the problems with the missing context.

Assuming the missing context in a case like this makes a statement "Half True," how in the world does PolitiFact allow itself to get away the shenanigan PolitiFact writer Jon Greenberg pulled in his article on Sen. Elizabeth Warren's DNA test?

Greenberg (bold emphasis added):

Trump once said she had as much Native American blood as he did, and he had none. At a July 5 rally in Montana, he challenged her to take a DNA test.

"I will give you a million dollars to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you're an Indian," Trump said.

Trump now denies saying that, but in any event, Warren did get tested and the results did find Native American ancestry.

Trump said those words, but Greenberg's version of the quote leaves out more than half of Trump's sentence, as well as comments that came before. The full quotation makes it clear that Trump's million dollar challenge was presented as a potential future event--a hypothetical, in other words. In context, Trump was referring to a potential future challenge for Warren to take a DNA test as opposed to making the $1 million challenge at that moment.

PolitiFact takes Trump just as much, if not more, out of context as the Senate Leadership Fund did with McCaskill.

How does that kind of boundless hypocrisy pass the sniff test? Are the people at PolitiFact that accustomed to their own stench?


Afters

PolitiFact's "In Context" presentation of Trump's million-dollar challenge to Sen. Warren, confirming what we're saying about PolitiFact's Jon Greenberg ignoring the surrounding context (bole emphasis in the original):

(L)et's say I'm debating Pocahontas. I promise you I'll do this: I will take, you know those little kits they sell on television for two dollars? ‘Learn your heritage!’ … And in the middle of the debate, when she proclaims that she is of Indian heritage because her mother said she has high cheekbones — that is her only evidence, her mother said we have high cheekbones. We will take that little kit -- but we have to do it gently. Because we're in the #MeToo generation, so I have to be very gentle. And we will very gently take that kit, and slowly toss it, hoping it doesn't injure her arm, and we will say: ‘I will give you a million dollars to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you're an Indian.’

See also: Fact Checkers for Elizabeth Warren

Washington Free Beacon: "PolitiFact Retracts Fact Check ..."

Full title:

PolitiFact Retracts Fact Check After Erroneously Ruling Anti-Claire McCaskill Ad ‘False’

We were preparing to post about PolitiFact's crashed-and-burned fact check of  the (Republican) Senate Leadership Fund's Claire McCaskill attack ad. But we noticed that Alex Griswold did a fine job of telling the story for the Washington Free Beacon.

Griswold:

In the revised fact check published Wednesday, PolitiFact announced that "after publication, we received more complete video of the question-and-answer session between McCaskill and a constituent that showed she was in fact responding to a question about private planes, as well as a report describing the meeting … We apologize for the error."

PolitiFact still only ruled the ad was "Half True," arguing that the Senate Leadership Fund "exaggerated" McCaskill's remarks by showing them in isolation. In full context, the fact checker wrote, McCaskill's remarks "seem to refer to ‘normal' users of private planes, not to ‘normal' Americans more generally."

Griswold's article managed to hit many of the points we made about the PolitiFact story on Twitter.


For example:

• PolitiFact misleadingly claimed it was unpublishing the fact check based on "new evidence."

New evidence to PolitiFact, maybe. The evidence was on the World Wide Web since 2017.

• The key error came not from missing evidence but from jumping to conclusions from the evidence it had.

PolitiFact claimed it was "clear" from the short version of the town hall video that the discussion concerned commercial aviation in the broad sense, not private aircraft. Somehow that supposed clarity vanished with the appearance of a more complete video.


Read the whole article at the Washington Free Beacon.


We also used Twitter to slam PolitiFact for its policy of unpublishing when it notices a fact check has failed. Given that PolitiFact, as a matter of stated policy, archives the old fact check and embeds the URL in the new version of the fact check. No good reason appears to exist to delay availability of the archived version. It's as easy as updating the original URL for the bad fact check to redirect to the archive URL.

