PolitiFact: "Mostly False" that many are paying more for health care than for mortgage or rent

Sometimes reading a PolitiFact fact check is like being whisked off to Wonderland for a conversation with the Mad Hatter.

Case in point: Donald Trump says that many Americans are paying more for health care than to pay their rent or mortgage for the first time in history. PolitiFact finds it "Mostly False."

This rating drew our attention right away because of the ambiguity of Trump's claim. How does a fact-check go about making a truth distinction about "many instances"? How many is "many"? And if pinning down "many" poses a challenge, how does one go from that challenge to finding out whether it's happening for the first time in history?

After getting into the text of the fact check, it was a matter of trying to control laughter over the way PolitiFact approached the problem.

Making stuff up the PolitiFact way (Updated)

Why is it so easy to find PolitiFact publishing falsehoods?

Early on Aug. 24, 2016 I was reviewing a "False" rating given to Donald Trump for claiming FBI Director James Comey said Hillary Clinton's email actions amounted to misconduct that was a disgrace and embarrassment to our country.

PolitiFact doled out the "False" rating based on its finding that Trump's paraphrase of Comey was far too creative.

But was Trump paraphrasing Comey? PolitiFact's reasoning on that key point raised a question or two:

The speech transcript specifically indicates, via the dash, that Trump was explaining the remarks of the FBI director, not just giving his own opinion. Trump's delivery on video makes it sound that way, too, and that's what caught our attention.

I found the audiovisual evidence from Trump's speech ambiguous. But what was this about a dash indicating that Trump was explaining Comey's remarks?

I dashed off a message to the writer and editor:

A little while ago I was reading your July 15, 2016 fact check of Donald Trump regarding his supposed paraphrase of FBI Director James Comey.

I found this piece of evidence striking:

The speech transcript specifically indicates, via the dash, that Trump was explaining the remarks of the FBI director, not just giving his own opinion.

I confess I had never before heard that the use of a dash serves to reliably indicate that what follows the dash shows an attempt to explain the remarks of another. But I was slightly more comfortable with my ignorance after failing to find evidence supporting the idea via Internet research and by consulting an English major.

Can you offer any support for the idea that a dash serves the purpose identified for it in your fact check? Thanks very much in advance.

(If we receive any reply from the PolitiFact team, we will certainly update this item.)

Compounding the problem for PolitiFact, Trump's speechwriters used dashes liberally in the speech. The speech includes 16 dashes of the same type, and so far as we can tell no pattern exists of the dash serving the purpose given it by PolitiFact.

Further, Jeff pointed out this article he ran across about Trump's speaking style. It has an entire section dedicated to how transcriptionists rely heavily on the em dash for transcriptions of Trump's speeches:

Trump's crimes against clarity are multifarious: He often speaks in long, run-on sentences, with frequent asides. He pauses after subordinate clauses. He frequently quotes people saying things that aren't actual quotes. And he repeats words and phrases, sometimes with slight variations, in the same sentence.

To untangle the jumble, his stenographers are increasingly reliant on a punctuation known as the "em dash" (—), which are used to separate parentheticals within the same sentence. Philip Rucker, The Washington Post's national political correspondent, said that among reporters covering Trump, he has become known as the "em-dash candidate."

Do we expect a response from PolitiFact? No. We think PolitiFact invented its key justification for claiming Trump was paraphrasing what Comey said. We expect PolitiFact to defend its crime against fact-checking with silence and inaction.

PolitiFact offered no solid justification for interpreting Trump's words as a paraphrase of Comey, but performed the fact check as though its interpretation was solidly justified.

That is deception.

Update 8/24/2016: Thanks to CSPAN, we have a short and sweet version of the video/audio of the key part of Trump's speech.



We are not impressed by those who would claim Trump's meaning is clear where the claim is unaccompanied by a convincing explanation of why it is supposedly clear.


Correction/Update Aug. 26, 2016: Belatedly included the embedded URL of the PolitiFact fact check.


Update 8/24/2016: For the sake of thoroughness, I suppose I should note the reply I received from editor Angie Drobnic Holan's email bot:

I am out of the office until Aug. 29. I won't be checking email until I return. If you have a question about PolitiFact, please contact Aaron Sharockman or Katie Sanders.

