PolitiFact's ongoing double standard on correlation versus causation

PolitiFact does not advertise the fact that it applies standards inconsistently.

But it could do so without misleading people.

The liberal bloggers at PolitiFact, who pass themselves off as objective fact checkers, presented us with a new example the other day.

President Biden passed correlation off as causation. "Mostly True," said PolitiFact: Because, you know, the correlation was there.

PolitiFact's reasoning:

A key study backs Biden up. But the reality is millions of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines remained in circulation during the ban, and that makes it hard to tease out the law’s impact. 

We rate this claim Mostly True.

Of course it's child's play to come up with an example where somebody factually claimed a correlation and got PolitiDinged for it.

The Facebook post did not directly claim causation any more than did President Biden.

PolitiFact confirmed the claimed correlation, but guess what? There was no proof the higher mask usage caused the deaths! So, "False."

PolitiFact's reasoning:

A Facebook post said there’s a "‘positive correlation’ between higher mask usage and COVID-19 deaths."

The post was referencing a study that reviewed data from 35 European countries and found that in places where mask usage was higher, COVID-19 deaths were also higher. But the study’s author said there was no cause-and-effect found.  

Critics of the study said masking protocols were issued in response to high rates of transmission. So it would be expected that deaths would occur while masking would be in place. 

Public health officials recommend masking as one way to help reduce transmission..

We rate this claim False.

Parallel cases. Both claims asserted a correlation. In both cases PolitiFact substantially confirmed the correlation but noted that correlation does not prove causation. Nearly polar opposite ratings resulted. 

That's how PolitiFact rolls.

PolitiFact's coin flips

We've often highlighted the apparent non-objective standards PolitiFact uses to justify its "Truth-O-Meter" ratings. John Kroll, a former staffer at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, PolitiFact's former partner with PolitiFact Ohio, said the choice between one rating and another was often difficult and said the decisions amounted to "coin flips" much of the time.

Heads the liberal wins, tails the Republican loses, at least in the following comparison of PolitiFact's ratings of Stephen Carter (liberal) and Ted Cruz (Republican).

I'll simply reproduce the email PolitiFact Bias editor Jeff D. sent me, reformatted to our standard PFB presentation:

Read the last three paragraphs of each one (emphasis mine):

Carter said that more than 70 percent of American adults have committed a crime that could lead to imprisonment. Based on a strictly technical reading of existing laws, the consensus among the legal experts we reached is that the number is reasonable. Way more than a majority of Americans have done something in their lives that runs afoul of some law that includes jail or prison time as a potential punishment.

That said, experts acknowledged that the likelihood of arrest, prosecution or imprisonment is exceedingly low for many of Americans’ "crimes." 

As such, we rate the claim Mostly True.

Cruz said that "Lorne Michaels could be put in jail under this amendment for making fun of any politician."

Most experts we talked to agreed that the proposed amendment’s language left open the door to that possibility. But many of those same experts emphasized that prosecuting, much less imprisoning, a comedian for purely political speech would run counter to centuries of American tradition, and would face many obstacles at a variety of government levels and run headlong into popular sentiment.

In the big picture, Cruz makes a persuasive case that it’s not a good idea to mess with the First Amendment. Still, his SNL scenario is far-fetched. The claim is partially accurate but leaves out important details, so we rate it Half True.

One wonders if PolitiFact sought the consensus of experts while considering whether blacks were convicted at a higher rate than whites in a recent fact check. Rudy Giuliani received a "False" rating since PolitiFact could locate no official statistics backing his claim. Looks like official statistics aren't really needed if experts think a claim seems reasonable.
 

Jeff Adds: 

Though former Cleveland Plain Dealer (PolitiFact Ohio) editor John Kroll admits PolitiFact's ratings often amount to coin flips, their other journalistic standards are applied with the same consistency. Take for instance their Dec. 2 dodge of the claim Obama's executive order on immigration would create a $3000 incentive to hire undocumented workers:

The claim isn’t so much inaccurate as it is speculative. For that reason, we won’t put this on our Truth-O-Meter.

Was there an unannounced policy change at PolitiFact? Aaron Sharockman was editor on both the Cruz and Carter checks. An unnamed editor signed off on the Incentive claim, adding flip flops to coin flips.

Here's a timeline:

• On Sept. 11, 2014, there was enough established, tangible evidence for something that may or may not happen in the future to say Ted Cruz' prediction was half wrong

• On Dec. 2, 2014, PolitiFact suddenly has a policy against checking speculative claims, but felt compelled enough to spend an entire article Voxsplaining their work to readers.

• On Dec. 8th, 2014, PolitiFact is back in the future-checking business and found enough proof of something that hasn't actually happened yet to definitively determine a liberal's claim is Mostly True.

