Sweet little PolitiLies

(Looks like the ill-timed and unintended press of a button resulted in a blank post under this title--so the initial publication of this content technically qualifies as an update)

Those who can be trusted in small things gain trust in handling larger things.

Hit play, then resume reading.



Mainstream journalists, including those at PolitiFact, often report things that are not true.

Case in point, as PolitiFact rules "Mostly True" Donald Trump's claim that the median household income has fallen by $4,000 since the year 2000:

While this statistic came amid a series of shots at President Barack Obama, the majority of the period Trump was referring to came under the presidency of George W. Bush, a Republican.

Since Trump was taking "a series of shots" at Obama, PolitiFact adds in missing context that we will shortly address. But PolitiFact's statement is pretext and not fact.

Here's Politico's transcript of the relevant segment of Trump's speech (is it coincidence that PolitiFact provided no hyperlink to the text of the speech?):

What about our economy?
Again, I will tell you the plain facts that have been edited out of your nightly news and your morning newspaper: Nearly Four in 10 African-American children are living in poverty, while 58% of African American youth are not employed. 2 million more Latinos are in poverty today than when the President took his oath of office less than eight years ago. Another 14 million people have left the workforce entirely.

Household incomes are down more than $4,000 since the year 2000. Our manufacturing trade deficit has reached an all-time high – nearly $800 billion in a single year. The budget is no better.

President Obama has doubled our national debt to more than $19 trillion, and growing. Yet, what do we have to show for it? Our roads and bridges are falling apart, our airports are in Third World condition, and forty-three million Americans are on food stamps.

Trump's treatment of the economy does occur after a series of paragraphs related to a rise in violent crime. Trump's first general topic was crime. The second was the economy, represented by the quotation above. After the economy Trump moves on to foreign policy, in which he spreads blame between Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

It does not make any sense to suppose Trump's statistic was intended to lay all the blame for the lower media wage on Obama. Most people realize that Obama was not in office until 2009, years after the year Trump used as the median income baseline.

But PolitiFact riffs based on this misleading reading of Trump's claim:

During the first eight years of the span Trump referred to -- 2000 to 2008 -- Bush was president. And during Bush’s tenure, inflation-adjusted median household income declined by $2,411, which is more than half the total amount it fell between 2000 and 2014.

Since Obama took office, it has fallen by $1,656. That’s not a great legacy, but it’s worth remembering that slicing the numbers this way puts all of the Great Recession on Obama’s watch while also denying Obama 2015, when there was a slow but steady recovery, because data is not available.

So it's Bush's fault, and that dastardly Trump is denying Obama a year for which data is not available. PolitiFact often makes its own judgments based simply on available data. But if PolitiFact thinks Trump is doing what PolitiFact does, then Trump is doing something wrong. Apropos of that, the Washington Post Fact Checker rated Trump more harshly on this same claim, saying the latest data showed median household income has almost returned to the levels from 2000. But what Trump does wrong is okay when PolitiFact does it.

We would draw attention to two main aspects of PolitiFact's fact check of Trump.

First, PolitiFact's defense of Obama in the midst of a Trump fact check was rationalized. It wasn't really needed, since Trump himself excused Obama from full blame by using the year 2000 as a baseline. Everybody understands from that context that Obama is not responsible for everything that happened to median income since the year 2000.

Second, PolitiFact engaged in the same type of misdirection it blamed on Trump. PolitiFact wrongly says Obama gets all the blame for the Great Recession while blithely saying, and we quote, that "during Bush's tenure, inflation-adjusted  median household income declined by $2,411, which is more than half the total amount it fell between 2000 and 2014."

Here's the story that PolitiFact failed to tell, even though it was illustrated by the Federal Reserve chart embedded in its own story: Bush inherited a declining economy from President Bill Clinton. So Bush was dealing with a recession at the start of his tenure as president. Under Bush, inflation-adjusted income had recovered nearly to 2000 levels by 2007, before the Great Recession hit. So the drop in median income PolitiFact lays on Bush was overwhelmingly tied to the Great Recession.

Some type of averaging would provide a more reliable picture of trends under Bush and Obama than the one PolitiFact painted.