Sharockman occasionally responds to email messages, so I forwarded my message to him. No reply so far aside from Holan's 'bot.


Update Aug. 25, 2016:

I tried needling Aaron Sharockman on Twitter to draw attention to this issue (including the email messages sent to PolitiFact). It kinda-sorta worked.

Never change buddy https://t.co/oDMDBCpJU7

— Aaron Sharockman (@asharock) August 26, 2016

Via Twitter, I reminded Sharockman of the importance PolitiFact's parent organization, Poynter Institute, places on journalistic transparency. Specifically, “show how the reporting was done and why people should believe it.”

Odds are we'll be back to the silent treatment from the exemplars of transparency at PolitiFact.

Surreal: PolitiFact gives Clinton "Mostly True" rating for deliberate deceit

Though we're used to seeing PolitiFact publish some of the worst and most biased fact checks of all time, PolitiFact's May 26, 2016 fact check of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton still counts as surreal.

It's surreal because we can hardly imagine anybody outside of the PolitiFact offices not seeing that it's ridiculously biased.

Here's what the top of it looks like:

This almost makes for a classic tweezers or tongs case. Should PolitiFact pick out the true nugget from the false boulder? Or focus on the boulder while giving some credit for the true nugget?

That subjective choice is, of course, one of the things that makes PolitiFact's claims of nonpartisanship ring resoundingly hollow. But in this case PolitiFact went way beyond its normal exercise of subjective discretion. Read on.

Note at the top of the image we clipped that PolitiFact uses a quotation from Clinton: "In 2006, Donald Trump was hoping for a real estate crash." If that was all there was to it, then Clinton could earn a "Mostly True." Donald Trump did hope the real estate bubble would burst (which ordinarily just means that overpriced real estate receives a correction). So penalize Clinton a little for exaggerating hoping the bubble would burst into hoping for a "crash," and okay. Maybe it's a little easy on Clinton, but okay.

But that isn't what PolitiFact did at all. No sirree.

PolitiFact gave Clinton the grade that might have been justified after tweezing out the nugget of truth from her ad. But PolitiFact associated the positive rating for the true-ish nugget with what can only be called a deliberate deception. A lie, if you will. A statement made with the intent to deceive.

Yes, it's right there in the same image capture up above: "Hillary Clinton faults Donald Trump for hoping for real estate crash that led to the Great Recession." Up from the headline and to the right a smidgen and the "Truth-O-Meter" blares its helpful "Mostly True" next to Clinton's gross untruth.

In context, the ad is even more blatant in sending the false message that Trump hoped for the Great Recession. PolitiFact recognizes it, even though the blatant deception fails to figure in the final rating:

He said on more than one occasion that he welcomed a downturn in the real estate market because it would give him a chance to buy properties at a bargain and sell them at a higher price later. That's the essence of profitable investing.

What's far less clear is whether Trump was rooting for something on the scale of the Great Recession, a suggestion made in the Clinton ad.

Got that? It not completely clear to PolitiFact that Trump wasn't hoping for a crash along the lines of the Great Recession. But Clinton's ad suggested as much. So what can you do? You just have to give Clinton the benefit of the doubt, right? It's mostly true that Trump was hoping for the Great Recession. It's a mostly true fact. It's right there in the name PolitiFact.

It's not at all plausible that Trump was hoping for the Great Recession, and Clinton knows it. There's no real evidence to support it except for a quotation taken out of context. The quotation is out of context because there was no Great Recession when he made the statement, and Trump doubted the housing bubble would burst. Should Trump have nonetheless predicted the depth of the recession along with the sluggish recovery engineered by the Obama administration?

Clinton's ad tells a lie, and PolitiFact grants its seal of mostly approval. Disgusting.

PolitiFact has turned out a ton of stinkers in its history. This one reeks with the worst of them.

What is 'empirical evidence" to PolitiFact?

At Stanford University, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton claimed some things aren't working in the war on terror. Clinton named torture among them:

Enter PolitiFact:

PolitiFact thus endorses Clinton's claim that empirical evidence shows torture does not work.

Do the people at PolitiFact understand the concept of "empirical evidence"?

It's striking that PolitiFact finds Clinton's statement "True" despite not supplying a single shred of evidence supporting Clinton's claim.