Remember also that Mitt Romney won the Lie of the Year award for a TV ad that claimed implied Chrysler would be moving Jeep production to China. So in 2012, PolitiFact's most notable falsehood of the year was a campaign ad implying something would happen in the future.

But does Obama's executive order offer a certain economic incentive, as in the Dec. 2 article? Sorry, PolitiFact says it doesn't rate speculative claims.

PolitiFlub: PolitiFact again ignores data on effective federal tax rates

 Crossposted from Sublime Bloviations


PolitiFact's latest fact check involving federal taxation sticks with its persistent pattern of ignoring and/or minimizing data on effective federal tax rates, including a study by the otherwise esteemed Congressional Budget Office.

A new ad from President Barack Obama’s campaign continues the drumbeat that Mitt Romney is a privileged rich guy who isn't paying his fair share of taxes.

"You work hard, stretch every penny," a narrator says. "But chances are, you pay a higher tax rate than him: Mitt Romney made $20 million in 2010, but paid only 14 percent in taxes — probably less than you."

Huh.  The Obama campaign didn't specify federal income taxes.  No worries.  Obama isn't Michele Bachmann, so PolitiFact can overlook the campaign's oversight.

PolitiFact then:

Bachmann would have been right if she’d said, "the top 1 percent of income earners pay about 40 percent of all income taxes into the federal government." But she didn’t say that -- and even if she had, her decision to focus on income taxes, rather than looking at the whole federal tax picture, would have presented the numbers in such a way that wealthier Americans would look more heavily taxed than they are.

So we want "the whole federal tax picture"?  Not so.  PolitiFact wants the tax picture minus the effects of corporate and excise taxes.  The thread is consistent and continues through today.

PolitiFact:

If you just look at income taxes, Obama is incorrect.

Bummer.  But since Obama didn't specify "(federal) income taxes" PolitiFact can consider payroll taxes while continuing to ignore corporate and excise taxes.  Or something like that.

PolitiFact:

So what happens when you add payroll taxes to income taxes? Obama's ad is accurate. Here's the breakdown when you include income taxes and both sides of the payroll tax (the parts paid for by employee and employer):

Bottom fifth of earners: 1 percent
Second-to-bottom fifth:  7.8 percent
Middle fifth: 15.5 percent
Second-highest fifth: 18.7 percent
Highest fifth: 24.3 percent

Once again, we can’t know exactly what percentage of Americans paid a higher effective tax rate than Romney's 14 percent, but the top two ranges, plus a significant share of the middle group, most likely did. So probably more than half exceeded Romney’s rate, making the Obama ad accurate.

Yippee!  Obama's ad is accurate!  Average out the true and the false, give the president a "Half True" and nobody really needs to know about that messy corporate and excise tax stuff.

Speaking of that messy corporate and excise tax stuff:

(click image for enlarged view)

The chart comes directly from the CBO report mentioned up above.  There are two important things to note.  First, excise taxes fall more heavily on those in the lower income quintiles.  That's a minor point.  Second, the burden of corporate taxes falls heavily on those with higher incomes.  And the higher you go with income, the higher the corporate tax burden.  That likely means that persons like Romney pay higher portions of the corporate tax burden as a percentage of their federal taxes.

Using "the whole federal tax picture" that PolitiFact once cited as its ideal standard, the middle quintile pays less than half the average federal tax burden of a person in the top 1 percent in 2006 (14.2 percent compared to 31.2 percent).  That means that it is very probably false that most people pay less more in federal taxes than Romney.

Luckily for the president, PolitiFact can make it look otherwise by cherry picking.

That's PolitiFact for you.


Afters: 

See also the review of a similar story from Annenberg Fact Check.


After Afters:

Just a little review of what PolitiFact wrote while rating Bachmann "False":

[Bachmann's] decision to focus on income taxes, rather than looking at the whole federal tax picture, would have presented the numbers in such a way that wealthier Americans would look more heavily taxed than they are.

PolitiFact's hypocrisy is pretty overwhelming, isn't it?


Correction Aug. 13 2012:
Less is more, after the correction.

Anchor Rising: "Truth Once Again Blowin' In The Wind At PolitiFact"

Monique Chartier of Anchor Rising brings our attention to likely case of PolitiFact bias.

This looks like another classic case where PolitiFact (PolitiFact Rhode Island in this case) applies a hyper-literal interpretation to a statement that is plainly true when given normal charitable interpretation.

Specifically, Lisa Blais of the Ocean State Tea Party In Action group appeared on WHJJ 920's Helen Glover Show.  During that appearance, Blais said ""As you know, we came out against Deepwater.  And everybody is now paying for it in their electric bills." 

Blais' comment came in the context of a different case of potentially wasteful government intervention.  Taken in context, Blais is saying that the Deepwater wind turbine project receives its financing from electric bills.  Blais was not communicating the message that persons paying electric bills today are directly paying for the Deepwater project.  Find Blais' comments at about the two minute mark of the following audio.