So PolitiFact made up the notion that Trump was pinning the drop in median household income on Obama to justify its own misleading editorial opposing Bush-era economic policy (and defending Obama-era policy). "Fact-checking."

Sweet. Restart the music video if desired.



Correction July 28, 2016: Performed a grammar fix on the WaPo hyperlinked sentence, eliminating "harsher" with a restructure of the sentence.

PunditFact's editorial page

Oops--are we being redundant? Sorry! Here's a portion of PunditFact's main page from Dec. 28, 2015.

Partial screen capture from PolitiFact.com/PunditFact/ Dec. 18, 2015

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a pictorial editorial.

It's not an unaltered photograph of Donald Trump. It's not a photo at all. It is an artist's rendering of Donald Trump, created to communicate an editorial message to PunditFact's readers. Note how Trump's fingers are crossed as he speaks, a traditional gesture of those who know they are speaking falsely.

Material like this makes PunditFact itself a pundit of sorts.

We've long noted the fact that PolitiFact and its various franchises blur the traditional line between straight news reporting--what some might expect from journalism billed as "fact-checking"--and editorializing. That's why we call PolitiFact "the Fox News of fact-checking" and PolitiFact staffers "liberal bloggers."

Their journalism is not objective. When PolitiFact creator Bill Adair calls fact checking a "new form of journalism" perhaps he has in mind that deliberate blurring of the lines.

Or not. Either way, we don't appreciate it.

PunditFact amends pundit's claim about amendments

We've pointed out before how PolitiFact will fault statements made on Twitter for lacking context despite the 140-character limit Twitter imposes.

This week PunditFact played that game with the following tweet from conservative pundit Phil Kerpen:

Amazing fact: Senate has already voted on more amendments in 2015 than Reid allowed ALL YEAR last year.
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) January 23, 2015

PunditFact found that the new Republican-controlled Senate has already voted on more amendments in 2015 than Reid allowed in the Democrat-controlled Senate for all of 2014: "On the numbers, that is right."

But PunditFact went on to find fault with Kerpen for leaving out needed context:

On the numbers, that is right. But experts cautioned us that the claim falls more in the interesting factoid category than a sign of a different or more cooperative Senate leadership.

The statement is accurate but needs clarification and additional information. That meets our definition of Mostly True.

We'll spell out the obvious problem with PunditFact's rating: Kerpen's tweet doesn't say anything about different or more cooperative Senate leadership. If Kerpen's not making that argument (we found no evidence he was), then it makes no sense at all to charge him with leaving out information. In effect, PunditFact is amending Kerpen's tweet, giving it context that doesn't exist in the original. Kerpen's statement doesn't need clarification or additional information to qualify as simply "True."

PunditFact's rating offers us a perfect opportunity to point out that if Kerpen's statement isn't simply "True" then there's probably no political claim anywhere that's immune to the type of objection PunditFact used to justify its "Mostly True" rating of Kerpen. A politician could claim the sky is blue and the fact checker could reply that yes, the sky is blue but no thanks to the policies of that politician's party! There are endless ways to rationalize withholding a "True" rating.

This rating convinces us that it would be productive to look at the breakdown between "True" and "Mostly True" ratings to look for a partisan bias. Since there's always context missing from political claims, drawing that line between "True" and "Mostly True" may prove no more objective than the line between "False" and "Pants on Fire."

PolitiFact is "Not Far" from "Large-Scale" Inconsistencies

Just over a week ago we highlighted PolitiFact's dubious rating of radio host John DePetro. The problem with that rating was simple: DePetro said the Boston Bomber was buried "not far" from John F. Kennedy. PolitiFact did a search on Google Maps to find the linear distance between the two graves, and said DePetro's claim was "mildly ridiculous." Somehow, PolitiFact Rhode Island was able to determine the specific distance of "not far."

PolitiFact explained their scientific conclusion:

Saying that Kennedy is buried "not far" from Tsarnaev is like saying Newport is not far from the eastern tip of Cape Cod, that Rhode Island's State House is not far from Derry, N.H., or that the site of the Boston Marathon bombing is "not far" from the the southernmost tip of Narragansett, R.I.

