PolitiFact advertises its "In Context" feature as a means of allowing readers decide, considering the surrounding context, the meaning of a politician's words.
The idea's fine in principle. But it takes principles to pull off an idea that's fine on principle and PolitiFact has a tough time with that. Consider PolitiFact's Nov. 1, 2024 feature about comments made by former President Donald Trump.
The third paragraph reminds readers of the ostensible purpose of the "In Context" feature:
With widespread interpretations of Trump’s remarks, we’re using our In
Context feature to let voters review his comments in their original
context and reach their own conclusions.
We say this "In Context" passes better as a prejudiced anti-Trump editorial.
Why do we say that?
Even the part of the comment taken completely out of context puts PolitiFact's headline in question.
Trump, appearing with Tucker Carlson (via PolitiFact's story):
Later, Trump added "I don’t blame (Dick Cheney) for sticking with his
daughter, but his daughter is a very dumb individual, very dumb. She is a
radical war hawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine
barrels shooting at her, OK? Let's see how she feels about it. You know,
when the guns are trained on her face."
What would support the conclusion that Trump describes a "firing squad"? Trump, after all, doesn't use that term in the out-of-context quote or elsewhere.
One element of the statement might reasonably support the "firing squad" idea: Trump describes a number of people (nine) aiming guns at Cheney's face.
What elements of the description fail to support the "firing squad" idea?
Cheney has a gun in Trump's description. What "firing squad" execution offers a gun to the target?
The guns are aimed at Cheney's face. Firing squads traditionally aim at the heart.
The alternative explanation, that Trump was talking about war hawks typically not needing to face battle themselves, has nothing that argues against it unless we count anti-Trump prejudice.
The text of PolitiFact's story links to an out-of-context version of Trump's comments. And though PolitiFact's source list includes a longer clip with the full context, PolitiFact left out what Trump said after "face":
"You know, they're all war hawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying 'Aw, gee, we'll, let's send, uh, let's send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.' But she's a stupid person." (transcript ours, comments start at 7:36)
Obviously, Trump expressed a common theme among politicians, that war hawks are not the ones facing the bullets.
So, even though PolitiFact gathered no reasonable evidence showing Trump was referring to Cheney facing a "firing squad," the fact checkers (actually liberal bloggers) put their own biased interpretation right in the headline to prejudice their readers.
Headlines often aren't written by the person who wrote the story, but we can blame biased journalist Amy Sherman directly because her story pushes the same conclusion: "Trump’s comments about Liz Cheney and a firing squad drew the most public attention."
There's no solid evidence Trump was referring to a firing squad and plenty to suggest he wasn't.
PolitiFact's story contains obvious signs of liberal bias and fails the supposed objective of the "In Context" feature by pushing a conclusion on readers.
PolitiFact's summary/quotation of Trump's statement counts as reasonably accurate. He drew an analogy between the fine imposed in the New York fraud case to the political persecution of Alexei A. Navalny, who notably opposed Vladimir Putin in Russian.
At its most basic level, the analogy says Navalny and Trump were treated unfairly in court over politics. But PolitiFact affords nearly zero attention to the basic comparison. Instead, PolitiFact focused on differences as though differences can erase similarities.
Karl Malden's nose remains Karl Malden's nose even if you put it on Emma Stone. And Emma Stone with Karl Malden's nose is Emma Stone having a point of similarity with Karl Malden.
PolitiFact classed Trump's statement (wrongly, we think) as hyperbole, but then justified revoking Trump's license for hyperbole because "we determined there were enough factual elements at play to rate his statement on the Truth-O-Meter."
We're not sure how that's supposed to work. As we noted on X, PolitiFact could use a similar approach to find a vegetarian "Pants on Fire" for comparing vegetarian bacon to regular bacon. The bacon example came straight from a dictionary definition of "analog."
Here We Go Again: "Experts"
Part of PolitiFact's schtick comes from its interviews of experts. Typically the pool of experts leans left, and often has a record of giving politically to Democrats. For some reason PolitiFact doesn't see that as a mark against its own credibility.
We found no political giving under Herron's name. But we did find an X post by Herron that appears to acknowledge the legitimacy of analogies where the comparison may seem strained.
I have spent today being inspired by students. First by WVU students fighting for THEIR university at the BoG meeting. Later by Fulbright applications from Ukrainian students fighting for their country. Both face powerful forces trying to crush them and they refuse to surrender.
Gehlbach's partisan political giving fails to challenge that of Balzer, but it's solidly behind Democrats with the exception of one nonpartisan figure, now a (liberal) judge in the Wisconsin court system.
Stephen Sestanovich
Sestanovich has six donations, minimum $250, all going to Democrats.
Kathryn Hendley
Hendley has only one political donation listed, with a Democrat listed as the recipient of the $200 gift.
Mark Osler
Osler has given exclusively to Democrats, with six donations in the range of $50-$250.
What are the chances a fact checker can find seven expert sources and six out of seven have given exclusively to Democrats? It's as though PolitiFact intentionally seeks out Democrats to serve as its experts.
Of course, the mere fact that the experts give to Democrats should not discredit their expertise. But PolitiFact simply uses the experts to underscore that the Navalny case is different than the Trump case. We don't need experts to prove that, and as we pointed out above, differences are irrelevant to the similarities, The former cannot erase the latter.
PolitiFingers on the Scale
As if distracting from the point of Trump's argument and using partisan experts wasn't enough, we have PolitiFingers on the scale of this fact check.
PolitiFact omits all mention of two significant aspects of the fraud case against Trump. Both aspects tend to support the Navalny analogy.
First, the trial judge found that Trump's fraud did not damage anyone financially. That makes the prosecution and the judgment unusual. The fine represents higher conjectured interest charges from lower valuations of Trump properties. We doubt such a basis has ever before been used in the United States to support a fraud penalty.
(Gregory) Germain, the Syracuse professor, said the government did a good job
of showing Trump inflated the value of his properties, but noted that
sophisticated financial institutions didn't require a third-party
appraisal like they do for a typical mortgage on a home.
And though the bank offered Trump lower interest rates because he had
agreed to personally guarantee the loans with his own money, it’s not
clear how much better the rates were because of the inflated figures.
The bank never complained, and it’s unclear how much it lost, if
anything. Bank officials called to testify couldn’t say for sure if
Trump’s personal statement of worth had any impact on the rates.