In another failure of transparency, PolitiFact's archived/unpublished fact checks eliminate bylines and editing or research credits along with source lists and hotlinks. In short, the archived version of PolitiFact's fact checks loses a hefty amount of transparency on the way to the archive.

PolitiFact can and should do better both with its fact-checking and its policies on transparency.


Exit question: Has PolitiFact ever unpublished a fact check that was too easy on a conservative or too tough on a liberal?

There's another potential bias measure waiting for evaluation.

PolitiFact: "European Union"=Germany

PolitiFact makes all kinds of mistakes, but some serve as better examples of ideological bias than others. A July 2, 2018 PolitiFact fact check of President Donald Trump serves as pretty good evidence of a specific bias against Mr. Trump:

The big clue that PolitiFact botched this fact check occurs in the image we cropped from PolitiFact's website.

Donald Trump states that the EU sends millions of cars to the United States. PolitiFact performs adjustments to that claim, suggesting Trump specified German cars and specifying that the EU sends millions of German cars per year. Yet Trump did not specify German cars and did not specify an annual rate.

PolitiFact quotes Trump:

At one point, he singled out German cars.

"The European Union … they send us Mercedes, they send us -- by the millions -- the BMWs -- cars by the millions," Trump said.

Saying Trump "singled out German cars" counts as twisting the truth. Trump "singled out" German cars in the sense of offering two examples of German cars among the millions sent to the United States by the European Union.

It counts as a major error for a fact checker to ignore the clear context showing that Trump was talking about the European Union and not simply German cars of one make (Mercedes) or another (BMW). And if those German makes account for large individual shares of EU exports to the United States then Trump deserves credit for choosing strong examples.

It counts as another major error for a fact checker to assume an annual rate in the millions when the speaker did not specify any such rate. How did PolitiFact determine that Trump was  not talking about a monthly rate, or the rate over a decade? Making assumptions is not the same thing as fact-checking.

When a speaker uses ambiguous language, the responsible fact checker offers the speaker charitable interpretation. That means using the interpretation that makes the best sense of the speaker's words. In this case, the point is obvious: The European Union exports millions of cars to the United States.

But instead of looking at the number of cars the European Union exports to the United States, PolitiFact cherry picked German cars. That focus came through strongly in PolitiFact's concluding paragraphs:

Our ruling

Trump said, "The European Union … they send us Mercedes, they send us -- by the millions -- the BMWs -- cars by the millions."

Together, Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen imported less than a million cars into the United States in 2017, not "millions."

More importantly, Trump ignores that a large proportion of German cars sold in the United States were also built here, using American workers and suppliers whose economic fortunes are boosted by Germany’s carnakers [sic]. Other U.S.-built German cars were sold as exports.

We rate the statement False.

That's sham fact-checking.

A serious fact check would look at the European Union's exports specifically to the United States. The European Automobile Manufacturers Association has those export numbers available from 2011 through 2016. From 2011 through 2013 the number was under 1 million annually. For 2014 through 2016 the number was over 1 million annually.

Data through September 2017 from the same source shows the European Union on pace to surpass 1 million units for the fourth consecutive year.


Does exporting over 1 million cars to the United States per year for three or four consecutive years count as exporting cars to the United States by the millions (compare the logic)?

We think we can conclude with certainty that the notion does not count as "False."

Our exit question for PolitiFact: How does a non-partisan fact checker justify ignoring the context of Trump's statement referring specifically to the European Union? How did the European Union get to be Germany?

The bird's-eye lowdown on PolitiFact's partisan reader advocates (Updated)

Today PolitiFact announced it will publish content from two reader advocates at its PolitiFact.com website.

The announcement didn't go so well. Shortly after making the announcement PolitiFact nixed Democrat Alan Grayson's planned involvement.

The Hill reports:

Fact-checking website PolitiFact on Thursday announced that it had hired former Florida Reps. David Jolly (R) and Alan Grayson (D) as “reader advocates” before hours later nixing Grayson's hire after fierce backlash.

The dumping of Grayson aside, does this represent a sincere effort from PolitiFact to help improve its product?