PolitiFact ruled based on the idea that the listener would conclude that today's electric bill directly pays for the Deepwater project and gave Blais a ruling of "Barely True."  The PolitiFact story concedes that the project indirectly increases utility bills for today's energy consumer:

In 2009, the legislature and Gov. Donald Carcieri modified that law, requiring National Grid to actively encourage renewable energy projects; one of them was to be an undersea power line from Block Island to the mainland.
(...)
National Grid has racked up some legal costs dealing with that power line and those costs are being passed on to consumers as part of a 0.007 cents per kilowatt hour surcharge on their bills. For the typical residential customer -- who uses about 500 kilowatts per month -- that surcharge translates to no more than 3.5 cents per month.

Even taken hyper-literally Blais' claim was partly true, but the real crime is PolitiFact's decision not to give credit Blais' statement with a normal interpretation.

Blais appeared again today on the Helen Glover Show and gave PolitiFact an appropriate and well-delivered pushback.  Blais point out how PolitiFact went easy on a liberal in a different fact check when the literal interpretation was egregiously wrong.  She correctly observes that PolitiFact's standards abuse the term "standards."




Chartier provided the following update:

Permit me to be more specifical as to how PolitiFact is miss-serving the public and the truth in the case of Lisa's statement. The headline of today's rating is

Tea Party leader Lisa Blais says Rhode Island consumers are now paying for Deepwater wind turbine project in their electric bills.

However deplorable, not everyone delves into an article or an issue. On any given day, many people are only going to skim headlines to pick up the news - I'm guilty of that myself.

And in skimming mode, the all-important modifier "now" in the PolitiFact headline is not likely to register. What will certainly register, however, is the "False". So people are going to come away from this rating thinking, "That's that offshore windmill project, isn't it? I thought it was going to be funded by our electric bills. But PolitiFact says it isn't. That's good!"

Of course PolitiFact is acting hypocritically.  Blais' statement might mislead people.  That's bad, and it deserves a "Mostly False."  PolitiFact similarly misleads people.  That's good, because it gives people an easy way to find the truth in politics without reading every word of a fact check.

Power Line: "Barack Obama, Fiscal Conservative!"

The latest smackdown of PolitiFact's unbelievably inept attempt to present Obama as a budget miser comes from John Hinderaker over at Power Line.

Hinderacker first delves into the problems with Rex Nutting's flawed analysis that started this meme off in the first place:

It started with the ridiculous column by one Rex Nutting that I dismantled last night. Nutting claims that the “Obama spending binge never happened.” He says Obama has presided over the slowest growth in federal spending in modern history. Nutting achieves this counter-intuitive feat by simply omitting the first year of the Obama administration, FY 2009, when federal spending jumped $535 billion, a massive increase that has been sustained and built upon in the succeeding years. Nutting blithely attributes this FY 2009 spending to President Bush, even though 1) Obama was president for more than two-thirds of FY 2009; 2) the Democratic Congress never submitted a budget to President Bush for FY 2009, instead waiting until after Obama was inaugurated; 3) Obama signed the FY 2009 budget in March of that year; 4) Obama and the Democratic Congress spent more than $400 billion more in FY 2009 than Bush had requested in his budget proposal, which was submitted in early 2008; and 5) the stimulus bill, which ballooned FY 2009 spending, was, as we all know, enacted by the Democratic Congress and signed into law by President Obama. So for Nutting to use FY 2010 as the first year of the Obama administration for fiscal purposes was absurd.

Hinderaker goes on to list several of Obama's big spending, deficit-boosting credentials before getting to PolitiFact. Hinderaker has some choice words for PolitiFact's determination that Obama is St. Skinflint, but more importantly notes a discrepancy with a past fact check:

PolitiFact arrived at this conclusion by swallowing the claim that President Bush is somehow responsible for the spending that Obama and the Democrats did in 2009 after he left office. This is doubly amusing because it contradicts the approach PolitiFact took when the shoe was on the other foot. In January 2010, PolitiFact purported to evaluate David Axelrod’s claim that “The day the Bush administration took over from President Bill Clinton in 2001, America enjoyed a $236 billion budget surplus….” PolitiFact found that claim to be true by referring to the FY 2000 budget:

When we asked for his sources, the White House pointed us to several documents. The first was a 2002 report from the Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency, that reported the 2000 federal budget ended with a $236 billion surplus. So Axelrod was right on that point.

So at that time, PolitiFact was clear: the Clinton administration’s responsibility ended in FY 2000, the year before President Bush took office. But, now that the partisan position is reversed, PolitiFact says the opposite. Obama isn’t responsible for anything until he had been in office for eight-plus months, even though, in that time, he had signed nine spending bills plus the stimulus.