PolitiFact correctly notes the difficulty with the scientific study of torture:

Because nobody's going to volunteer to be part of a scientific study where you might get tortured — ethics review boards might be apoplectic about such a proposal — the only way to examine the issue is through case studies.

Game over. Case studies provide a type of empirical evidence, but anecdotal evidence, being anecdotal, does not lend itself to generalizations. Therefore, case studies do not empirically support the broad generalization that torture does not work. That goes double for case studies not specifically geared toward answering the issue scientifically.

The entire exercise, parading under the banner of "fact-checking," at best substitutes the opinions of experts for empirical data. And it is worth emphasizing that the experts' opinions have no firm basis in empirical data--only case studies.

At worst, the fact check treats congressional reports as proof.

PolitiFact's summary, even as it gives Clinton a "True" rating, implicitly confesses its failure:

Clinton said that when it comes to fighting terrorism, "Another thing we know that does not work, based on lots of empirical evidence, is torture."

When it comes to the real goal of getting useful intelligence, the preponderance of the evidence shows that the details interrogators will get from a detainee can typically be acquired without torture. When torture is used, the "information" extracted is likely to be fiction created by a prisoner who will say anything to get the punishment to stop.

All ethical issues aside, the experts say, it doesn't work because it is extremely inefficient and, in many ways, counterproductive.

PolitiFact says "the preponderance of evidence" shows information obtained through torture might be obtained without torture. But Clinton said we know, thanks to empirical evidence, that torture simply does not work. She calls it a "fact." The second paragraph in PolitiFact's summary does not support Clinton's claim, despite PolitiFact using it as justification. Compare PolitiFact's approach to the claim it is "clear" Clinton broke the law with her handling of top secret information. It's a different standard.

PolitiFact's experts say that torture does not work because it is extremely inefficient. But a thing that works inefficiently works, albeit inefficiently. It clouds the issue to claim something doesn't work because it works inefficiently.

PolitiFact's fact check clouds the issue on torture. We do not possess enough empirical data to know torture does not work. Giving Clinton a "True" rating makes a total mockery of journalistic objectivity.

A "key bit of data" sometimes

We say PolitiFact uses inconsistent methods in fact-checking political claims. An April 27, 2016 fact check of the "New Day for America" Super PAC serves as a recent example, paired with a comparable case from the 2012 presidential election.

The 2016 claim from "New Day for America" charged Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton with promising to raise taxes by $1 trillion. PolitiFact's conclusion said the number was about right but charged the Super PAC with ignoring the 10-year time frame over which the tax increase would produce its revenue. PolitiFact  added that Clinton would not even be in office for the entire 10 years. PolitiFact also claimed it was important who paid the taxes, calling that "another key bit of data." "New Day for America" ignored two key bits of data, so "Half True":

[Clinton's] plan does, in fact, call for raising a trillion dollars, but it would do so over 10 years — longer than she could serve as president, even if she were re-elected. So if she brought in roughly $100 billion per year, even a two-term Clinton administration couldn't fulfill a promise to bring the total to $1 trillion.

Also, the statement ignores another key bit of data — that the money would be raised by tax changes targeted to the richest Americans, a group that has seen its top tax rate drop dramatically since the 1950s and early 1960s, when the marginal tax rate was over 90 percent.

Because the statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context, we rate it Half True.

We couldn't remember PolitiFact using this approach to a tax proposal before, so we looked for a comparable example from PolitiFact's past. It turned out President Obama's re-election campaign back in 2012 said challenger Mitt Romney's tax plan would "add trillions to the deficit." PolitiFact examined that claim along with the associated claim that President Obama's tax plan would cut deficits by $4 trillion. In both cases PolitiFact found that the numbers were inflated (cherry-picking high estimates). The details of Romney's tax plan were unknown, so the accusations about his tax plan had little foundation in fact.

More importantly, the effects of the tax plans were estimated over a 10-year period in both cases. Neither Romney or Obama would serve as president over the full 10 years. The Obama ad said Romney wold cut taxes for millionaires,, but ignored other tax cuts and tax increases in the plan. Good enough for PolitiFact? The Obama ad received a "Half True" rating, the same as "New Day For America" even though the Obama ad committed the same errors and more.