Probably not, despite the we're-so-humble sales job from PolitiFact Executive Director Aaron Sharockman.

Huh. Well, we intended to link directly to PolitiFact's announcement about its new reader representatives, but it looks like PolitiFact unpublished it. We'll go with the reporting from the Hill instead, which has coincidentally also been altered since its publication: (an earlier version carried a hyperlink to PolitiFact's announcement)

The two former lawmakers had been set to critique the website’s fact-checks and provide additional insight on political issues as part of a pilot program that will run through the end of April, according to a Thursday PolitiFact post announcing the hires. The post has since been deleted.

“David and Alan are both particularly qualified, we think, to critique the work of PolitiFact, because they’ve been subject to our fact-checks as members of Congress,” PolitiFact Executive Director Aaron Sharockman wrote an his initial statement.

Well-qualified to critique the work of PolitiFact! That implies that the critiques may prove valid, right?

PolitiFact said it would learn from Jolly and Grayson, though it's hard for us to prove that now that PolitiFact is disposing of the evidence. Like a good fact-checker should, I guess.

We think PolitiFact's flirtation with reader advocates fits well with its old narrative about how it receives criticism from both sides. Getting criticized from both sides, using mumbo-jumbo logic, shows the reliability of the entity getting criticized. That's a superb narrative for PolitiFact to promote. It's certainly far better than the alternative narrative, that getting criticized by both sides means you're probably doing something wrong.

PolitiFact's founding editor, Bill Adair, did research suggesting that PolitiFact receives most of its substantive criticism from the right. Will PolitiFact allow such research to impact its choice of which narrative to promote? We doubt it.

We captured images from Sharockman's Twitter feed--ones he had so far elected not to delete. The one at the top pretty much shows PolitiFact's thinking behind this experiment. It's not about improving the product. It's about encouraging the public to trust in the existing product.

Note that PolitiFact's experiment was only slated to run through April 2018. Three months. If PolitiFact detects signs that people are trusting it less during the experiment, it will terminate the experiment.

Does that sound like a sincere effort to improve the product? Or more like a cynical ploy intended to trick people into trusting PolitiFact?

How many times do we have to say it? One gains trust by proving trustworthy. One proves one's trustworthiness through accuracy and transparency.

Making published works entirely disappear is not transparency.



Jeff adds:


We wonder what it says about PolitiFact that they considered Grayson representative of a conventional Democrat voice.

We'd also like to congratulate the fact checkers on selecting conservative powerhouse David ... uh ... *checks notes* ... Jolly.

We're not surprised that PolitiFact's ill-advised attempt to gain credibility resulted in more of the same deception we've come to expect. For example, un-publishing articles is somehow a sign of trustworthiness?

For years we've said PolitiFact would benefit from an inside critic of their work and suggested most of their obvious blunders would have been prevented with a heterodox voice on staff. On its face the notion of "reader advocates" seems like a step in that direction, until you realize it's just another click-seeking gimmick (Is Grayson really the top pick for any serious endeavor?).

If PolitiFact were actually sincere about gaining reader trust there's more effective ways than adding sideshow acts performed by clowns and cranks. For instance, they could unequivocally disavow their longtime use of stealth edits. That might help bring them into compliance with the International Fact Checking Network code of principles that they currently violate.

But the most obvious thing they could do to improve their image is to credibly rebut the volumes of legitimate, earnest criticism of their work. So far, PolitiFact's response to charges of bias has been to call critics "mental" or to ignore them altogether. For some reason PolitiFact does not view an honest defense of their work as a viable remedy for reader distrust.

PolitiFact's incompetent and biased editorializing has never earned credibility. Adding more clowns to the car won't change that. This "readers advocate" stunt only shows how unserious PolitiFact is about providing readers the truth.






Edit 0835PST 2/2/2018: Added word "PolitiFact" in penultimate graph -Jeff

The PolitiFact Evangelism & Revival Tour II

Thanks to a generous and wasteful grant from the Knight Foundation, PolitiFact is reaching out to red state voters!