PolitiFact's assertion that "Obama has indeed presided over the slowest growth in spending of any president" is absurd. The sheer level of incompetence demanded for a rating like this makes it easy to believe that PolitiFact overlooked the problems deliberately. It's simply implausible that PolitiFact overlooked such obvious flaws accidentally.

It takes a special kind of hubris to call yourself non-partisan when dispensing this type of deceitful gimmickry.

Hinderaker's article goes into more detail pointing out the problems from Nutting and PolitiFact.  Do visit Power Line and read the whole thing.

Hoystory: "Also known as 'Promise Kept'"

When does a promise qualify as being kept?  It depends.

Matthew Hoy of Hoystory highlights the stratospheric standards of the self-appointed Valuator of Vows. This time PolitiFact checks in on John Boehner's promise to fly commercial planes as opposed to military aircraft (a'la Nancy Pelosi).

What titillating travel tidbits did PolitiFact uncover?

[Boehner] spokesman, Michael Steel, told The Hill that Boehner had no intention of reconsidering a decision he previously made to forgo the use of a private jet for transportation to and from his Ohio district.

When we contacted Steel about this pledge, he said Boehner still flies commercial, and the only time he has flown on a military jet was for an overseas congressional delegation.

Promise Kept, right? Hoy fills us in on the promissory particulars:

His spokesman says he’s flying commercial. They’ve gone through his travel records and have uncovered no evidence that he’s using military jets.
...

So, they’ve got zero evidence that he’s not flying commercial. Zero evidence that he has failed to keep his pledge.

And the best they can muster is: “In the works?”

Poor Boehner. If only he had been rated back in the olden days of eight months ago when PolitiFact's standards for Promise Kept weren't so high.

In a Promise Kept rating we reviewed, Obama was given credit for his promise to "...establish a 10 percent federal Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) to require that 10 percent of electricity consumed in the U.S. is derived from clean, sustainable energy sources, like solar, wind and geothermal by 2012." To this day, PolitiFact has yet to cite the actual legislation that Obama signed establishing the 10 percent RPS standard. Our best guess is they haven't done so because it doesn't exist. Rather, Obama was given a Promise Kept simply because market conditions caused energy sources to meet the 10 percent figure, not because of any requirement Obama was able to enact.

Boehner honors his commitment, and it's considered In the Works. Obama fails to act, and earns a Promise Kept for something that happened without his action that was only tangentially related to his pledge in the first place. But it don't worry, PolitiFact is still objectively on the case:

We will continue to seek more concrete records of Boehner"s travels and follow this pledge. If readers see him flying commercial -- or on a military jet -- please let us know.

PolitiFact's inability to maintain consistent standards for the statements and people they rate offer a great example of how the editors' and writers' personal bias creeps into their work. PolitiFact is a collection of partisans convincing each other of their own impartiality. They should not be trusted as a news source, let alone as a fact checkers.   

Check out Hoystory for the full article. His snark is always worth the visit. And for more from Hoy on PolitiFact go here. And see our reviews of Hoy's work here.


Bryan adds:

When I read the PolitiFact item on Boehner I had little problem with it as an interim rating--but when I recall that PolitiFact gave President Obama a "Promise Kept" for troop increases that he's now in the process of reversing it does create some puzzlement.  Obama was, after all, supposedly preparing us for "meeting the challenges of the 21st century."  Inconsistency remains a rampant problem at PolitiFact.

Tales of the Unexpected, featuring PolitiFact

 Crossposted from Sublime Bloviations

You have to love PolitiFact's fact-challenged statements about itself.


Now:

We’ve consistently ruled in the past that the economy is too complex to
assign full blame (or credit) for job gains or losses to a president or a
governor.

Then:

Our ruling

Pelosi compared a select time frame in the Obama administration against the entire length of the Bush administration -- a methodology that treats the two presidents unequally. The irony is that if she had used better methodology, she would have had a sounder argument that more private-sector jobs were created under Obama than under the Bush administration. For her general point, we give Pelosi some credit. For her methodological sins -- repeated at least three times -- we give her thumbs down. On balance, we rate her statement Half True.

There's consistency for you.

The NRCC makes a statement that's correct but represents cherry picking and gets a "Barely True."  Nancy Pelosi makes a statement that's also correct, represents cherry picking and gets a "Half True"--with no mention of docking Pelosi for crediting President Obama.  On the contrary, PolitiFact itself recommends an alternative method for giving President Obama credit for his job creation numbers compared to those of his predecessor.



Jeff adds (3/02/12): For the record, there's at least some consistency in these two articles: Both were written by Louis Jacobson, and both were edited by Martha Hamilton.

PolitiFact's sham fact checking

Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and  President Barack Obama had something in common last week, and Jeff Dyberg noticed.

Both made statements about majorities that were graded "Mostly True" by the fact checkers at PolitiFact.  The justifications PolitiFact used for the rulings was similar.  PolitiFact cited poll data showing that pluralities rather than majorities obtained, and ruled favorably based on the underlying points.