We encourage readers to look at PolitiFact's rating of the Obama campaign, especially the summary paragraphs, to see how PolitiFact largely forgave the fundamental inaccuracies in the ad. Compare it to the summary PolitiFact offered for the ad coming from "New Day For America."

PolitiFact simply does not use the same standards for the two ads.

In Fact-Checking This Is a Big Deal

Why do we nitpick PolitiFact over this kind of thing? Both "Half True" ratings are justified on reasonable grounds, aren't they?

No. Full stop. Good fact-checking requires a consistent approach to the issues. PolitiFact repeatedly fails to achieve consistency.

PolitiFact's rating system has always been a sham, because PolitiFact follows no rigid definition for its ratings. Sure, PolitiFact usually attempts justifications, but they are all over the map. For example, PolitiFact once gave Mitt Romney a "Half True" rating because the problems with his claim matched PolitiFact's definition of "Mostly True." Seriously, that's how PolitiFact justified its rating of Romney. PolitiFact has let the error stand for years.

Critics left and right have panned PolitiFact's rating system. Defenders often claim that the ratings aren't important. The important thing, they say, is the detailed information we get in the fact check. But if PolitiFact varies in its approach, finding a problem in one instance and overlooking that same problem in another instance, it gives its readers poor fact-checking.

Of course the problem is worse when the inconsistencies favor one political leaning over another.


Afters:

In defending Clinton from the "New Day For America" ad, PolitiFact pointed out that her tax plan tries to increase taxes on the rich, ostensibly to help restore the balance in effect in the 1950s:

(T)he statement ignores another key bit of data — that the money would be raised by tax changes targeted to the richest Americans, a group that has seen its top tax rate drop dramatically since the 1950s and early 1960s, when the marginal tax rate was over 90 percent.

PolitiFact evidently did not bother to check its facts on this point. PolitiFact writer C. Eugene Emery Jr. supported his statement by providing links to raw data showing top marginal income tax rates. But changes to tax law affecting deductions have kept the effective tax rates on rich people from changing much. It was rare for anybody to pay the highest marginal income tax rate from the 1950s. Ari Gupta, in a paper for the Manhattan Institute, pointed out that popular liberal economists Thomas Piketty and Emanuel Saez admitted as much:

The reduction in top marginal individual income tax rates has contributed only marginally to the decline of progressivity of the federal tax system, because with various deductions and exemptions, along with favored treatment for capital gains, the average tax rate paid by those with very high income levels has changed much less over time than the top marginal rates.

Why is it okay to call out others for leaving out key information while at the same time omitting key information in one's own reporting? Ask PolitiFact. But don't expect an answer.

PolitiFingers on the scale

Did you know that PolitiFact is objective and nonpartisan?

Yes, well, it was a trick question.

Yesterday PolitiFact gave us a fantastic example of placing fingers on the scale to change the outcome of a fact check

The example comes from PolitiFact's March 1 fact check of President Barack Obama. Here's the visual:

The problem?

We just don't find it anywhere close to obvious that this:

"None of the GOP candidates have a climate change plan"

is a plausible paraphrase of this:

"There is not a single candidate in the Republican primary that thinks we should do anything about climate change."

Does PolitiFact writer Lauren Carroll make an effort to justify her paraphrase of Obama? Not from what we can tell.

Carroll's conclusion features a representative gloss:

Bush, who was in the race when Obama made his comment, and Kasich both have said they believe human-caused climate change is real and have said pursuing these alternative energy sources could mitigate the problem. But neither has outlined a specific plan.

For some Republican voters, this stance might be a plus. But it doesn’t change the veracity of Obama’s statement.

So advocating increased private-sector reliance on renewable energy sources to mitigate climate change means that Bush and Kasich think we should do nothing about climate change?

Seriously?

One can make Obama's statement somewhat true by (charitably) assuming that by "we" he means the federal government. If we make enough unfounded assumptions, we can find some truth in Obama's statement. But by the time we've made those assumptions we're not really engaged in fact-checking.

Yet that's what PolitiFact did, effectively putting its PolitiFingers on the scale. It's not logical to conclude that lacking a plan for the federal government to act means that there is no desire to address a problem.