These outreaches suspiciously correlate to new PolitiFact state franchises, in turn making it look like the Knight Foundation wants to help PolitiFact advertise itself.

Daniel Funke of the Poynter Institute posted a story about the Oklahoma leg of PolitiFact's dog & pony show. We reviewed that in our first part in this series. This installment concerns a Washington Post story about the third and final stage of the evangelism and revival tour, ending up in West Virginia.

What's the Purpose of This Tour, Again?

The Post article leads with a section that more-or-less paints PolitiFact's outreach as a failure.

PolitiFact planned to go out and tell people PolitiFact is nonpartisan and fair and let them see, at least to some degree, how PolitiFact works. That was supposed to lead to greater trust. But when given the opportunity to make that case, PolitiFact editor Amy Hollyfield comes across like Eeyore.

“I have discussions with people about the news all the time on Facebook, and I show them what I consider to be credible sources of information,” a man named Paul Epstein says from a middle row. “And they say, ‘Oh, that’s all biased.’ So how can you, or how can we, convince people to trust any mainstream media?”

Amy Hollyfield of PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking organization, considers the question. She hesitates a beat before telling Epstein and about 65 others in the audience that maybe you can’t. Not all the time.

Well, that's encouraging! What else does Hollyfield have?

“We have a lot of things on our website” that attest to PolitiFact’s impartiality and credibility, Holly­field says. “But I don’t think that seeps in when you’re having that kind of conversation. That’s why we’re trying to tell our story.”

Specifics? Aren't specifics always foremost in the minds of journalists? Okay, maybe Hollyfield gave the specifics. Maybe the Post's Paul Farhi left them out. But it seems to us beyond question that if the idea of the evangelism tour is to build trust of PolitiFact in red states then PolitiFact should focus on those specifics, whatever they are.

The fact-checkers keep steering the conversation back to Politi­Fact and its 10-year track record of rating political speech, including how it assigns its most damning rating, “Pants on Fire.”

What? It would be great to have some specifics on that. Pretty much the best description we have of the difference between PolitiFact's "False" and "Pants on Fire" ratings is PolitiFact Editor Angie Drobnic Holan's immortal "Sometimes we decide one way and sometimes decide the other." We'd like to know even more about this occult-yet-objective (?) process. But there's nothing new in the Post article. So not today.

Sharockman has the Evidence of Neutral Nonpartisanship (not)!

Just a few days ago we published a chart showing PolitiFact has published more fact checks of President Trump between his inauguration and Oct. 18 than it did of President Obama over the same period in 2009 and 2013 combined. We did it to show the utter ridiculousness of Executive Director Aaron Sharockman's argument that fact-checking Obama frequently serves as an evidence of PolitiFact's neutrality.

Lo and behold, the Post captured Sharockman making that same argument again. Christmas in October (bold emphasis added):

(Sharockman) bristles a bit at the conservative critique [The basic critique is that fact-checkers cherry-pick statements and facts to create a false impression — usually that conservative candidates are less truthful than the liberal kind"--bww]. “People say, ‘Why didn’t you fact-check Hillary Clinton’s claim about coming under fire [as first lady] in Bosnia?’ Well, we did. The person we fact-checked more than anyone else is Barack Obama. . . . The person we fact-check the most is the president. We’re going to hold the president accountable.”

As we pointed out in our earlier article accompanying the graph, yes of course national fact checkers check the president the most. That will be true regardless of party and therefore serves as no evidence whatsoever of impartiality, particularly if a Republican president may have drawn greater scrutiny than Obama. Sharockman's argument is flim-flam.

This article about PolitiFact trying to convince conservatives it is neutral and non-partisan gives conservatives no evidence of PolitiFact's neutrality or non-partisanship. These people could use some talking points that have greater strength than wet toilet paper.

Hey, the article mentions "PolitiFact Bias"!