Note the summary paragraph for the Rubio story:

Rubio said that the majority of Americans are conservative. A respected ongoing poll from Gallup shows that conservatives are the largest ideological group, but they don’t cross the 50 percent threshold. So we rate his statement Mostly True.

Compare the summary paragraph for the Obama item:

So overall, the poll numbers support Obama’s general point, but they don’t fully justify his claim that "the American people for the most part think it’s a bad idea." Actually, in most of the polls just a plurality says that. On balance, we rate his statement Mostly True.

Rubio and Obama no longer have the "Mostly True" ruling in common.

PolitiFact received numerous complaints about the Rubio ruling and changed it to "Half True."

Of course, in the case of Rubio, PolitiFact found more information that bolstered the downgraded "Half True" rating.

Just kidding.  Go through the updated story with a fine-toothed comb and Rubio's claim ends up looking even more similar to Obama's, except maybe better.  Note the concluding paragraph of the updated Rubio story:

So by the two polls, he was incorrect. By one, he was correct and we find support for his underlying point that there are more conservatives than liberals. On balance, we rate this claim Half True.

This case makes it appear that PolitiFact is sensitive to scolding from the left, perhaps particularly when it comes from media elites like Jay Rosen.  And maybe that's understandable in a way.  But if the left doesn't complain about the Obama rating until it's downgraded to "Half True" then both the left and PolitiFact (or is there a difference?) look pretty inconsistent.

Future of Capitalism: "Two More Obama Switcheroos"

I'm a regular reader of Ira Stoll's Future of Capitalism, though it's not where I typically troll for PolitiFact rebukes. So I was surprised last week to catch a brief mention of our factastic friends in the otherwise non-PolitiFact related piece.

At issue is the announcement that the Obama administration seeks to reduce the number of armed services personnel by 490,000 troops over the next decade. Stoll happens to be keeping his own mini-ObamaMeter and points out that this reduction contradicts an Obama campaign promise that he "supports plans to increase the size of the Army by 65,000 troops and the Marines by 27,000 troops."

It takes Stoll a whopping two sentences to expose PolitiFact's sophistry:

The Politifact Web site absurdly rates this as a "promise kept," explaining, "Obama said nothing about keeping the higher levels indefinitely." How cynical can you get?

Not only is it cynical, it's also an example of PolitiFact's alternating standards. Note how PolitiFact dealt with Rand Paul's claim that the "average federal employee makes $120,000 a year. The average private employee makes $60,000 a year." Paul received a False rating because, as PolitiFact explained:

"Most people hearing that would assume he was talking about salary alone, but  he was talking about total compensation, including benefits such as retirement pay and paid holidays."

In Obama's case, PolitiFact gives him a Promise Kept because of the literal (and cynical) interpretation of his words. Paul, on the other hand, is deemed false not because of what he said, but because of what PolitiFact thinks people would assume he meant.

If that's not good enough, check out this recent rating on Mitt Romney's claim that "More Americans have lost their jobs under Barack Obama than any president in modern history..."

Romney’s claim is accurate if you count from every president’s first day in office to his final day -- by those standards, Obama is indeed the only president since World War II to have presided over a net job loss.

Don't worry. Despite finding the literal claim true, PolitiFact invented arbitrary standards to justify finding Romney's claim Mostly False. No "said nothing about" treatment for poor ol' Mitt.

One more?

You can read Bryan's in-depth take down of this rating on Sarah Palin, but I'll give you a hint on how it ends:

Although she's technically correct, the numbers are wildly skewed by tiny, non-industrialized countries. We find her claim Barely True.

The examples are, if I can avoid being taken literally, endless. PolitiFact's vacillating guidelines on when to literally interpret something can provide solid evidence of bias. And, to be fair, PolitiFact doesn't always take Obama literally:

So overall, the poll numbers support Obama’s general point, but they don’t fully justify his claim that "the American people for the most part think it’s a bad idea." Actually, in most of the polls just a plurality says that. On balance, we rate his statement Mostly True.

Doh!

In case readers infer that the above conflicting standards have been cherry picked, it's important to note that every one of the examples provided, including the Promise Kept cited by Stoll, was written by PolitiFacter Louis Jacobson. So we can rule out different approaches from different authors.

Until PolitiFact develops objective standards and adheres to them, the political bias of the writers and editors will be exposed with each contradictory rating.

Although Future of Capitalism isn't a usual destination for PolitiFact articles, I encourage readers to read the whole thing and enjoy Stoll's brilliant writing.


Bryan adds:

Bill Adair offered this in mid-2011:

"You're right that we have not always been consistent on our ratings for these types of claims. We've developed a new principle that is reflected in the Axelrod ruling and should be our policy from now on. The principle is that statistical claims that include blame or credit like this one will be treated as compound statements, so our rating will reflect 1) the relative accuracy of the numbers and 2) whether the person is truly responsible for the statistic.)"