This was yet another sham fact check from the fraudsters at PolitiFact.



Afters

Here's Ben Carson explaining that it's important to sustain the environment. After that, he condemns Obama's climate change plan for putting a high price tag on accomplishing almost nothing:




Jeff Adds: This editorial from Carroll seems like a rating searching for a quote. PolitiFact openly admits they select claims to rate partly based on what they find interesting.

In this case, it's easy to imagine Carroll wanting to highlight (in her view) the GOP's lax attitude toward the climate change issue and went fishing for a quote to use as a vehicle for her to express that view. That scenario would plausibly explain how she made the leap from Obama's explicit claim to the different (and invented) claim she rated.

This example highlights the selective nature of PolitiFact's body of work. Contrary to the myth that they're dispassionate researchers uncovering the truth of all claims, they're partisan actors promoting or ignoring narratives as they see fit.

The Unbeliebable Hilarity of Abortion

If you're the kind of prude that can't joke about abortion, then PunditFact isn't the nonpartisan fact-checker for you.

Recently PunditFacter C. Eugene Emery Jr. wondered if Sarah Palin made a true claim about the abortion stances of Donald Trump and Justin Bieber. Palin claimed that both Trump and Bieber held "pro-choice" positions in the past but now disavow those positions. The post originally caught my attention because I couldn't figure out what exactly Emery Jr. was fact checking. The closest we get to an explanation is this:

I'm not sure if the term "conversion" is intentional snark directed at religious believers or if it's just an inapt choice of words, but in any event the sentence is vague. Is PundiFact simply trying to verify Bieber was formerly pro-choice and is now opposed to abortion? Are they determining if Bieber came to his new position via an affirmation of faith or if his new public stance is a matter of political convenience? Without knowing specifically what Emery Jr. is checking we can't determine if the evidence supports his ruling or if it's even a verifiable fact to check. [Note: I used a screengrab for PunditFact's sentence instead of quoting the text for reasons discussed below.]

If ambiguity was the only problem with the piece I would have probably ignored it. Unfortunately for his readers, Emery Jr. chose to use the serious topic of abortion to display his comedic talents. Note the opening sentence of the post:

What do Donald Trump and Justin Bieber have in common?
Humongous hair?
Big bucks?
How about a case of abortion contortion?

Ha! Get it? Abortion contortion! ZING!

And that's just the beginning of the yuk-yuk tone throughout the article. Emery Jr's entire post is peppered with a repeat gag wherein he uses a specific word that is hyperlinked to a Justin Bieber video. For example, when Emery Jr. uses the word "sorry," the text links to Justin Bieber's music video for the song "Sorry." Emery Jr. seems to think this spoof is so hilarious he repeats it with the word "believe," and the phrases "never say never," "No Pressure," and "What do you mean."

Whatever one's views on abortion, it is not a funny topic. At the very least it involves a complicated decision and often an invasive surgery for a woman. For those who subscribe to the notion that life begins somewhere between conception and birth, abortion can quite sincerely be viewed as the death of a viable human being.

It's beyond the scope and purpose of this website to weigh in on the moral, scientific, and philosophical debate surrounding abortion. But anyone holding conventionally accepted sensibilities and decency recognizes that abortion is not a subject ripe for clever barbs and smartassery. 

Eugene Emery Jr. and his editor, Katie Sanders, betray a woeful lack of both seriousness and good judgement when they yuk it up over such a solemn issue. Further, their humor displays a comfort level with mockery that we think a right-leaning voice in PunditFact's newsroom would disapprove of.

It seems that for PunditFact, abortion jokes aren't just acceptable watercooler chat, they're worthy of publishing.

PunditFact's poor choices don't end there. In the screengrab above readers will note that the word "overboard" is highlighted indicating a hyperlink. The link leads to a YouTube version of Bieber's song "Overboard."  We chose not to link to it ourselves because unlike all the other instances where PunditFact links to the official Justin Bieber Vevo account, Emery Jr. links to a pirated version of the "Overboard" song, presumably unauthorized by Bieber or his label.

In case readers had any doubt about PunditFact's ethics, note that making a joke in an abortion article was so important to them they chose to promote music piracy to make the gag work when they couldn't find an official version offered by the artist. (Perhaps this was accidental, but that would only highlight their shoddy editing standards.)