Plus: How PolitiFact could build trust across the board

At the risk of humeral fracture from patting ourselves on the back, the best section of the Post article is the one that mentions PolitiFact Bias. That's not because it mentions PolitiFact Bias, though that's part of it (bold emphasis added)

(Sharockman)’s fully aware of the free-floating cynicism about fact-checking, a form that has enjoyed a boomlet in the past few years with such outfits as PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, Snopes and The Washington Post’s Fact Checker on the scene. In one poll last year, 88 percent of people who supported Trump during the 2016 campaign said they didn’t trust media fact-checking. (Overall, just 29 percent of likely voters in the survey said they did.) PolitiFact itself has come in for particularly intense criticism; a blog called PolitiFact Bias is devoted to “exposing [its] bias, mistakes and flimflammery.”

The basic critique is that fact-checkers cherry-pick statements and facts to create a false impression — usually that conservative candidates are less truthful than the liberal kind.

The fact is that the polls show that moderates and independents are more skeptical about mainstream media fact-checking than are Democrats. The corollary? The political group that most trusts political fact-checking is Democrats.

Shouldn't we expect moderates more than Democrats or Republicans to favor PolitiFact if it treats Democrats and Republicans with equal skepticism? Indeed, for years PolitiFact tried to argue for its neutrality by saying it gets attacked from both sides. Left unsaid was the fact that most of the attacking came from one side.

PolitiFact needs to hear the message in the numbers. Likely voters don't trust fact checkers (71 percent!). PolitiFact can't do meet-and-greets with 71 percent of likely voters.  To earn trust, PolitiFact needs to severely ramp up its transparency and address the criticism it receives. If the criticism is valid, make changes. If the criticism is invalid, then crush entities like PolitiFact Bias by publicly discrediting their arguments with better arguments.

Establish trust by modeling transparently trustworthy behavior, in other words.

Or PolitiFact can just keep doing what it's doing and see if that 30 percent or so that trusts it just happens to grow.

Good luck with that.


Afters

Is this true?

The fact of the matter is that both sides are becoming less moored to the truth, Sharockman says. The number of untrustworthy statements by Republicans and Democrats alike has grown over the past three presidential cycles, he noted.

Our numbers show that the number of false ("False" plus "Pants on Fire") statements from Democrats, as rated by PolitiFact, drop from PolitiFact's early years.  Though with a minor spike during the 2016 election cycle.

What data would support Sharockman's claim, we wonder?

Fact-checking the president

When accused of focusing its fact checks on conservatives more than liberals, PolitiFact has been known to defend itself by pointing out that it has fact checked Barack Obama more than any other political figure.

We properly ridiculed that claim because it is natural for a national political fact checker to place special importance on the statements of a president. We should only be surprised if the fact checker fails to fact check the president most frequently. And now that President Donald Trump has succeeded President Obama in office, we can do some comparisons that help illustrate the point.

Please note that this comparison does have an apples-to-oranges aspect to it. PolitiFact started out with the aim of fact-checking the election campaign. Therefore, we should allow for PolitiFact to get a slow start on President Obama's first term.

We based the comparisons on the number of fact checks PolitiFact performed on the presidents between their inauguration (two of those for Obama) and Oct. 18. In fact, PolitiFact fact checked Obama more frequently in 2009 than it did when he launched his second term in 2013.

As the graph shows, through Oct. 18 PolitiFact has fact checked Trump more in 2017 than it did Obama in 2009 and 2013 combined.

Trump has an excellent shot at supplanting Obama as the figure most fact checked by PolitiFact within just four years of taking office.

And perhaps we'll never again hear PolitiFact's balance defended on the basis of its fact-checking Obama more often than other political figures.

PolitiFact defends itself for money

PolitiFact has a terrible record when it comes to defending itself from public criticism. So it surprised us to see PolitiFact's Jon Greenberg take to Twitter highlighting an article he wrote defending against criticism he received from Mark Hyman.

.@WeAreSinclair is targeting @PolitiFact. Says I made up numbers. Theirs are pathets. See for yourself.https://t.co/aWCxwO8lEF

— Jon Greenberg (@JonZGreenberg) October 11, 2017

The destination article by Greenberg failed to link to the attacking video. So persons wishing to see for themselves would just have to take Greenberg's word or else try to find the video through their own effort.