That's probably good news for "Bush's fault" in the past and bad news for "Obama's fault" moving forward.


Jeff adds: Bryan is correct that PolitiFact has "updated" their principles. But we've shown, repeatedly,  that PolitiFact hasn't changed in practice subsequent to publication of Adair's new and improved standard. And Adair's update still fails to provide a transparent, let alone objective, method to weigh the various components of a compound statement.

Big Tent: "A PolitiFact Example"

Blogger and PolitiFact-cited expert Tom Bruscino supplies a partial insider's look at the PolitiFact process along with a critique of the finished work of which he was a part in his post "A PolitiFact Example."

PolitiFact writer Louis Jacobson asked Bruscino for his assessment of Mitt Romney's claim that the U.S. Navy is at its smallest since 1947.

Bruscino found Jacobson's questions leading:

Jacobson did a remarkable bit of research in a very short period of time. However, I did think his questions to me were leading. Remember, Mr. Jacobson asked "(2) What context does this ignore (changing/more lethal technology, changed geopolitical needs, etc)?," which both assumes and implies to the interviewees that Romney ignored those specific contexts.

And after registering some surprise at Jacobson's use of apparently non-objective descriptors of Romney, Bruscino demurs from PolitiFact's "Pants on Fire" ruling:

My opinion, for what it is worth, is that since Romney's base statement was factually accurate when it came to most numerical metrics, it would seem that he could be given credit for a half-truth, even if the context complicates the matter.

Do read Bruscino's entire post, which is particularly valuable since it provides yet another look at the style of inquiry used by PolitiFact journalists.  The commentary thread is also well worth reading.

Hat tip to Power Line blog.  Visit Power Line also for a parallel review I'd have been better off copying rather than writing up my own.



Jeff adds: I first saw this rating yesterday, and couldn't help but notice it provided another example of PolitiFact's alternating standards. Check out how PolitiFact presented this article on their Facebook page:

Image from http://www.facebook.com/politifact

Notice that Romney is spreading ridiculous falsehoods because he "ignores quantum leaps in technology and training."

Poor Mitt. If only he had made this statement back in 2009 when PolitiFact's standards were much different:

We agree that the two cars are totally different. But Obama was careful in the way he phrased his statement: "The 1908 Model T earned better gas mileage than a typical SUV sold in 2008."  As long as you don't consider any factors other than mileage, he's right. We rate his statement Mostly True.

You see, Obama is rated only for his literal statement, while ignoring quantum leaps in technology that make the Model T "totally different." Romney suffers from additional qualifiers that PolitiFact throws in to the mix.

The similarities between the two ratings don't end there. Here's a bit from the Obama/Model T rating:

So technically Obama is right.


But his implication is that we haven't gotten more fuel efficient in 100 years. And that's a reach.
...

...Model Ts reached top speeds of only 40 miles an hour. They guzzled motor oil, about a quart a month. The original tops were made of canvas, and they had no heating or cooling systems. They also had none of the safety features of modern cars: no bumpers, no air bags, no seat belts, no antilock breaks [sic].

The cars had large, skinny wheels to more easily clear the obstacles on rocky, rutted roads. Corner them too fast and they could tip over. And if you crashed, the windshield would usually shatter into sharp, jagged pieces that could slice you to ribbons.

"The government would not allow anyone to sell Model Ts today because they're so unsafe," Casey said. "It's a car that no one would use on a regular basis today. It's not a fair comparison."

Here's similar text from the Romney rating:

This is a great example of a politician using more or less accurate statistics to make a meaningless claim. Judging by the numbers alone, Romney was close to accurate.

...

Thanks to the development of everything from nuclear weapons to drones, comparing today’s military to that of 60 to 100 years ago presents an egregious comparison of apples and oranges. Today’s military and political leaders face real challenges in determining the right mix of assets to deal with current and future threats, but Romney’s glib suggestion that today’s military posture is in any way similar to that of its predecessors in 1917 or 1947 is preposterous.

Obama: Technically correct, as long as you don't consider any other factors, but a reach. Mostly True.

Romney: Close to accurate, meaningless, egregious, glib, preposterous. Pants on Fire.

Bruscino is right to point out the terms used to describe Romney's statement are more appropriate for the editorial page as opposed to an objective determination of facts. And once again, we're left to wonder why different guidelines are used for different people.

Update (1/19/2012 1921 pst) Jeff adds: Speaking of glib and preposterous, this part of the rating just caught my eye:

A wide range of experts told us it’s wrong to assume that a decline in the number of ships or aircraft automatically means a weaker military. Quite the contrary: The United States is the world’s unquestioned military leader today, not just because of the number of ships and aircraft in its arsenal but also because each is stocked with top-of-the-line technology and highly trained personnel.