PunditFact's journalistic clowns had another embarrassing trick up their sleeve that my co-editor Bryan pointed out. Here's how PunditFact laid out some of its evidence:

The Chicago Sun-Times said in a Jan. 21, 2013, story that it had spoken with an unnamed "longtime Bieber associate" who claimed, "I don't believe he agrees with his mom on this issue."

Some might interpret that to mean that Bieber is now pro-abortion — which would signal a new position on abortion that, sorry, does not fit Palin’s point. However, PolitiFact has a policy of not relying on unnamed or secondhand sources to speak for what others believe.

In case you missed the subtlety, PunditFact includes a source that they immediately disavow since it goes against PolitiFact's policy. If there's a policy against using unnamed sources then why include an unnamed source in your piece? This is just another example in a long list of cases where the PolitiFact enterprise ignores its own policies.

Finally, we get to the rating. Unsurprisingly, Palin gets a "False" rating but it's the way they arrived at that conclusion that is so offensive to those of us that care about the truth:

At PolitiFact, we believe it's the responsibility of the person making a claim to provide the evidence to back it up...Palin’s claim is not substantiated.

In PunditFact's world, absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Of course, PolitiFact often shirks its own burden of proof.

Perhaps it's a stretch to infer any ideological leanings from these PunditFacters behaving so daftly while writing about abortion. But beyond whatever bias it may or may not expose, Emery Jr's piece showcases a jaw-dropping level of poor taste and substandard journalism.

C. Eugene Emery Jr. is funny, but he's only funny by mistake.

Two Clinton fibs, two "Half True" ratings from PolitiFact

PolitiFact is too good to us.

Seriously. We don't have any formal agreement with PolitiFact binding them to produce horrible fact-checking in order to make sure we have stuff to write. They just do it anyway.

Case in point, co-editor Jeff D sent me an email about this item earlier today.

During the Democratic presidential debate on Feb. 4, 2016, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said she waited until President Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement was finalized before passing judgment on it.

Try to wrap your head around PolitiFact's reasoning:

Did Clinton really withhold her support until the terms of the proposal had been finalized?

[...]

Speaking in Australia in 2012, Clinton hailed the deal as "setting the gold standard."

"This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field," Clinton said. "And when negotiated, this agreement will cover 40 percent of the world's total trade and build in strong protections for workers and the environment."

First, Clinton condemned the deal after it was finalized. It doesn't even make sense to ask whether Clinton withheld her support for the deal until after it was finalized. She never supported it after it was finalized. PolitiFact's headline makes the same error:

The statement supposedly from Clinton in PolitiFact's headline is flatly false. Clinton endorsed the deal before negotiations were finalized. The "Half True" doesn't belong within 10 miles of PolitiFact's headline.

If Clinton said she did not pass judgment on the deal before it was finalized that is likewise false.

The only way Clinton can escape with a shred of truth on this one is if she was saying she did not condemn the deal until after it was finalized. The problem? That statement does nothing to address the concern in the question posed by debate moderator Chuck Todd (transcript via The New York Times, bold emphasis added):

TODD: Secretary Clinton, let me turn to the issue of trade. In the ’90s you supported NAFTA. But you opposed it when you ran for the president in 2008. As secretary of state, you supported TPP, and then — which, of course, is that trade agreement with a lot of Asian countries, but you now oppose it as you make your second bid for president.

If elected, should Democrats expect that once you’re in office you will then become supportive of these trade agreements again?

CLINTON: You know, Chuck, I’ve only had responsibility for voting for trade agreements as a senator. And I voted a multinational trade agreement when I was senator, the CAFTA agreement, because I did not believe it was in the best interests of the workers of America, of our incomes, and I opposed it.

I did hope that the TPP, negotiated by this administration, would put to rest a lot of the concerns that many people have expressed about trade agreements. And I said that I was holding out that hope that it would be the kind of trade agreement that I was looking for.

I waited until it had actually been negotiated because I did want to give the benefit of the doubt to the administration. Once I saw what the outcome was, I opposed it.

It looks to us (see particularly the second paragraph of Clinton's response) like Clinton tried to downplay the support she offered the deal when she was Secretary of State. She seems to say that she didn't really support the deal back then. Apparently she was just being being a good soldier for President Obama, leaving her free to oppose the deal after she left the administration.