“This
sets a horrible precedent,” said Adam Leitman Bailey, a New York real
estate lawyer who once successfully sued a Trump condo building for
misrepresenting sales to lure buyers.
Second, PolitiFact's fact check misrepresents the ease of appealing the ruling.
Former President Donald Trump is gearing up to fight a massive fine in the New York business fraud case that threatens to erase most of the cash he says he has on hand.
But first, he has to secure a bond — and that might not be so easy.
Why doesn't PolitiFact tell you any of that?
Because they're biased.
They make sure there are no observations from a conservative such as Andrew C. McCarthy:
PolitiFact is on a real tear against Trump early in 2024. It's almost like they're trying to retroactively make true their false claims about Trump's "Truth-O-Meter" record.
In fact it was Louis Jacobson, listed first on the byline of PolitiFact's fact check, who recently endured two corrections from Slate after it published an interview with him. Jacobson made two flatly false claims about Trump's record on the "Truth-O-Meter."
One wonders whether publicly making false claims about Trump should disqualify Jacobson from working on fact checks involving Trump.
Note: Huh--Looks like Slate botched its editor's note: "It has also been updated to clarify that among major politicians
frequently fact-checked by PolitiFact, Trump has the highest percentage
of Pants on Fire ratings." I gave them the example of Michele Bachmann, who has had 72 "Truth-O-Meter" ratings.
Hmm. Looks like it's time for another correction request, if there's no clear justification for that claim.
Strawmen are always in season at PolitiFact, particularly when a Republican speaks.
Broken quotations always count as a red flag worth investigating. PolitiFact's is especially worth investigating because the key part of the blurb doesn't come from Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley: "is a reason why."
So, did Haley say it was a reason?
Here's the relevant part of CNN's transcript of its Haley town hall (bold highlights added)
(APPLAUSE) TAPPER: So, woke, the word woke used to be used by
progressives to talk about an awareness of inequities and historical
inequities, but obviously it means something else to conservatives
criticizing it. What does it mean to you? How do you define woke?
HALEY:
There's a lot of things. I mean, you want to start with biological boys
playing in girl sports. That's one thing. The fact that we have gender
pronoun classes in the military now, I mean, all of these things that
are pushing what a small minority want on the majority of Americans,
it's too much. It's too much. I mean, the idea that we have biological
boys playing in girls' sports, it is the women's issue of our time. My
daughter ran track in high school. I don't even know how I would have
that conversation with her. How are we supposed to get our girls used to
the fact that biological boys are in their locker rooms? And then we
wonder why a third of our teenage girls seriously contemplated suicide
last year. We should be growing strong girls, confident girls.
Then
you go and you talk about building a strong military. How are you going
to build the morale in a strong military when you're doing gender
pronoun classes? Why is it that --
(APPLAUSE)
HALEY:
Why is it that you have, you know, kids undergoing critical race theory
where if a little girl's in kindergarten if she's -- goes into
kindergarten if she's white, you're telling her she's bad. If she's
brown or black, you're telling her she's never going to be good enough
and she's always going to be a victim. All of these things have gone to
where they are pushing, you know, and transgender, the whole issue of
the transgender, it's not that people don't think in America you should
live the way you want to live. I want everybody to live the way they
want to live, but stop pushing your views on everybody else. That's the
problem, is there starting to push everything on the rest of us.
Considering the context, it makes sense to conclude Haley says pushing woke ideology on kids has contributed to the higher suicide rate and that she used biological boys in girls' locker rooms as an example of forcing woke ideology in school.
PolitiFact, however, focuses on its distortion of Haley's argument. Even though Haley did not say that having biological boys with the girls in the girls' locker room caused a higher suicide rate, PolitiFact insists that is what Haley claimed.
PolitiFact asked Haley's campaign to comment, apparently sending a "Have you stopped beating your wife" inquiry to the campaign:
When we asked Haley’s campaign spokesperson to cite research that
supported her claim, he sent a statement by Haley that did not answer
the question: "We have to grow strong girls, and that is being
threatened right now. Whether it’s biological boys going into girls’
locker rooms or playing in girls’ sports, women are being told their
voices don’t matter. If you think this kind of aggressive bullying isn’t
part of the problem, you're not paying attention."
Note that the campaign's response accords well with our interpretation of Haley's remarks.
But PolitiFact sets its trap, asking for evidence specific to boys in the girls bathroom, with the plan in mind to invoke its fallacious "burden of proof" criterion and find Haley's supposed claim "False."
Teen girls today are experiencing rising rates of suicidal ideation.
However, there is no research that suggests this is being caused by the
presence of trans athletes in locker rooms.
Research points to other causes, including feelings of isolation or
loneliness, feeling like a burden on others, difficulty navigating
parental and family relationships and pressures from constant exposure
to social media.
Pushing woke ideology on teen girls could not possibly contribute to feeling of isolation or loneliness, feeling like a burden on others, difficulty navigating parental and family relationships and pressures from constant exposure to social media. Right?
Fact checkers have no business putting their own spin on the words of others. Or that would be the case if the modern fact checker weren't in the business of crafting narratives instead of telling the truth.
PolitiFact inventinged a claim for Haley, committing a straw man fallacy, then smacked down its straw man based on the fallacy of appeal to silence. Those two fallacies in PolitiFact's hands add up to a "False" rating for Haley.
PolitiFact tried so hard to bury the Hunter Biden laptop story in a June 14, 2021 story that it ended up accidentally telling the truth about it.
Donald Trump claimed that he was "right about everything" and PolitiFact published its article to contest that claim item by item. Trump said the "Biden laptop was real," apparently trying to make the point that the Hunter Biden laptop story the mainstream media largely ignored in the runup to the 2020 election was truly based on Hunter Biden's laptop.
PolitiFact's telling:
'Hunter Biden’s laptop was real'
It was real in the sense that it exists, but it didn’t prove much.
Trump allies obtained a laptop or copies of a laptop during the 2020
campaign that allegedly belonged to Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s
son. Over time, there has been less doubt that the laptop did in fact
belong to Hunter Biden, though how the laptop came to be obtained by
Trump allies and Trump-friendly media outlets is unclear.