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

Last Thursday, after hearing President Obama claim "there have been no large scale attacks on the United States" during his presidency, I fired off an email to my co-editor Bryan White: "What are the odds PF gives Obama leeway because 'large scale' is too vague?"

As it turns out, the Predictability Gods were listening to my prayers:

Indeed, the definitions of "large-scale" are sufficiently vague that there’s a lot of room for Obama... 

That's right. PolitiFact can determine the linear distance of "not far," but the definition of "large scale" is beyond their ability to comprehend.

Their final ruling is so pathetically protective of Obama it's actually insulting (emphasis added)

Obama said that since he has taken office, "there have been no large-scale attacks on the United States."

Two attacks on Obama’s watch that might qualify as "large scale" -- the Fort Hood shootings and the Boston Marathon bombing. They caused substantially fewer deaths than the biggest terrorist attacks of recent years, and they are believed to have been carried out by "lone wolf" attackers with limited connections to large-scale terrorist networks. But where to draw the line between small, medium and large attacks is open to interpretation. Obama's formulation is plausible, but not the only one. We rate it Half True.

There's a lot wrong with this paragraph. What qualities are necessary for an attack to be deemed "biggest"? Loss of life? Property damage? Number of terrorists involved? How far back do "recent" years go? Notice that "small," "medium" and "large" are "open to interpretation," but "not far" can be quantified by a Google search.

The reality is that reasonable people are entitled to their own opinions about what constitutes a "large scale" attack, or how close is too close to bury a terrorist to a fallen president. In either case, though, it amounts to an opinion, and is rightly beyond the bounds of the clinical world of fact checking. 

PolitiFact does decent work as an editorial page. And they tend to provide valid arguments in favor of their opinions. But it's dishonest to label themselves "fact checkers," let alone pretend to be unbiased. This latest Obama rating is not a legitimate uncovering of facts. It's a defense of a spin of a denial. PolitiFact may as well have their own podium next to Jay Carney.


Bryan adds:

The way fact checkers rule on ambiguous claims over time reveals much about their ideology.  If one side gets a statistically significant advantage over the other then we have a strong indication of ideological bias.

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.

Ben Shapiro: "Politifact Cites Three Liberal 'Apology Experts' to Condemn Romney"

Ben Shapiro, writing for Breitbart.com's Big Peace, pre-emptively steals my thunder on PolitiFact's ridiculous story on Mitt Romney and the statement from the American embassy in Libya.

Shapiro:

Just when you think Politifact can’t make any more of a mockery of itself than it already has – over and over and over and over again – they wade into the breach today on foreign policy. More specifically, they took issue with Mitt Romney’s statement today that “I think it’s a terrible course for America to stand in apology for our values.”

PolitiFact has a history of denying that things Mitt Romney says are apologies are, in fact, apologies.  Shapiro has fun with PolitiFact's method of undercutting Romney in this case:

So, what did Politifact have to say? They interviewed three “apology experts.” Seriously. First, they interviewed Professor John Murphy, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who said it wasn’t an apology because “the statement does not use the word ‘apology’ or ‘apologize’ and does not use any synonym for that word.” Second, they interviewed Lauren Bloom, “an attorney and business consultant who wrote The Art of the Apology.” What did she say? Romney’s “once again allowing his emotional allergy to apology to interfere with his judgment.” Finally, they interviewed Professor Rhoda E. Howard-Hassman, who said the statement was “not an apology.”

But is that PolitiFact's fault?  PolitiFact tried to contact a fourth expert who did not respond.  By looking at the earlier fact checks we can confirm that the expert was conservative foreign policy analyst Nile Gardiner of the Heritage Foundation.

What did Gardiner have to say in PolitiFact's original story?  Here it is:

Nile Gardiner, a foreign policy analyst with the the conservative Heritage Foundation, said Obama is definitely apologizing, and it's not good. He co-wrote the Heritage analysis, "Barack Obama's Top 10 Apologies: How the President Has Humiliated a Superpower."