We found the video with a little effort. We could not find it through the association with Sinclair Broadcasting that Greenberg advertised. We found it by connecting the "Mark Hyman" mentioned in Greenberg's self-defense to BehindtheHeadlines.net.



We found a number of things striking about Greenberg's article.

 Greenberg:

Sinclair, which has faced criticism for a clear conservative point of view, published a video commentary last week saying we fabricated data related to a fact-check we published on Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. Cruz claimed, "Two-thirds of the (Sandy disaster relief) bill had nothing to do with Sandy."

First, we were overpoweringly bemused by PolitiFact, which has faced criticism for a clear liberal point of view, mentioning that Sinclair has received criticism for leaning right. If the accusations against Sinclair are worth mentioning, then what of those against PolitiFact?

More importantly, Greenberg made a logical leap with his claim the article says "we fabricated data related to a fact-check we published on Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas." That simply isn't in Hyman's video or the transcript. The closest to that occurs at the end of the video, when Hyman refers to his two other criticisms of PolitiFact:

On our website are two other segments [here, here] that show PolitiFact fabricating info and presenting false claims.

While it is possible to read the statement as a suggestion PolitiFact fabricated information in its fact check of Cruz, it may also be read to simply say the other two segments show PolitiFact fabricating information and(/or) presenting false claims. In his tweet Greenberg was more specific, fabricating the claim that Hyman accused him of making up "numbers."

Back to Greenberg's article:

We found that the bulk of the federal money went to states hit hardest by Sandy.

Sinclair executive Mark Hyman countered, saying that "billions were not for emergency relief. Or for Sandy."

Is this a titanic battle of straw men or what?

Hyman's beef with PolitiFact was its supposed suggestion that virtually all of the Sandy relief bill went to pay for relief from Sandy's impact. The quotation Hyman used occurred in the Washington Post version of the Cruz fact check but not in the one PolitiFact published. But it isn't hard to see the same idea presented in PolitiFact's fact check. If the money went to states hardest hit by Sandy, PolitiFact apparently reasoned, then it was for relief from superstorm Sandy.

That's bad reasoning, and worth exposing.

Is Mark Hyman a "Sinclair executive"? We think Greenberg botched the reporting on this one [Pre-publication update: PolitiFact fixed this after we did some Twitter needling]. Hyman's biography (dated October 2017) says he stepped down from an executive position in 2005 and mentions no resumption of a similar post.

That straw man again

Greenberg:

That could be true, but that isn’t what Cruz claimed. He said the lion’s share of the money had no connection to Sandy.

That’s a bold assertion, and nothing Sinclair presented actually supports it.

We must forgive Jon Greenberg for focusing on Hyman's failure to show Cruz was right. A fact checker cannot be expected to notice that Hyman did not try to defend Cruz and did not mention Cruz in his critique of PolitiFact.

In debate terms, Greenberg conceded that Hyman may have a sound premise.

Pictorial interlude/foreshadowing

How about a different straw man?

Greenberg:

It’s a simple question of math and scale. Sinclair’s report said that $16 billion went to the Housing and Urban Development Department. It then gave two examples of that money going to Chicago (to upgrade sewer and water systems) and Springfield, Mass. (to boost development in tornado-damaged low-income neighborhoods). Together, the two grants add up to $85 million.

Those dollars amount to one half of 1 percent of the money HUD got after the storm.

Greenberg omits that Hyman explicitly said he was merely giving two examples among many. It was disingenuous, and a straw man fallacy, for Greenberg to total the amount from Hyman's two examples and use the total to amplify PolitiFact's point that the bulk of the spending went to disaster relief for damages wrought by Sandy. In a way, Greenberg actually proves Hyman's point after the fact.

A point unresponsive to Hyman's charge

This is what happens with straw man arguments. We see arguments advanced that have nothing to do with what the other person was arguing.