Conservative media have done quite a bit of reporting on how the laptop ended up in Rudy Giuliani's hands, not to mention those of the FBI. We find it interesting that PolitiFact declined to report on or link to any of those details. Instead of providing those details, PolitiFact gave us Hunter Biden's side of things and a link to that story:
Hunter Biden has been open about his history as a recovering drug addict; he’s said it’s possible the laptop was stolen from him.
PolitiFact wraps up the section on Biden's laptop by accidentally telling the truth:
Nothing from the laptop has revealed illegal or unethical behavior by
Joe Biden as vice president with regard to his son’s tenure as a
director for Burisma, a Ukraine-based natural gas company.
Though PolitiFact's statement isn't even necessarily true in itself, it tells a series of truths in what it doesn't say. It doesn't say whether the laptop shows illegal or unethical behavior as vice president not regarding Hunter Biden's (apparently well-paid) tenure with Burisma.
What can't we fit through the loophole PolitiFact leaves open?
PolitiFact's statement is compatible with each of the following prospective assertions about what the laptop shows:
Illegal behavior by Joe Biden while not serving as vice president
Unethical behavior by Joe Biden while not serving as vice president
Illegal behavior by Vice President Biden unrelated to Hunter Biden's role as a Burisma employee
Unethical behavior by VP Biden unrelated to Hunter Biden's role as a Burisma employee
We're not saying any of the statements on our list is necessarily true. We're saying PolitiFact's disclaimer about what the Hunter Biden laptop doesn't show is so laughably narrow that it's incriminating.
Why?
Why would any news organization, let alone a fact-checking organization, include such a preposterous caveat in a story? It looks designed to mislead readers.
If it's just simple incompetence, it's of the kind that looks much worse than simple incompetence. It looks like an attempt to deceive readers.
If Republicans fail to make enough false statements, apparently PolitiFact has to invent them.
Is it to meet a quota?
PolitiFact is on a roll, lately, taking claims out of context to present them as false. Today's example involves Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.).
When PolitiFact gets around to showing what Rep. Clyde actually said, it creates an instant contrast with the sensationalistic presentation above. "Pants on Fire"! Oh, my!
(Bold highlights added to match what PolitiFact highlighted in its above misquotation of Clyde):
"Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked
through Statuary Hall, showed people in an orderly fashion staying
between the stanchions and ropes taking videos and pictures. If you
didn't know the TV footage was a video from Jan. 6, you would actually
think it was a normal tourist visit," Clyde said at a May 12 House
hearing.
In context, Clyde appears to clearly talk about video of protestors passing through Statuary Hall. In other words, video like this:
We think any normal, competent fact checker should have no trouble at all figuring this out.
When PolitiFact repeatedly publishes material in this vein, it makes us suspect PolitiFact is not a normal, competent fact checker.
Would it surprise our readers to learn that PolitiFact awarded Clyde his "Pants on Fire" rating based on evidence that had nothing to do with video from the Statuary Room?
(H)ere is what a normal visit looks like for tourists: They go on
guide-led tours of historic areas. They buy souvenirs at the gift shop.
They view temporary exhibits. They dine in the restaurant. And they do
it all without bringing in weapons (or even water).
Here’s what rioters did on Jan. 6. They forced their way through
barricades and past law enforcement to breach the building. They smashed
windows and broke doors. They ransacked offices. They chanted "Hang
Mike Pence!" They attacked police officers. They caused the House and
Senate to shut down for several hours on the day they were certifying
the presidential election. One put his feet up on a desk in House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office and left her a nasty note. None of these
actions are things that tourists normally do at the Capitol.
Here's a list of things we do not see in the Jan. 6, 2021 video from Bloomberg News showing protestors making their way through the Statuary Room:
forcing their way past barricades
forcing their way past law enforcement
smashing windows, breaking doors
ransacking offices
chanting "Hang Mike Pence!"
Attacking police
causing any apparent shutdown
putting feet on the House Speaker's desk
leaving nasty notes
PolitiFact's fact check counts as a ridiculous sham, based on a straw man reading of Rep. Clyde's words. We can imagine legitimate criticism of what Clyde said. For example, one might legitimately claim that by restricting his comments to the Statuary Room video he distracted from things the Capitol mob did elsewhere.
But PolitiFact's fact check succeeded in avoiding any legitimate criticism of Clyde's claim.
Afters I
PolitiFact appears to have handled its headline quotation of Rep. Clyde improperly, using AP Style as the guide:
A longer quotation might span multiple sentences. Use four ellipsis
points (rather than three) to indicate any omission between two
sentences. The first point indicates the period at the end of the first
sentence quoted, and the three spaced ellipsis points follow.
The existing punctuation appears to credit (?) Rep. Clyde with a fragmentary sentence: "Watching the TV footage at the Capitol." There was no such fragment in the actual quotation. Cutting and pasting the headline material shows a space between the first ellipsis point (probably intended as a period by the PolitiFact team) and the three ellipsis points that followed. Usage of the ellipsis following the AP Style blog instructions would have had four ellipsis points evenly spaced. That was not PolitiFact's approach.
For what it's worth, we're not sure how that supposedly correct format would help the casual reader understand that material was omitted before and after the period.
Afters II
In its concluding paragraphs, PolitiFact informed its readers that taking pictures or capturing video do not count as tourist activities (bold emphasis added):
Clyde’s spokesperson pointed to a few moments of video of people walking
through Statuary Hall snapping photos or videos. But those people were
not engaged in anything that resembles tourism. They were part of a
group who had violently breached the U.S. Capitol.
We've pointed out for years that PolitiFact's story focus often determines the "Truth-O-Meter" rating at the end. Story focus shenanigans never go out of style at PolitiFact.
PolitiFact's method allows its fact checkers any number of ways to approach the same claim. A fact checker might focus on what the claimant said was meant. Or the fact checker could focus on how an audience might perceive the claim. One approach might lead to one "Truth-O-Meter" rating and another approach to a different "Truth-O-Meter" rating. There's no good evidence of any objective criteria guiding the process.
That brings us to two timely examples that help illustrate the phenomenon.
President Biden set policy to allow essential workers who are undocumented to receive coronavirus vaccines. Why is Scalise's statement "Mostly False"? Apparently because American citizens who are not among the first groups eligible for the vaccine are not waiting to get the vaccine:
But, we wondered, does allowing this population access to the vaccine
mean they are being invited to step in front of American citizens in the
queue?