"Apologizing for your own country projects an image of weakness before both allies and enemies," Gardiner said. "It sends a very clear signal that the U.S. is to blame for some major developments on the world stage. This can be used to the advanage of those who wish to undermine American global leadership."

He noted that Obama tends to be most apologetic about how the U.S. has fought terrorism and its approach to the Iraq war. "There is a very strong partisan element to his apologies, but the biggest driving factor is Obama's personal belief that the U.S. is not an exceptional, uniquely great nation," he said.

As I noted in an earlier analysis, PolitiFact completely discounted Gardiner's statement in ruling Romney "Pants on Fire" for saying Mr. Obama went on an apology tour.  PolitiFact did not explain its reasons for discounting Gardiner's expertise.  If partisanship was a problem then we should expect PolitiFact to find an entirely new set of experts.  Choosing the expert opinion of three liberals over one conservative looks simply like an expression of partisan bias by the fact checker when unaccompanied by a solid rationale.

In the latest apology for Obama, PolitiFact's three experts make a show of distinguishing between condemnation and apology.  But that approach obscures a potential relationship between condemnation and apology.

One cannot condemn an entity and apologize for that same entity at the same time with the same statement.  Those aims work against each other.  But very clearly, one can easily work a condemnation into an apology:  "My son was bad, bad, bad, bad, bad--a thousand times bad for breaking your window, Mrs. Jones."

In the above example we have an apology and a condemnation in the same sentence.  It works because the apology is directed at one entity (Mrs. Jones) while the condemnation is directed at a third party (the son).  By throwing a natural ally under the bus for breaking the window, the condemner sends a clear implicit message of regret to the offended party, Mrs. Smith.

It's important to emphasize the role of an apology in both personal and international relations:  An apology is an attempt to smooth things over with the offended party.  Condemning the breaking of the window sends a message to Mrs. Jones that something will be done to the window breaker to help balance the scales of justice.  Absent that implication, condemning the window-breaker isn't likely to sooth Mrs. Jones' ire.
 
In the case of the Libyan embassy, embassy officials clearly released the statement with the aim of defusing anger at the United States.  One can claim that it was a condemnation rather than an apology, but that's obfuscation.

It was a classic apology, delivered by implicit means.

***

Shapiro's sharp, pithy and to the point.  Visit Big Peace and read the whole of his take.

PolitiFact and the gutting of Welfare reform (Updated)

Many of us on the political right heard about the Obama administration's proposed waivers for Welfare work requirements cast in a frame suggesting Obama had rolled back a significant aspect of the Republican-led Welfare reform plan Clinton signed into law in the 1990s.

The Romney campaign didn't take long to produce ads criticizing the change.

Almost as quickly, mainstream fact checkers found fault with such ads.

PolitiFact:

The ad’s claim is not accurate, and it inflames old resentments about able-bodied adults sitting around collecting public assistance. Pants on Fire!

 We were suspicious.  But to call the fact checkers on a mistake takes research.

Enter Mickey Kaus, piggybacking on The New York Times:

Here’s how the Times describes what Nevada wants to do:

[Nevada] asked to discuss flexibility in imposing those requirements. Perhaps, the state asked, those families hardest to employ could be exempted from the work requirements for six months while officials worked with them to stabilize their households. [E.A.]

“Exempted from the work requirements for six months.” That’s not just “weakening” work requirements–the safe, milder charge I chose to make a couple of days ago. It’s explicitly tossing them out the window for an extended period–“to allow time for their barriers to be addressed and their household circumstances stabilized”, in Nevada’s words.

Nevada, recall, was one of the states the Obama administration cited as requesting waivers from the Welfare reform work requirements.

This piece of evidence alone doesn't make the Romney ad accurate.  But it does render the "Pants on Fire" verdict very questionable.

And then there's Robert Rector, writing for the National Review:

(I)t appears the administration intends to do away with standards of the reform law that require 30 to 40 percent of the work-eligible TANF caseload to engage in clearly defined activities for 20 to 30 hours per week. It will replace those standards with a new standard urging that the work-eligible caseload engage in vaguely defined activities for as little as one hour per week. This sounds a lot like “gutting” to most reasonable people.