So ... no flip-flop because she was just doing Obama's bidding? And endorsing the deal before it was finalized is simply giving the administration--of which she was a part!--the benefit of the doubt?

Clinton's answer doesn't make much sense to us. She offers a thin excuse for her flip-flop.

PolitiFact's fact check doesn't make sense, either. The claim from PolitiFact's headline is false but receives a "Half True" rating. And it doesn't correctly capture what Clinton was saying in the first place.

What Clinton actually said might have been half true. She did not condemn the deal until after it was finalized. Though that claim carries a healthy dollop of misdirection downplaying her apparently insincere early endorsement of the TPP.

And did Clinton condemn the deal privately within the administration? Did President Obama hear from Clinton what it would take for her to support the deal? Ask the question, debate moderators.

The Second Fib

 Wait, didn't we say something about a second fib rated "Half True"?

Yes. Yes, we did.

The fact check we discuss above--containing the first fib--was from C. Eugene Emery, Jr., recently added to the staff at PolitiFact National after leading fact-check efforts for PolitiFact's Rhode Island franchise.

It looks like Emery relied on an earlier PolitiFact fact check for his analysis. That article contains the second fib, and probably helped nudge Emery toward his interpretation of Clinton's 2016 debate comments.

In that Oct. 13, 2015 fact check, it looks like Clinton did say she had reserved judgment on the TPP while Secretary of State. But with the contradictory evidence available and included in its story, PolitiFact gifted Clinton with a "Half True" rating on her claim that while serving as Secretary of State she merely "hoped" the TPP was the type of deal she could support.

 Try to figure out which half was true from PolitiFact's conclusion:

Clinton said when she was secretary of state, she was reserving judgment but "hoped (the Trans-Pacific Partnership) would be the gold standard."

She’s twisting her 2012 remarks a bit. Clinton said, "This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements," which is a more confident claim than if she had said she "hoped" it would meet that standard. This is in contrast to more recent comments where Clinton said she had concerns about the deal and that she ultimately opposes it.

The statement is distorting her previous comments. We rate it Half True.

Hooray for objective standards in fact-checking?

Hillary Clinton & PolitiMath

Our PolitiMath series of posts looks for correlations between numerical errors and PolitiFact's ratings.

The "False" rating PolitiFact gave to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Jan. 20, 2015 allows us to further expand our data set. Clinton said nearly all of the bills she presented as a senator from New York had Republican co-sponsors.

PolitiFact said her numbers were off.

We found at least one Republican co-sponsor in 4 of 7 resolutions or continuing resolutions (57 percent) but only 9 of 37 bills (24 percent).

Overall, that's 13 out of 44, or just under 30 percent.

Focusing on the 18 bills that Clinton sponsored and brought to the Senate floor for consideration, four had at least one Republican co-sponsor (22 percent) ...

Note we are dealing with a slightly mushy comparison. What is "nearly all"? We think setting a fairly low bar gives us the most useful comparison to other ratings.

Let's say 80 percent of her bills would count as "nearly all." We think that's a fairly low bar to clear.

Using the best figure PolitiFact produced on Clinton's behalf, she exaggerated her claim by 167 percent. Using the figure reflecting a more literal interpretation of her words (the 22-percent figure), Clinton exaggerated by 264 percent.

PolitiFact said Clinton's claim "isn't even close" to the truth. But we know it wasn't ridiculously far off, otherwise PolitiFact would have awarded Clinton a "Pants on Fire" rating.

Right?

A Fact Too Far

PolitiFact Rhode Island published an article yesterday that highlights the distance between fact checking and what PolitiFact actually does.

Image from PolitiFact

At issue is radio host John DePetro's comments regarding the current resting place of the deceased Boston bomber: "You know, in a way, think of who else is there. That is, President Kennedy is buried not far from there, in Virginia,"

PolitiFact's findings?

We used the Google Maps Distance Calculator to find the actual span between Kennedy's grave at Arlington and the Al-Barzakh Cemetery on Sadie Lane in Doswell, Virginia.

Driving distance: 87 miles.
Bee-line distance: 74 miles.
That's about 55,817 casket lengths.