PolitiFact weasel-words "in the queue" so that Americans in low priority vaccine eligibility groups are not in the queue at all and are thus not skipped over when undocumented immigrants join those in the high priority groups.
You're not waiting for the vaccine if you're not in that narrowly-defined queue. PolitiFact quoted a Scalise spokesperson who explained his meaning. To no avail. Scalise received a "Mostly False" rating even though his statement was literally true taken in context, with "in the queue" encompassing all American citizens awaiting the vaccine.
Pointedly, PolitiFact does not look at all the ways Mr. Biden's claim fails the test of truth. It does mention some of them, but breezes past such technicalities to point out that IF the person making below $15 per hour is the sole breadwinner in a family of four AND/OR lives in an area with high living expenses THEN they would fall below the poverty level.
How many of those earning less than $15 per hour meet those conditions? Well, if that was important then PolitiFact would have given us a number. Obviously it's not important. What we need to know is that under some conditions Biden's statement could be true. Those missing conditions count as missing context and that matches PolitiFact's definition of "Half True"!
Marvel at PolitiFact's rationalization:
A spokesman for Biden said he was referring to a family of four with
one full-time income using the federal government’s poverty guideline,
an explanation Biden didn’t include in the interview. Using that
measurement, that family with a paycheck of $13 an hour would live below
the poverty line. At $15 an hour, the same family would clearly be
above the poverty line. So Biden was off by about a dollar, using the
existing standards.
But experts said wages alone don’t tell the full story about whether a
household lives in poverty. Other factors include child care and
housing costs, for example, which can vary by geography. Generalizing a
"poverty wage" to a specific number ignores the different circumstances
that families face. Other experts said the federal definition of a
poverty level is out of date and needs changing.
We rate this claim Half True.
You wonder why similar reasoning couldn't justify a "Half True" for Scalise?
PolitiFact reported President Biden's plans would ensure covid-19 vaccine supplies large enough to vaccinate 300 Americans by early fall.
The Biden administration has envisioned a more prominent federal role, including setting up 100 vaccine centers across the nation by the end of February. Officials say the biggest roadblock is lack of vaccine supply. Biden announced that his administration aims to purchase enough doses to fully vaccinate 300 Americans by the end of the summer or beginning of the fall.
That's an average of three vaccines per planned vaccine center, by our reckoning.
Of course, PolitiFact pretty obviously omitted the word "million" that belonged between "300" and "Americans." So why do we even bother to mention such a small error? It's not even an example of bias, is it?
There are two related reasons why.
First, because PolitiFact loves to trumpet its rigorous system for reporting accurately. Did you know that PolitiFact's system calls for three editors to review each fact check?
The reporter who researches and writes the fact-check suggests a
rating when they turn in the report to an assigning editor. The editor
and reporter review the report together, typically making clarifications
and adding additional details. They come to agreement on the rating.
Then, the assigning editor brings the rated fact-check to two additional
editors.
The three editors and reporter then review the fact-check by discussing the following questions.
We hope we're correctly assuming that two editors aside from the assigning editor would not dream of discussing the critical questions without bothering to read the fact check. Under that assumption, three editors and one writer together failed to keep the fact check from including a figure that was off by a factor of one million.
So our first point consists of the observation that PolitiFact's system may allow for considerable error, even obvious error.
So far as we're concerned, that by itself is no big deal. Everybody makes mistakes. So that brings us to our second reason for writing this up.
Thanks to its performance since its inception, we have a very low expectation that PolitiFact will run a correction or update and include this item on its page of "corrections and updates."
That's troublesome.
The best journalists make thorough corrections a priority. Take a gander at the expectation the International Fact-Checking Network lays down for its verified signatory fact-checking organizations:
6.3 Where credible evidence is provided that the applicant has made a
mistake worthy of correction, the applicant makes a correction openly
and transparently, seeking as far as possible to ensure that users of
the original see the correction and the corrected version.
PolitiFact makes many--perhaps most--of its corrections secretly and without transparency.
Here's the loophole (bold emphasis from the original):
Typos, grammatical errors, misspellings – We correct typos, grammatical errors, misspellings, transpositions and other small errors without a mark of correction or tag and as soon as they are brought to our attention.
The section on "Typos, grammatical error, misspellings" sneaks in an extra category that PolitiFact feels needs no notice of correction. That is the "other small errors." We think that most likely PolitiFact will treat reporting 300 instead of 300 million as a small error and insert the correction without any notice at all to its readers. Under that scenario, PolitiFact will make no attempt to correct the error openly and transparently, and will likewise make no attempt to bring the corrected number to the attention of those who read the erroneous reporting in the original version.
If PolitiFact surprises us and issues a correction notice, we expect it to follow the form "We reported the wrong number of vaccines Biden promised in the original version of this story." PolitiFact prefers to report vaguely on its mistakes instead of detailing the exact nature of the error as full transparency would demand.
Doing the right thing isn't hard: "We reported Biden would acquire vaccines for 300 Americans when we intended to specify 300 million Americans." Nobody would have a real problem with that.
Whatever one thinks about the significance of the error, the PolitiFact method of treating substantive errors the same as it does typos, grammatical errors and misspellings does not scrupulously follow the IFCN's requirement on corrections.
Supposedly the IFCN requires its signatory organizations like PolitiFact to "scrupulously" follow its guidance on corrections. But the truth is the IFCN has turned a blind eye on PolitiFact's correction shenanigans for years. They know about it because I've informed them about it periodically. The IFCN has never directly addressed any of the reports I've sent detailing PolitiFact's failures to follow policy despite showing no clear evidence that the reports have in any way affected PolitiFact's signatory status.
If the complaints carry no validity, the IFCN should transparently declare the how and why of its judgments.
So this isn't evidence of bias. It's evidence that PolitiFact tries to trick its readers into believing it strives to meet the highest journalistic standards. It advertises a system with failsafes that would prevent the type of error it made. PolitiFact and the IFCN assure readers that PolitiFact performs corrections to appropriately high standards.
It's deception.
We'll update this post to report on whatever actions PolitiFact takes to correct its mistake. A sufficiently pathetic response may result in yet another complaint filed with the IFCN.