Read all of Rector's argument and look for additional information before making a final judgment.  Don't trust in mainstream fact checkers like PolitiFact.

We'll keep following this issue as it develops.


Update 9/11/2012:

Our apologies for neglecting information pointed out in August by Senior Attorney Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute:

The Obama Administration’s move to gut welfare reform puzzled Kaus, who voted for Obama in 2008. But perhaps it shouldn’t have baffled him, since it reflects Obama’s longstanding antipathy to reforms of the welfare system aimed at reducing dependency on welfare and requiring welfare recipients to work. “For example, in the years immediately after passage of the [1996 reform] law, Barack Obama himself pledged to do all he could to undo it,” noted the Washington Examiner. As the Examiner's Chief Political Correspondent, Byron York, noted, on July 12, the Obama administration ‘released an official policy directive rewriting the welfare reform law of 1996’” to allow the “Department of Health and Human Services to waive the work requirement at the heart of welfare reform.”

Obama also gutted welfare reform in other ways, such as supporting and signing into law a stimulus package that rewarded states for promoting welfare dependency, giving state governors an incentive to try to water down any work requirements for welfare recipients to keep federal welfare money flowing.

In a subsequent essay, Bader delivers appropriate words for PolitiFact:

In arguing that waivers won’t lead to the gutting of the 1996 welfare reform law, since the Obama administration now says it won’t approve waivers unless it makes welfare reform more successful, left-leaning “independent” fact-checkers like PolitiFact and Factcheck.org chose to rely on political spin from the Obama administration in response to the furor over its action, and self-serving, unsubstantiated, and non-binding statements about its intentions, rather than on what the Obama administration actually did in claiming for itself the broad authority to waive the work requirements at the heart of the welfare-reform law (and what it actually said in its July 12 HHS memo claiming that authority, which discussed “the sort of waivers they want to grant,” which do indeed “weaken work requirements,” and did so in response to a waiver request by Nevada, which expressly sought to weaken work requirements, as Mickey Kaus has noted at The Daily Caller).

We echo Bader's question:  Why did PolitiFact remain effectively silent regarding contrary expert opinion?

This is the game we end up with so often from PolitiFact.  PolitiFact ends "he said/she said" journalism by arbitrarily picking the clear winner between two plausible opposing viewpoints.  The result gives us "PolitiFact says" journalism.


Jeff adds:

I looked through PolitiFact's source list but wasn't able to see a poll they cited that determined Romney's ad "inflames old resentments about able-bodied adults sitting around collecting public assistance." How did PolitiFact determine the reaction millions of viewers had to the ad? Unless they offer some evidence of the audience reaction, PolitiFact is simply editorializing.

PolitiFact takes another cue from the opinion pages in its summary:

Romney’s ad says, "Under Obama’s plan (for welfare), you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check."

That's a drastic distortion of the planned changes to Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.

How is that a drastic distortion? If Romney had used Nevada's language, and said "You could be exempt from work requirements and you'll still get a welfare check" would PolitiFact have awarded Romney with a shiny True? PolitiFact's hyperbolic description is raw opinion that shouldn't be confused with verifiable evidence of a falsehood.

And check out this gem describing the same policy that allows states to provide a six month exemption from work requirements:

"The requirement was for more work, not less."

That's a portion of a Bill Clinton statement that PolitiFact rated True.

I'm also struggling to imagine the fantasy world where PolitiFact would ever write this paragraph:

That's a drastic distortion of the planned changes to the Affordable Care Act. By granting waivers to states, the Romney administration is seeking to make health insurance mandates more successful, not end them. What’s more, the waivers would apply to individually evaluated pilot programs -- HHS is not proposing a blanket, national change to ObamaCare.

In PolitiFact's world of facts, illegally granting waivers and exemptions to laws is a way to strengthen policy. Keep that in mind should the GOP control the White House and Congress next year.
 
Romney's claim is entirely accurate. Partisans can argue about whether or not it's misleading, or if it's a reasonable summation of Obama's policy. But Romney's statement that a person could still receive a welfare check without working or training is unarguably based on fact. Attempts to claim otherwise are pure editorial spin.