Greenberg:

As we reported, HUD granted $12.8 billion to the places hit hardest by Sandy, namely New Jersey, New York and New York City. That represents about 80 percent of the HUD total, the opposite of Cruz’s claim that two-thirds had nothing to do with Sandy.

As Hyman wasn't defending Cruz, Greenberg wastes his words.

A paragraph hinting at what might have been ...

We nominate this next segment as Greenberg's best paragraph:

There are valid reasons to debate what qualifies as emergency relief and what is non-emergency spending. We noted that distinction in our report, as well as that the Sandy appropriation bill was a leaky bucket. The money, for example, could be spent on disasters in 2011, 2012 and 2013. We also highlighted that it takes years to spend many of those billions of dollars, especially when they go to roads, bridges, tunnels and other infrastructure.

The above is the sensible person's response to Hyman's editorial. Hyman charged that PolitiFact made it look like nearly all the money from the Sandy relief bill went for emergency relief. Greenberg's right that PolitiFact made these points in its fact check. Hyman's case, then, is certainly not a slam-dunk.

... and then back into the weeds of falsehood and obfuscation

Greenberg:

The Sinclair report concluded by saying that PolitiFact "is fabricating info and presenting false claims." That is simply not true. Our reporting is accurate, and we list all of our sources.

Greenberg leaves out the context of Hyman's conclusion, as we pointed out above. As a result, Greenberg leaves his readers the misleading impression that his article refutes Hyman's concluding claim. That claim most obviously refers to two other segments about PolitiFact that Greenberg does not address in his article. On what basis does he call those charges false?

Making matters worse for PolitiFact, Greenberg's article contains inaccurate reporting and fails to list all its sources (documented above).

The Ulterior Motive

Why did PolitiFact defend itself from Hyman's video attack when we've been enthusiastically targeting PolitiFact for years while receiving a fairly dedicated silence in response?

The image we inserted above foreshadowed the answer, specifically the blue hotlink in the middle of Greenberg's article encouraging readers to "STAND UP FOR FACTS AND SUPPORT POLITIFACT!" (all caps in the original)

The link leads to a page where readers can sign up to join PolitiFact's "Truth Squad," which helps financially support PolitiFact.

Greenberg's story is PolitiFact's version of those ubiquitous emails politicians send out to spur their constituents to give them money. My opponent is forming a Super PAC! Send $8 to show you support Candidate X and getting rid of money in politics!

PolitiFact chose the attack from Sinclair because it could attach the attack to a company with deep pockets, scaring its supporters into giving it money.

Check out the email we got from Executive Director Aaron Sharockman:

Friends,

The Sinclair Broadcasting Group, the nation's largest owner of television stations, is attacking PolitiFact for a recent fact-check we published about federal funding related to superstorm Sandy.

Sinclair, which has faced criticism for a clear conservative point of view, published a video commentary last week saying we fabricated data related to a fact-check we published on Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. Cruz claimed, "Two-thirds of the (Sandy disaster relief) bill had nothing to do with Sandy."

We found that the bulk of the federal money went to states hit hardest by Sandy.

Sinclair executive Mark Hyman countered, saying that "billions were not for emergency relief. Or for Sandy."

That could be true, but that isn’t what Cruz claimed. He said the lion’s share of the money had no connection to Sandy.

That’s a bold assertion, and nothing Sinclair presented actually supports it.

Will you help PolitiFact fight for the truth?