Update Jan 28, 2021: We sent an email pointing out PolitiFact's error about 1 p.m. When we checked at about 3:30 p.m., the error was fixed. PolitiFact also appended a correction with the milquetoast-style wording we expected. Oddly, neither the correction nor the tag denoting the correction show up for the archived version of the story. Only the corrected wording in the story shows up.
Here's the correction notice:
CORRECTION, Jan. 28: We corrected the number of
Americans the Biden administration hopes to fully vaccinate by the end
of summer or early fall.
On the plus side, PolitiFact corrected the error, posted a correction notice and even placed the "corrections and updates" tag.
On the negative side, the correction falls well short of full transparency. PolitiFact told readers on what specific topic it erred but not the specific error it made. That style of correction hides from readers the magnitude of the error. And that was probably the plan.
Is PolitiFact entering a golden age of Joe Biden rubberstamp fact checks?
Consider this Jan 8, 2021 item from PolitiFact with bylines for Amy Sherman and Miriam Valverde:
PolitiFact cited an expert who counted 63 cases that were dismissed either on the merits or for other reasons such as lack of standing. That's an okay thing for fact checkers to do:
Marc Elias, a lawyer who has filed and defended cases on behalf of Democrats, keeps a tally on the outcome of the election cases.
"It is 63 losses by Trump and his allies," Elias told PolitiFact the
morning of Jan. 8. "We treat each case separately — so if there is a
federal case and a state case, we treat them as two cases. We only ever
count a case one time — so if there is an appeal or remand, we do not
treat that as a separate loss."
But PolitiFact ended up having a hard time distinguishing between lack of merit and lack of standing. Instead of distinguishing between the two, PolitiFact appeared to assume that a case dismissed for lack of standing also lacked merit. This type of wording was typical of the fact check:
More than 60 lawsuits brought by Trump and his allies failed because they were unable to prove their allegations. Some lawsuits were dismissed due to errors in the filings and other procedural issues.
A proper fact check of Biden's claim would look specifically at the cases dismissed on the merits, putting a number on it and then looking at whether that number exceeded 60.
That never happens in PolitiFact's fact check. Instead, PolitiFact tells us that more than 60 cases were dismissed for a variety of reasons. And then concludes on that basis that Biden was correct. The "True" rating is supposed to mean that there's no missing context.
But PolitiFact itself omits critical context. The law distinguishes between the reasoning judges use to determine lack merit and the reasoning used to determine lack of standing. When a judge rules the plaintiff lacks standing to sue, the court need not examine the merits of the case.
Glenn G. Lammi sketched the essence of the doctrine for Forbes:
A plaintiff’s lack of standing to sue is about as close to a
silver-bullet defense as civil-litigation defendants have at their
disposal in federal court. The doctrine is based in Article III of the
U.S. Constitution, which limits federal courts to hearing only "cases
and controversies." The doctrine puts the onus on a plaintiff to prove,
among other factors, that she suffered an actual harm, and if she can't,
the court has no jurisdiction over the case.
And when a court has no jurisdiction over a case, it need not consider the case on its merits (Wikipedia):
In the United States, the current doctrine is that a person cannot bring a suit challenging the constitutionality
of a law unless they can demonstrate that they are or will "imminently"
be harmed by the law. Otherwise, the court will rule that the plaintiff
"lacks standing" to bring the suit, and will dismiss the case without
considering the merits of the claim of unconstitutionality.
It follows that a suit dismissed for lack of standing was not dismissed as meritless, for the court had no need to decide the case on the merits.
Without counting the number of cases dismissed for reasons other than lack of merit, a fact check cannot make a determination that more than 60 cases were dismissed as meritless. Yet PolitiFact's so-called fact check does just that.
PolitiFact used 63 as the total number of relevant cases. Based on that number, if just three cases were dismissed for reasons other than merit, then Biden's claim is false. But PolitiFact decided not to put that kind of effort into its fact check.
As happens so often, PolitiFact was only willing to put enough effort into its fact check of a Democrat to find the claim true. In this case, PolitiFact appeared to assume that any dismissal indicated lack of merit.
In other words, it was another PolitiFact rubberstamp.
PolitiFact says a "Half True" claim is one that is "partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context."
Also PolitiFact:
Did Rep. Nunes self-stultify when he, a Republican, communicated the notion that Republicans have no way to communicate with the demise of Parler?
PolititiFact's treatment of his claim is almost that simple, and it could have been as simple as that given PolitiFact's failure to consider the context. As a general rule of literary interpretation, the interpreter ought to look for evidence in context that might explain an apparently self-contradictory statement.
To help illustrate that point, we'll look for evidence PolitiFact followed its own published statement of principles in fact-checking Nunes' claim.
What did Nunes say?
For starters, we put together a transcript from the Fox News clip PolitiFact used as its source. Fox News is poor for preserving its videos and also poor for publishing transcripts. Our transcript may end up the best available before much time has passed. We note that regretfully.
We highlight in bold the parts of Nunes' statement that PolitiFact used in its story (punctuation may vary).
The effect of this is that there is no longer a free, and open social media company, or site, for any American to get on any longer. Because these big companies, Apple, Amazon, Google, they have just destroyed a, what was likely, Parler's likely a billion dollar company. Poof, it's gone.
But it's more than just the financial aspect of that. Republicans have no way to communicate. If, it doesn't even matter if you're Republican or conservative. If you don't want to be regulated by left wingers, that are at Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, where you get shadowbanned, nobody gets to see you, nobody gets to see you, they get to decide what's violent or not violent. It's preposterous.
So, I don't know where the hell the Department of Justice is at right now, or the FBI, uh, this is clearly a violation of antitrust, civil rights, RICO statutes, there should be a racketeering investigation on all the people that coordinated this attack on not only a company, but on all of those, of those, like us, like me, like you, Maria; I have three million followers on Parler. Tonight, I will no longer be able to communicate with those people. And they're Americans.
Context, Context, Context
Is it hard at all to see Nunes point in the above? He's saying with the loss of Parler, people (including Republicans) have no social media option that isn't regulated by left wingers. That's the context for "Republicans have no way to communicate." PolitiFact follows that with "And" in its telling. We are confident our transcript is correct. Nunes followed with "If." So the idea he was trying to communicate was "Republicans have no way to communicate if (they) don't want to be regulated by left wingers."
PolitiFact's misquotation of Nunes counts as minor, but as we have noted, when such mistakes help PolitiFact in setting a misleading narrative they count as significant indicators of bias.