The first problem is obvious. Romney never claimed that a reduction in the number of ships or aircraft automatically meant a weaker military.  Actually, Romney was citing examples in support of his overall claim (that continued cuts in defense spending will eventually lead to a weaker force). Jacobson's second sentence is a howler. "Quite the contrary" to what? The fact that the U.S. is the world's supreme military force is totally irrelevant to whether or not it's on the path to becoming weaker. If Warren Buffet loses a million dollars on a bad deal, the fact that he's still the richest guy in the room does not negate the fact that he's also a million dollars poorer. And just like Romney claimed in his statement, Buffet simply cannot continue to cut bad deals if he is going to remain the richest guy in the room.

WaPo Fact Checker: "Revisiting Romney’s ‘deceitful, dishonest’ ad about Obama"

Back in late October, PolitiFact was publicly wringing its hands over a story it published that was out of step with fact checks of the same material by Annenberg Fact Check and the Washington Post's "The Fact Checker" column by Glenn Kessler.

It's hand-wringing time again as Kessler writes about a Mitt Romney ad that PolitiFact found outrageous ("Pants on Fire") while Kessler and the Annenberg folks found the ad more middle-of-the-road misleading:

(T)here are three reasons why we have trouble being outraged.


 First, the ad makes clear that Obama is speaking in 2008.
(...)
 Second, Obama’s statement was actually a misleading quote itself.
(...)
 Finally, the Romney campaign made it very clear that it had truncated the quote.

Two out of three of Kessler's points appeared in our own analysis of Romney's claim in our review of the PolitiFact fact check.

Though Kessler doesn't mention our central point about the ad, that its point doesn't change significantly regardless of whether the context was included or not, Kessler does note PolitiFact's out-of-step fact check response:

(Fact Checkers can disagree: PolitiFact labeled it “Pants on Fire.” But Factcheck.org reached a conclusion similar to ours, saying the health-care line actually posed a “more serious problem.”)

Kessler treats PolitiFact very kindly.  The fact is that PolitiFact failed to make any mention of Kessler's three points.  In baseball terms, they whiffed on all three.

And Annenberg Fact Check?  The quotation issue was a sideshow so far as they were concerned:

What the Obama campaign chose to take issue with was how the then-candidate’s words were edited in a section where he is heard to say, “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.” Obama was actually quoting his Republican opponent. The full quote is: “Senator McCain’s campaign actually said, and I quote, if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.”

Is that “deceitful and dishonest,” as Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt quickly claimed? Or “blatantly dishonest,” as the liberal group ThinkProgress described it? It is possible that a viewer might be misled into thinking that Obama said this about his own campaign in 2011, since the quote comes 23 seconds after a graphic cites Obama’s comments as being uttered in 2008. But we’ll leave that for our readers to determine.

PolitiFact is, uh, bolder than that.  That's why PolitiFact is closer to Media Matters than the other major fact check services.  They have the chutzpah to let their subjective judgments determine the position of the misnamed "Truth-O-Meter" and serve it up to their readers as though it is objective journalism.



Jeff adds: When I first read the original PolitiFact piece I was reminded of a rating they gave former congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL). Grayson ran an ad that referred to his opponent, Daniel Webster, as "Taliban Dan." In the ad, Grayson edited a video of Webster to distort Webster's words into the opposite of what he said. Check out PolitiFact's summary in that ruling (bold emphasis added):

The Grayson ad clearly suggests that Webster thinks wives should submit to their husbands, and the repeated refrain of "Submit to me," is an effort to scare off potential female voters. But the lines in the video are clearly taken out of context thanks to some heavy-handed editing. The actual point of Webster's 2009 speech was that husbands should love their wives.

We rate Grayson's claim False.

Now read PolitiFact's treatment of Romney's ad (emphasis added):

We certainly think it’s fair for Romney to attack Obama for his response to the economy. And the Romney camp can argue that Obama’s situation in 2011 is ironic considering the comments he made in 2008. But those points could have been made without distorting Obama’s words, which have been taken out of context in a ridiculously misleading way. We rate the Romney ad’s portrayal of Obama’s 2008 comments Pants on Fire.

As Bryan noted, including the context wouldn't have changed the point of Romney's ad. Yet in Grayson's ad he not only took Webster out of context, he distorted (removed) Webster's words in order to make it appear Webster said something contrary to what he actually said (to say nothing of associating his opponent with a terrorist group). What exactly is more ridiculous about Romney's editing than Grayson's? What standard is PolitiFact using to make these determinations?

Until PolitiFact comes up with a way to objectively quantify a statements ridiculousness the ratings will continue to be plagued by the editors' personal biases.