It’s a simple question of math and scale. Sinclair’s report said that $16 billion went to the Housing and Urban Development Department. It then gave two examples of that money going to Chicago (to upgrade sewer and water systems) and Springfield, Mass. (to boost development in tornado-damaged low-income neighborhoods). Together, the two grants add up to $85 million. Those dollars amount to one half of 1 percent of the money HUD got after the storm. As we reported, HUD granted $12.8 billion to the places hit hardest by Sandy, namely New Jersey, New York and New York City. That represents about 80 percent of the HUD total, the opposite of Cruz’s claim that two-thirds had nothing to do with Sandy. There are valid reasons to debate what qualifies as emergency relief and what is non-emergency spending. We noted that distinction in our report, as well as that the Sandy appropriation bill was a leaky bucket. The money, for example, could be spent on disasters in 2011, 2012 and 2013. We also highlighted that it takes years to spend many of those billions of dollars, especially when they go to roads, bridges, tunnels and other infrastructure. The Sinclair report concluded by saying that PolitiFact "is fabricating info and presenting false claims." That is simply not true. Our reporting is accurate, and we list all of our sources. Whenever we can, we let the numbers do the talking and in the case of Cruz’s statement, the numbers spoke loud and clear. He said two-thirds had nothing to do with Sandy. The dollars show that the bulk of the money went to the places hit hardest by Sandy.

Yours truly,

Aaron Sharockman
Executive Director

Isn't that precious? Sharockman sends out Greenberg's article under his own name! You'd think Sharockman could give Greenberg the credit for writing the thing, right?

Cheap Stunt, Poorly Executed

Anyway, PolitiFact makes it clear that it didn't answer Hyman as part of its supposedly firm commitment to transparency. PolitiFact answered Hyman to propel an appeal for money.

It only compounds our amusement that PolitiFact left out the fact that gives that appeal whatever urgency it might have. Maybe PolitiFact didn't want to credit HBO's John Oliver for it. Who knows? Regardless, Oliver reported  (our link goes via The Hill) that Sinclair Broadcasting Group makes Hyman's commentaries, among others, mandatory showing on local news programs (all or some we do not know). So Hyman's videos have greater reach than the modest Alexa rankings we see for BehindtheHeadlines.net (a little ahead of PFB in the 3.1 millions) would suggest.

All in all, we call this a cheap stunt poorly executed.

Nice work, PolitiFact. It makes a good bookend with your PolitiFact Evangelism and Revival Tour.

The PolitiFact Evangelism & Revival Tour I

PolitiFact has embarked on what it is calling an "outreach" tour aimed at breaking down barriers that keep conservatives from trusting the fact checkers at PolitiFact.

To us here at PolitiFact Bias, this outreach tour bears all the earmarks one would expect of a naked publicity stunt.

Why would we say that?

First, consider the target audience. PolitiFact isn't just reaching out to any old run-of-the-mill conservatives, and the outreach certainly doesn't target any of PolitiFact's long-time critics. Rather, PolitiFact has targeted conservatives near the locations of its newest three state franchises in Alabama, Oklahoma and West Virginia.

What a coincidence? When I first heard that detail of the outreach plan all I could think of was the cult evangelism tool of "love-bombing."

We're keeping tabs on PolitiFact's effort to wash the unwashed, and the latest update from Poynter's Daniel Funke compelled us to complete this first in what is likely to prove a number of observations on the project. The Poynter Institute, by the way, owns the Tampa Bay Times, the newspaper that runs PolitiFact.

We found this paragraph striking:

(PolitiFact's Executive Director Aaron) Sharockman told Poynter they once did some consulting with business students at the University of Missouri to learn more about how to build trust and create new audiences. The students recommended that PolitiFact double down on growing liberal readership by visiting communities that skew blue — the exact opposite of its current project in middle America.

A-ha. So PolitiFact apparently recognizes that its audience tilts left. We figured the PolitiFact folks had to know that, but this serves as the best confirmation of that so far.

It's great (seriously!) that PolitiFact chose the hard route of reaching out to the tougher audience. If PolitiFact ends up only interested in outreach to conservatives who accept PolitiFact as an objective referee of political claims, then we would consider that outcome consistent with the project's resemblance to love-bombing.

But who knows? Maybe PolitiFact is more interested in finding out why conservatives withhold their trust and changing its approach to address those concerns.

We will eagerly look for evidence that would falsify our working hypothesis.


Correction Oct. 16, 2017: Changed "Virginia" to "West Virginia" in the fourth paragraph. Our congratulations to Virginia. Condolences to West Virginia.  We apologize to our readers for the mistake.