He added: "Republicans have no way to communicate. And it doesn't even matter if you're a Republican or conservative. If you don't want to be regulated by left-wingers that are at Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, where you get shadowbanned, nobody gets to see you."
If a fact checker has no interest in seeing the contextual clues explaining a statement, then the fact checker will more likely overlook contextual clues explaining a statement.
Nunes said "If" not "And" and his statement about it not mattering if you're a Republican or conservative was an interruption of his idea that hamstringing Parler took from Republicans the social media company not regulated by left wingers.
How did PolitiFact miss it?
Careless Interpretation Leads to Faulty Premise
When PolitiFact overlooked the context of Nunes' remarks, it led to the false premise that Nunes was literally saying Republicans have no way at all to communicate. Though PolitiFact did not use Nunes own ability to speak to contradict his claim, the evidence the fact checkers used was not far removed from that:
Some users on Twitter found it ironic that Nunes was making his claim on Fox News, the most watched cable network, and a favorite medium for Republicans to communicate.
We may forgive Twittter randos for badly missing Nunes point. But isn't PolitiFact supposed to be better than that?
More:
And long before social media, members of Congress had several venues to communicate with constituents, including some unfiltered ones.
Long before social media (the thing Nunes was talking about), Republicans could communicate with constituents a number of ways!
One would think that context simply does not exist for PolitiFact.
Want more? PolitiFact has more:
House members can communicate via press releases, send out mass emails or paper mail to constituents, or host phone-in or online town halls. Capitol Hill has places where members can hold in-person press conferences or satellite interviews with media outlets back home or national outlets, or record a video message to email to their constituents.
What does that have to do with social media companies having the power to moderate conservatives who try to use social media? Nothing, really. It's just PolitiFact ignoring the context and fact-checking a straw man version of Nunes' claim. It's the type of thing fact-checkers do routinely, and we've been pointing it out for years and years.
PolitiFact continues on and on in the same vein. But by now we hope our readers get the idea.
It's just another claim PolitiFact invented in order to find it false.
Afters:
PolitiFact used a number of (scare quote) "expert" sources in this fact check. The quotations likely reflect that the experts were asked whether Republicans can communicate without Parler. PolitiFact does not share with its readers the text of its inquiries. But it's a good bet those inquiries used PolitiFact's false premise as their basis.
Is Joe Biden, contrary to his centrist reputation, a tax-and-spend liberal? That was the argument made by Politifact's Amy Sherman, defending him against accusations from the Bernie Sanders camp that in 2018, "Biden lauded Paul Ryan for proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare." Not so, says Politifact: "The Sanders campaign plucked out part of what Biden said but omitted the full context of his comments. We rate this statement False."
The argument, unlike many from-the-left criticisms of PolitiFact, isn't frivolous. We noted during the 2016 election that PolitiFact seemed tougher on Sanders than on his opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton. It makes sense that wherever PolitiFact's ideology falls on the political continuum those to either side may experience a resulting bias.
And, in fact, that's our purpose in highlighting the accusation. A charge of centrist bias proves consistent with the charge of liberal bias. The Week is saying PolitiFact is biased toward political positions to its left and right. The Week just doesn't bother to highlight any of the "centrist" bias that harms conservatives.
We do that.
Plus we highlight good examples of PolitiFact's anti-progressive bias under the "Left Jab" tag.
Note: The "bending the truth" example from The Weekdoesn't wash.
The hyperbole should have been easy to spot based on the context.
Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley appeared on Fox News' "Hannity" show with host Sean Hannity.
Transcript ours (starting at about 2:12):
Do you agree with, uh, listen I've always liked General Petraeus. He's a great, great general, hero, patriot in this country. He said it's impossible to overstate the importance of this particular action. It's more significant than the killing of bin Laden, even the death of al Baghdadi. And he said Soleimani was the architect, operational commander of the Iranian effort to solidify control of the so-called Shia Crescent stretching from Iran to Iraq through Syria and southern Lebanon. I think that's the reason why Jordanians, Egyptians and Saudis are now working with the Israelis, which I don't think anybody saw coming.
NH
Well, and I'll tell you this: You don't see anyone standing up for Iran. You're not hearing any of the Gulf members, you're not hearing China, you're not hearing Russia. The only ones mourning the loss of Soleimani are our Democrat leadership. And our Democrat presidential candidates. No one else in the world, because they knew that this man had evil veins. They knew what he was capable of and they saw the destruction and, and the lives lost (based?) from his hand. And so--
SH
What a dumb (?). We've been hearing "Oh, he's evil, he's a murderer he killed Americans and he, this is the No. 1 state sponsor of terror and they're fighting all these proxy wars but we don't want to make 'em mad." That's what it sounds like to me.
NH
You know, and you go tell that to the 608 American families who lost a loved one. Go tell that to the military members who lost a limb. This was something that needed to be done and should be celebrated. And I'll tell you right now, partisan politics should stop when it comes to foreign policy. This is about America united. We need to be completely behind the president, what he did, because every one of those countries are watching our news media right now seeing what everyone's saying. And this is a moment of strength for the United States. It's a moment of strength from President Trump.
Haley's "mourning" comment comes after her emphasis Iran received no support ("You don't see anyone standing up for Iran") regarding the killing of Soleimani. So it makes very good sense to take "mourning" as a hyperbolic amplification of that point.
Hannity's response to Haley's comment came in the same vein, in fact mocking Democrats who acknowledged Soleimani got what he deserved while questioning the wisdom of the move.
PolitiFact could legitimately check to see if world leaders offered statements much in the same vein leading Democrats offered. Instead of doing that, PolitiFact used a wooden-literal interpretation of Haley's remarks as a basis for its fact check.
How do mistakes like this (and these) make it past PolitiFact's exalted "Star Chamber" of experienced fact check editors?
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.
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.
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.
In our post "PolitiFact's Green New Deal Fiction Depiction" we noted how PolitiFact had decided that a Democrat posting a falsehood-laden FAQ about the Green New Deal on her official congressional website escaped receiving a negative rating on PolitiFact's "Truth-O-Meter."