Edit 12/11/11 : Added link to the original WaPo article-Jeff

Hope 'n' change at PolitiFact

Crossposted from Sublime Bloviations


 I keep hoping that criticism will influence positive change at PolitiFact, the fact checking arm of the St. Petersburg Times (soon changing its name to the Tampa Bay Times).

Well, a positive change occurred at PolitiFact recently.

Unfortunately, it was of the "one step forward, two steps back" variety.

For some time I've carped about PolitiFact's inconsistent standards, and in particular its publishing of two different standards for its "Half True" position on the "Truth-O-Meter."

The recent change probably stemmed from a message I sent to an editor at the paper's city desk (sent Nov. 9):

PolitiFact has created a problem for itself through inconsistency.  During the site's earlier years a page called "About PolitiFact" gave information about how the "Flip-O-Meter" and the "Truth-O-Meter" supposedly operate.  The page includes a description of each of the "Truth-O-Meter" rating categories.

More recently, editor Bill Adair posted an item called "Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter."  The problem?  The definition for "Half True" is different than the one PolitiFact posted for well over a year prior.  Compounding the problem, PolitiFact has kept both versions online through now.

1)  The statement is accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.
2)  The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.

I'll be interested to see the eventual remedy.  Which items over PolitiFact's history went by which definition? Was a change made in Feb. 2011 or before without any announcement?  How can PolitiFact legitimately offer report cards and "Truth Index" ratings if the grading system isn't consistent?  Those are questions I'd imagine readers would have if they realized PolitiFact is using two different definitions for the same rating.  I don't expect you to answer them for my sake (not that I would mind if you did). 

Good luck to all sorting this one out.

The eventual remedy is apparently to simply change the longstanding definition at "About PolitiFact" to match the newer one at "Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter" without any fanfare--indeed, without any apparent notice whatsoever.  I detect no admission of error at all and no acknowledgment that PolitiFact changed its standard.

The move seems consistent with the desire of the mainstream press to avoid doing things that "undermine the ability of readers, viewers or listeners to believe what they print or broadcast."

Sadly, I'm not at all surprised.

On the positive side, the definitions are now consistent with one another.

On the negative side, PolitiFact either created a past illusion where Truth-O-Meter ratings used the old system or else created a fresh illusion that past ratings follow the new system.  And went about it in about the least transparent way possible.


Update:

Good luck to PolitiFact retroactively changing the dozens (perhaps hundreds) of places on the Web that republished the original definition of "Half True."

(Clipped from PolitiFact.com; click image for enlarged view)

Contact PolitiFact Wisconsin.  They didn't get the memo yet.  And PolitiFact Texas has the same problem.


It's not the crime, it's the coverup.


Update 2:


It's also worth remembering PolitiFact's agonizing decision to change "Barely True" to "Mostly False."

"It is a change we don't make lightly," wrote Bill Adair.

How do you like that?  A change in the wording of a rating gets a reader survey prior to the change and an article announcing the change.  A change in the definition of a rating--a much more substantial change--gets the swept-under-the-rug treatment.



11/22/11-Added PFB link in update 2-Jeff

Sublime Bloviations: "PolitiFlub: The employee contribution to Social Security"

It's not often PolitiFact alters their standards so quickly on the exact same topic, but it happens. 

We spotted it right away and PFB editor Bryan White was on the case with his latest update regarding the recent flurry of tax related campaign flyers factchecks PolitiFact's been writing.

This one is pretty obvious. Let's see if our readers can spot it.

Here's PolitiFact's standard for determining tax contributions for Obama's hypothetical $50,000/year worker that pays a higher tax rate than someone making $50 million (bold added):

We asked two researchers at the [Brookings Institute] ... for their advice on how to factor in payroll taxes. They estimated that combining the workers’ share of the payroll tax with the employer’s share -- the usual practice among economists -- would mean an extra 15 percentage points for our hypothetical middle-class worker, and less than 2 additional percentage points for the high-income taxpayer.  Adding these to the percentages we previously found for the income tax alone produces a new, "final" rate of 22 to 23 percent for the construction worker...

Obama's final rating: Half True.

Here's their standard for determining the facts of Herman Cain's statement that "every worker pays 15.3 percent payroll tax":

What we found is that Cain is counting both worker and employer contributions to payroll taxes to arrive at the 15.3 percent number.

Uh-oh.

Cain said, "Every worker pays 15.3 percent payroll tax." That's not accurate. Workers only pay half that...You can reach that number only by including the half of the tax that employers pay.

If this sound went through your head just now; welcome to our world.

Instead of boring you with the rating they gave Cain, we suggest you head over to Bryan's article and read the whole thing. 

Once there you will find a deeper analysis as well as a handy chart Bryan has created that shows how PolitiFact has used one standard or the other in various tax fact checks.

Extra Credit: Guess which party benefits from the alternating definitions of what constitutes a tax contribution.

And if you haven't done so check out our recent reviews on this tax issue here and here.