This is how the non-non-partisans at PolitiFact have always operated, though in the past they did better at keeping their campaign chaff out of their research wheat. They must be getting antsy, or perhaps they're getting cocky. Either way, their unabashed defense of liberal policies is less and less camouflaged as the election nears.

Bearing Drift: "Who Watches The Watchers?"

There's been a lot of good criticism on PolitiFact lately, and Brian Schoeneman over at Bearing Drift provides a great example. While his post discusses fact checking and fact checkers in general, he hits the mark when panning three recent PolitiFact ratings that went against Paul Ryan:

What Ryan said in each statement he made was factually accurate.  Politifact claimed what he said was misleading, which is their opinion, not a fact.  Politicians using facts to persuade and not giving the entire context is to be expected, and there’s nothing wrong with it.  We can’t expect a politician to act like a journalist or a lobbyist, presenting both sides of every story.  That’s not what they do.  As Gabriel Mallor noted in the New York Daily News, “the bottom line is that the fact checker criticisms of Ryan’s speech come in only one form: ‘Yes it’s true, but here’s some context that Democrats want to talk about.’ That’s not fact checking; that’s advocacy. And it’s not persuasive, it’s absurd.”

And that’s the point – Ryan’s statements weren’t false, so calling them false is dumb. We should expect more from folks who want to sit in judgment over “the truth.”

When fact checkers stop actually checking facts and begin checking opinion or try to place facts in “context,” they enter into murky water where bias is inevitable.

Schoeneman goes on to offer advice for fact checkers to help them avoid the pitfalls of opinion journalism, and serves up plenty of thoughtful criticism while he's at it. I won't say that Schoeneman writes anything particularly unique or anything that we haven't been saying here for years, but his observations are spot on, well written and carry a message well worth repeating. His post isn't a specific critique of PolitiFact, but he hits so many solid points in such a short post we consider it recommended reading. Check out the entire article here.

PolitiFlub: PolitiFact grades Callista Gingrich by the wrong measure

Crossposted from Sublime Bloviations

Words matter -- We pay close attention to the specific wording of a claim. Is it a precise statement? Does it contain mitigating words or phrases?
--Principles of PolitiFact and the "Truth-O-Meter"

It's a testament to PolitiFact's warped self-image that it continues churning out journalistic offal even while enduring a wave of substantive criticism.

Our latest example comes again from the Republican National Convention, where Callista Gingrich claimed that the Obama administration's foreign policy has led to decreased respect for the United States.

A legitimate fact checking enterprise immediately suspects that Gingrich referred to respect from foreign governments in terms of recognizing the U.S. as a power to which deferral yields the most beneficial results.  In other words, other nations fear the United States depending on the degree to which they operate contrary to our policy designs.  Based on that premise, the legitimate fact checker asks Gingrich to clarify the intent and tries to find a verifiable statistic that measures her accuracy.

That's not PolitiFact:

While surveys are currently being undertaken in 20 nations, only 14 of those have been done for long enough to shed light on Callista Gingrich’s claim.

The question asked is, "Please tell me if you have a very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable opinion of ... the United States." While favorability isn’t exactly identical to respect, we think it’s very close and a good approximation.

Seriously?

No doubt PolitiFact used the opinions of foreign policy experts to determine that the Pew data were an appropriate measure.

Or maybe not:

Seriously?  No expert sources?  Not one?

That's not a responsible fact check.  The global standing of the United States does not depend on the popular view among the world's peoples.  It comes directly from the way the world's leaders view the United States and whether they believe they can flaunt their power contrary to U.S. interests.

PolitiFact chose the wrong measure.

Why does anyone take PolitiFact seriously?



Jeff adds (9-2-12): 

If there's any doubt that PolitiFact is peddling editorial pieces as objective reporting, check out this Bret Stephens op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week discussing the same topic and using the same sources:

In June, the Pew Research Center released one of its periodic surveys of global opinion. It found that since 2009, favorable attitudes toward the U.S. had slipped nearly everywhere in the world except Russia and, go figure, Japan. George W. Bush was more popular in Egypt in the last year of his presidency than Mr. Obama is today.