At the time we noted that PolitiFact's forbearance held benefits for Democrats and Republicans alike:
Many will benefit from PolitiFact's apparent plan to give out "Truth-O-Meter" mulligans over claimed aspects of the Green New Deal resolution not actually in the resolution. Critics of those parts of the plan will not have their attacks rated on the Truth-O-Meter. And those responsible for generating the controversy in the first place by publishing FAQs based on something other than the actual resolution also find themselves off the hook.
We were partly right.
Yes, PolitiFact let Democrats who published a false and misleading FAQ about the Green New Deal off the hook.
But apparently PolitiFact has reserved the right to fault Republicans and conservatives who base their criticisms of the Green New Deal on the false and misleading information published by the Democrats.
False? It doesn't matter at all that Ocasio-Cortez said otherwise on her official website? There is no truth to it whatsoever? And Ocasio-Cortez gets no "False" rating for making an essentially identical claim on her website?
This case will get our "tweezers or tongs" tag because PolitiFact is once again up to its traditional shenanigan of tweezing out one supposed falsehood from a background of apparent truths:
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., outlined his opposition to the Democrats’ Green New Deal in a Feb. 25th Orlando Sentinel op-ed:
"If you are not familiar with it, here’s the cliff notes version: It calls for rebuilding or retrofitting every building in America in the next 10 years, eliminating all fossil fuels in 10 years, eliminating nuclear power, and working towards ending air travel (to be replaced with high-speed rail)."
...
Let’s hit the brakes right there -- do the Democrats want to end air travel?
See what PolitiFact did, there?
Scott can get three out of four points right, but PolitiFact Florida will pick on one point to give Scott a "False" rating and build for him an unflattering graph of "Truth-O-Meter" ratings shaped by PolitiFact's selection bias.
The Jestation Hypothesis
How does PolitiFact Florida go about discounting the fact that Ocasio-Cortez claimed on her website that the Green New Deal aimed to make air travel obsolete?
The objective and neutral fact checkers give us the Jestation Hypothesis. She must have been kidding.
No, really. Perhaps the idea came directly from one of the three decidedly non-neutral experts PolitiFact cited in its fact check (bold emphasis added):
"It seems to me those lines from the FAQ were lighthearted and ill-considered, and it’s not clear why they were posted," said Sean Hecht, Co-Executive Director, Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA law school.
Does anyone need more evidence that the line about making air travel obsolete was just a joke?
"No serious climate experts advocate ending air travel -- that's simply a red-herring," said Bledsoe, who was a climate change advisor to the Clinton White House.
Former Clinton White House advisor Bledsoe is about as neutral as Hecht. The supposed "red-herring," we remind readers, was published on Ocasio-Cortez's official House of Representatives website.
The neutral and objective fact-checkers of PolitiFact Florida deliver their jestational verdict (bold emphasis added):
Scott wrote in an op-ed that the Democrats’ Green New Deal includes "working towards ending air travel."
The resolution makes no mention of ending air travel. Instead, it calls for "overhauling transportation systems," which includes "investment in high-speed rail." Scott seized on a messaging document from Democrats that mentioned, perhaps in jest, getting rid of "farting cows and airplanes." But we found no evidence that getting rid of airplanes is a serious policy idea from climate advocates.
Apparently it cannot count as evidence that Democrats have advocated getting rid of airplanes if a popular Democratic Party representative publishes this on her website:
The Green New Deal sets a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, at the end of this 10-year plan because we aren’t sure that we will be able to fully get rid of, for example, emissions from cows or air travel before then. However, we do believe we can ramp up renewable manufacturing and power production, retrofit every building in America, build the smart grid, overhaul transportation and agriculture, restore our ecosystem, and more to get to net-zero emissions.
Oh! Ha ha ha ha ha! Get it? We may not be able to fully get rid of emissions from cows or air travel in only 10 years! Ha ha ha!
So the claim was quite possibly a joke, even if no real evidence supports that idea.
But it's all PolitiFact needs to give a Republican a "False" rating and the Democrat no rating at all for saying essentially the same thing.
This style of fact-checking undermines fact checkers' credibility with centrists and conservatives, as well as with discerning liberals.
Afters
There was one more expert PolitiFact cited apart from the two we showed/noted were blatantly partisan.
That was "David Weiskopf, climate policy director for NextGen Climate America."
Here's a snippet from the home page for NextGen Climate America:
So basically neutral, right?
PolitiFact Florida "fact checker" (liberal blogger) Amy Sherman seems to have a special gift for citing groups of experts who skew hilariously left.
We're nonpartisan because we defend Democrats unfairly harmed by the faulty fact checkers at PolitiFact.
See how that works?
On with it, then:
Oops.
Okay, we made a faulty assumption. We thought when we saw PolitiFact's liberal audience complaining about the treatment of Nelson that it meant Nelson had received a "False" rating based on Nelson not offering evidence to support his claim.
Republicans (and perhaps Democrats) have received poor ratings in the past where evidence was lacking, which PolitiFact justifies according to its "burden of proof" criterion. But either the principle has changed or else PolitiFact made an(other) exception to aid Nelson.
If the principle has changed that's good. It's stupid and fallacious to apply a burden of proof standard in fact checking, at least where one determines a truth value based purely on the lack of evidence.
But's it's small consolation to the people PolitiFact unfairly harmed in the past with its application of this faulty principle.
Afters:
In April 2018 it looks like the "burden of proof" principle was still a principle.
As we have noted before, it often appears that PolitiFact's principles are more like guidelines than actual rules.
And to maintain our nonpartisan street cred, here's PolitiFact applying the silly burden of proof principle to a Democrat:
If "burden of proof" counts as one of PolitiFact's principles then PolitiFact can only claim itself as a principled fact checker if the Nelson exception features a principled reason justifying the exception.
If anyone can find anything like that in the non-rating rating of Nelson, please drop us a line.
PolitiFact decides who built what, and it's ridiculous
Back in 2016 we reviewed the "True" claim PolitiFact awarded First Lady Michelle Obama for her claim the White House was built by slaves.
Slaves definitely helped with the labor of constructing the White House, but to an unknown degree. Regardless of that, PolitiFact awarded Obama a "True" rating on its subjective "Truth-O-Meter."
We thought PolitiFact went too easy on the claim, given that one could use the same standard to claim it "True" that European immigrants built the White House. Including a word like "helped" allows either claim to rise to credibility.
Fast forward to 2018 and the State of the Union Address response from U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-Mass.).
Kennedy said immigrants built Fall River, Massachusetts.