When we informed DePetro of the distance and asked if he was still bothered, he wrote in an e-mail, "Yes. Insult to bury him so close to JFK. Johnston landfill was my choice or out to sea."

Notice anything missing?  PolitiFact failed to provide a standardized measurement for the linear distance of "not far." Probably because no such definition exists. It's an opinion, and one DePetro articulated quite effectively.

Any guess on PolitiFact's rating?

[T]o say that such a distance should somehow spark offense strikes us as mildly ridiculous, so we rate his statement Pants on Fire!

This is a wholly inappropriate sentence to include in a supposed fact check. We've long argued that there is simply no objective definition of what makes a claim "ridiculous." It's a subjective term determined only by the personal inclinations of PolitiFact's editors. Compounding that subjectivity, PolitiFact finds DePetro's claim only mildly ridiculous in this case. So now not only is the Pants on Fire rating based on an opinion, it's also subject to a sliding scale, the standards for which have yet to be published. Is it a Truth-O-Meter or a mood ring?

It would be interesting to learn when PolitiFact acquired the magical gift of objectively defining what should or should not cause offense. The fact that PolitiFact Rhode Island isn't offended does not make something inoffensive. That's a personal judgement that has no place in a dispassionate determination of fact.

This article is yet another example of how PolitiFact operates as an editorial site sheathed in a false blanket of objectivity. There is simply no way for them to measure the accuracy of DePetro's opinion, and even less possible for them to place a factual determination on what is or isn't offensive.

This is an opinion piece. It's not a fact check. It is dishonest for PolitiFact to suggest otherwise.

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.

Anchor Rising: "Abortion Question Shows PolitiFact RI's Bias and Ignorance"

Blogger Justin Katz of Rhode Island's "Anchor Rising" recently hit PolitiFact for its poor handling of the abortion issue in a fact check of Jon O'Brien.  O'Brien serves as president of the self-explanatory group Catholics for Choice.

Katz makes great points about the ignorance of Roman Catholic doctrine displayed in the fact check.

Katz:

(I)n order that I may exorcise today's demon, I have to point out the ignorance and bias on display in Eugene Emery's finding that it is "mostly true" that "only 14 percent of Catholics agree with the Vatican's position that abortion should be illegal."
An objective assessment must acknowledge that there are two parts to the question, with a third qualifier necessary for an understanding of the results:

1. What is the Church's position on the matter?
2. Do Catholics agree with that position?
3. In what sense are the respondents "Catholic"?

Katz goes on to show that PolitiFact's fact-finding fudges on all three points.  PolitiFact failed to look into the crucial term "direct abortion" in the portion of the catechism it quoted and made no effort to correlate the actual Catholic doctrines to the poll data.

Katz covers it all and then some, so pay a visit and read it through.

It's worth adding that many Catholics out of agreement with Vatican teaching on abortion think they agree with Vatican teaching on abortion.  Using such statistics often matches a fallacious pattern of argument.

Anchor Rising: "Cicilline Gifted Another Mostly True From Politifact -- Seriously?"

Patrick Laverty and the Anchor Rising blog give us yet another quality criticism of PolitiFact.

PolitiFact just makes it way too easy.

Ok sure, the funding level was "close". It was in the 90s and it was more than the previous administration. However, as Politifact themselves often say, that isn't what Cicilline said. He said it was at 100% all but two years. It was there for all but six years. That's a big difference.

So the issue really speaks to Politifact's credibility, if they have much left. They are, at best, inconsistent with their rulings especially when it comes to Congressman Cicilline. This is the same newspaper that int 2010 endorsed Cicilline for Congress, in part due to his fiscal management of Providence. 

 PolitiFact's justification for the ruling?

Cicilline, in his off-the-cuff statement, mixed up where the years with the lowest contribution fell. But he made it clear a few times that he was citing figures from memory, so we’ll give him some leeway and rule Mostly True.

It's good to know that one can obtain some leeway if one is citing figures from memory.  At least when PolitiFact decides to grant such leeway (I'm not finding other examples of this kind of treatment).  If you're working from memory then the same set of facts can become more true than otherwise.  Like magic.

Looks like we can add a new wrinkle to the Principles of PolitiFact.