It's true that these surveys need to be taken with a grain of salt: efficacy, not popularity, is the right measure by which to judge an administration's foreign policy. But that makes it more noteworthy that this administration should fail so conspicuously on its own terms. Mr. Obama has become the Ruben Studdard of the world stage: the American Idol who never quite made it in the real world.

Is PolitiFact accusing Mr. Stephens of lying? Inaccuracy? Or is the reality that the world's opinion of America is beyond the scope of objective, measurable standards? How could two reputable outfits come up with such contradictory interpretations of the same facts? What is the measuring stick that makes Louis Jacobson and the Truth-O-Meter the final arbiter of truth on one end and Bret Stephens a dishonest, partisan dolt on the other?

Callista Gingrich made a perfectly reasonable, if not politically rhetorical, statement about Obama's influence on the world's impression of our country. She offered an opinion that has solid, if not conclusive, support. PolitiFact's biggest lie is their claim that they can fit opinions onto a ratings scale and objectively disprove them with opinions of their own.

The reality is PolitiFact often publishes opinion pieces instead of fact checks. And if it expects to maintain whatever shred of credibility it has left, it should take a lesson from Mr. Stephens' employer, and publish its articles on the editorial page.


(Earlier today I explained even more problems with PolitiFact's treatment of Gingrich's claim in the comments section below, so I won't repeat them here.)

Madison Forum: "Not Politifact; Just Politicopinion"

In March of this year J. Randolph Evans of "The Madison Forum" clobbered PolitiFact over its failure to cleave to objective standards in its fact checks: 

(W)ith a name like Politifact, readers might think that in at least one area, newspapers had abandoned their biases for one brief moment of objectivity. Do not be fooled. Hidden within the clever marketing names like Politifact and the nifty ratings like pants-on-fire, newspapers still filter in their biases.

Evans used a fact check of Mitt Romney's claim about President Obama's international policy tour as his example.

Evans: 

Even though Politifact writers by their own admission “reviewed several analyses of what Obama’s foreign policy goals are in traveling the world and readily admitting to America’s mistakes,” they could never bring themselves to the Politifact of the matter; instead they opted for politicopinion.

Evans goes straight for his point and makes it well, though he could have strengthened his case even more by pointing out PolitiFact's eye-popping arbitrary dismissal of one of the expert opinions it sought (bold emphasis added):

We sent Obama's remarks to several different experts on foreign policy and apologies, to see if they thought Obama was apologizing.

• Nile Gardiner, a foreign policy analyst with the the conservative Heritage Foundation, said Obama is definitely apologizing, and it's not good. He co-wrote the Heritage analysis, "Barack Obama's Top 10 Apologies: How the President Has Humiliated a Superpower."

That's true fact checking.  If an expert gives a take you don't agree with or is out of step with other experts, just ignore them.  In the name of the Truth, of course.

Evans makes a number of good points about modern American journalism, so pay The Madison Forum a visit and read the whole bit.

Americans for Tax Reform: "Responding to Politifact on Olympics and Taxes"

Do PolitiFact staffers actually read the statements they rate? It's stuff like this that implies they don't.

At issue is PolitiFact's rating of a recent Americans for Tax Reform claim that set the Internet abuzz:

Image from PolitiFact.com

PolitiFact found the claim to be Mostly False. Americans for Tax Reform responded and made quick work of PolitiFact's sophomoric attempt at fact checking (emphasis in the original):

ATR's primary claim is that the prizes are taxable, not that all medalists will necessarily owe $9,000 in taxes.  Poltifact admits that after they checked with their own experts, it was confirmed that prizes awarded would be taxable.  On this finding alone, the verdict should have been "mostly true," at least.

They're right. The original ATR article that PolitiFact rated emphasized the onerous tax policies of the U.S., not the specific cost.  By focusing on the $9,000 figure, PolitiFact is able to fish out a kernel of ambiguity from an otherwise factually solid article. But even with their myopic focus, PolitiFact still manages to flub this check:

ATR consistently said that prizes were taxable "up to" a 35% marginal tax rate.  We deliberately used this language because we know that Olympians will pay taxes at whatever marginal tax rate they happen to find themselves in this year.