Breitbart, a right-leaning news outlet, judged Kennedy's statement "Mostly False," reasoning that the establishment of Fall River by native-born descendants of English settlers made it reasonable to say the city was built, at least in part, by those native-born people. Breitbart added that the native-born population has always outnumbered immigrants in the county that contains Fall River.
PolitiFact apparently doesn't care for sharing credit. If one group helped build something then that group gets credit and other groups that helped do not get credit.
PolitiFact rated Breitbart's claim "False." Yes, that implies that immigrants who helped "build" Fall River by coming to work at factories established by the native residents were the ones who exclusively built Fall River.
Call us radical right-wingers if you like, but we think if the facts show that credit for building something should be shared, then a fact checker should acknowledge shared credit in its ratings.
Breitbart's "Mostly False" rating hints at an ability to make that type of acknowledgement.
PolitiFact's "True" and "False" ratings make it look more partisan than Breitbart.
With the speed of the Interwebs at its disposal, PolitiFact on July 22, 2017 declared that no evidence exists to show Senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) favors a single-payer health care system for the United States of America.
We detected signs of very poor reporting from PolitiFact Florida, which will likely receive a closer examination at Zebra Fact Check.
Though PolitiFact reported that Nelson's office declined to give a statement on his support for a single-payer plan, PolitiFact ignored the resulting implied portrait of Nelson: He does not want to go unequivocally on the record supporting single-payer because it would hurt his re-election chances.
PolitiFact relied on a paraphrase of Nelson from the Tampa Tribune (since swallowed by the Tampa Bay Times, which in turn runs PolitiFact) to claim Nelson has said he does not favor a single-payer plan (bold emphasis added):
The ad suggests that Nelson supports Warren on most things, including a single-payer health care system. Actually, Nelson has said he doesn’t support single payer and wants to focus on preserving current law. His voting record is similar to Warren’s, but members of the same party increasingly vote alike due to a lack of bipartisan votes in the Senate.
There's one redeeming feature in PolitiFact Florida's summary. Using the voting agreement between two candidates to predict how they'll vote on one particular issue makes little sense unless the past votes cover that issue. If Nelson and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) had voted together in support of a single-payer plan, then okay.
But PolitiFact downplayed the ad's valid point about the possibility Nelson would support a single-payer plan. And PolitiFact made the mistake of exaggerating its survey of the evidence. In declaring that evidence does not exist, PolitiFact produced the impression that it searched very thoroughly and appropriately for that evidence and could not find it because it does not exist.
In other words, PolitiFact produced a false impression.
"Another major step forward"
We tried two strategies for finding evidence Nelson likes the idea of a single-payer plan. The first strategy failed. But the second strategy quickly produced a hit that sinks PolitiFact's claim that no evidence exists of Nelson favoring a single-payer plan.
A Tampa Bay market television station, WTSP, aired an interview with Nelson earlier in July 2017. The interviewer asked Nelson if he would be willing to join with Democrats who support a single-payer plan.
Nelson replied (bold emphasis added):
Well, I've got enough trouble just trying to fix the Affordable Care Act. I mean, you're talking about another major step forward, and we're not ready for that now.
The quotation supports the view that Nelson is playing the long game on single-payer. He won't jeopardize his political career by unequivocally supporting it until he thinks it's a political winner.
PolitiFact's fact check uncovered part of that evidence by asking Nelson's office to say whether he supports single payer. The office declined to provide a statement, and that pretty much says it all. If Nelson does not support single-payer and does not believe that going on the record would hurt his chances in the election, then nothing should stop him from making his position clear.
PolitiFact will not jeopardize Nelson's political career by finding the evidence that the NRSC has a point. Instead, it will report that the evidence it failed to find does not exist.
It will present this twisted approach to reporting as non-partisan fact-checking.
Afters:
We let PolitiFact know about the evidence it missed (using email and Twitter). Now we wait for the evidence of PolitiFact's integrity and transparency.
First, find a politician who has made a conditional statement, like this one from Marco Rubio (R-Fla.):
"As long as Florida keeps the same amount of funding or gets an increase, which is what we are working on, per patient being rewarded for having done the right thing -- there is no reason for anybody to be losing any of their current benefits under Medicaid. None," he said in a Facebook Live on June 28."
Rubio starts his statement with the conditional: "As long as Florida keeps the same amount of funding or gets an increase ..." Logic demands that the latter part of Rubio's statement receive its interpretation under the assumption the condition is true.
A partisan fact checker can make a politician look bad by ignoring the condition and taking the remainder of the statement out of context. Like this:
As the partisan fact checker will want its work to pass as a fact check, at least to like-minded partisans and unsuspecting moderates, it should then proceed to check the out-of-context portion of the subject's statement.
For example, if the condition of the statement is the same or increased funding, look for ways the funding might decrease and use those findings as evidence the politician spoke falsely. For a statement like Rubio's one might cite a left-leaning think tank like the Urban Institute, with a finding that predicts lower funding for Medicaid:
The Urban Institute estimated the decline in federal dollars and enrollment for the states.
It found for Florida, that federal funding for Medicaid under ACA would be $16.8 billion in 2022. Under the Senate legislation, it would fall to about $14.6 billion, or a cut of about 13 percent (see table 6). The Urban Institute projects 353,000 fewer people on Medicaid or CHIP in Florida.
Easy-peasy, right?
Then use the rest of the fact check to show that Florida will not be likely to make up the gap predicted by the Urban Institute. That will prove, in a certain misleading and dishonest way, that Rubio's conditional statement was wrong.
The summary of such a partisan fact check might look like this:
Rubio said, "There is no reason for anybody to be losing any of their current benefits under Medicaid."
Rubio is wrong to state that benefit cuts are off the table.
There are reasons that Medicaid recipients could lose benefits if the Senate bill becomes law. The bill curbs the rate of spending by the federal government over the next decade and caps dollar amounts and ultimately reduces the inflation factor. Those changes will put pressure on states to make difficult choices including the possibility of cutting services.
We rate this claim Mostly False.
Ignoring the conditional part of the claim results in the fallacy of denying the antecedent. The partisan fact checker can usually rely on its highly partisan audience not noticing such fallacies.
Any questions?
Correction: July 2, 2017: In the next-to-last paragraph changed "to notice" to "noticing" for the sake of clarity.