Remember back in the olden days when PolitiFact passed out Mostly True ratings for demonstrably false numbers as long as the claimant was "citing figures from memory"?  Apparently some qualifiers are more equal than others.

ATR goes on to explain in detail how the $9,000 figure itself is a perfectly accurate example. Make sure to read the entire post to see the step-by-step take-down of PolitiFact's bupkis.

The story here is PolitiFact found a solid, honest criticism of the U.S. tax code and had to resort to distortion and gimmicks to cast a pall over the entire article. ATR presented a legitimate example that illustrated its political position. PolitiFact found that claim accurate, and then editorialized to brand ATR with the mark of dishonesty. 

That's not what a non-partisan fact checker is supposed to do.

The Weekly Standard: "Romney to PolitiFact: There You Go Again"

The Weekly Standard's Mark Hemingway was back in PolitiFact's grille back in April.

PolitiFact ruled "Mostly False" a claim from the Mitt Romney campaign that women as a group have suffered 92.3 percent of the net job losses under Obama's presidency.  That ruling brought a swift and stern response from the Romney campaign.

Hemingway filed the battle report:

Given that PolitiFact says Romney's numbers check out, how the heck did PolitiFact then conclude Romney's statement is "mostly false"? Well, they did what fact checkers habitually do whenever they find something factually correct but politically disagreeable—kick up a bunch of irrelevant contextual dirt and lean on some biased sources. Which is why PolitiFact's own language here is absurd: "We found that though the numbers are accurate, their reading of them isn’t" and "The numbers are accurate but quite misleading." I would also note that my friend Glenn Kessler, the fact checker at the Washington Post, evaluated the same claim and deemed it "TRUE BUT FALSE." I do hope that if media fact checkers expect to retain any credibility to evaluate basic empirical claims, they're aware that this kind of Orwellian doublespeak is going to make them a laughingstock.

Read the whole thing, because Hemingway's just warming up with the above. 

The above point, that PolitiFact appears absurd for ruling a true statement "Mostly False" probably can't receive enough emphasis.  PolitiFact's rating system provides no description fitting this type of rating.  If the results make it look like PolitiFact isn't categorizing claims according to whether they fit some type of established objective criteria, it's probably because that's the way it is.

Addendum:

PolitiFact's response to the complaint from the Romney campaign deserves a closer look:

We considered the complaint and interviewed four other economists, none of whom have formal or financial ties to any campaigns. Our additional reporting found no reason to change our ruling, which remains at Mostly False.

Two words:  Fig leaf.

The point is that the original reporting didn't justify the ruling.  If PolitiFact can't see that then it's no surprise that additional reporting fails to sway its made-up mind.

Hoystory: "Dishonest hacks"

Frequent PolitiFact critic Matthew Hoy weighed in about a Crossroads GPS rating about President Obama's claim that "If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan."

Hoy gets right to the issue with his trademark eloquence:

It was a lie. Anyone with half a brain knew it.
...

Since I don’t think that [PolitiFact editors] Angie Drobnic Holan and Bill Adair are slack-jawed drooling idiots, that makes their assessment of Obama’s promise evidence that they are dishonest, lying hacks.

Hoy then zeros in on the way PolitiFact interpreted, and assigned a new meaning, to Obama's specific words:

Politifraud:

Obama often said during his 2008 campaign for president that if people liked their health insurance, they wouldn’t have to change it under his proposal, and he continued to say it as president.“If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan,” he said at a 2009 town hall meeting.

Stop there for a moment and think about that quoted statement. When you as an English-speaking individual read those 14 words, do you think Obama’s saying this:

What Obama was talking about was the way his plan left in place the current health care system in the United States.

Seriously? So, according to Politifraud, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan” = “We will not institute a single-payer system.”

Well, if you’re going to twist the plain meaning of Obama’s words into that, then I suppose Politifraud should make Humpty Dumpty its mascot.

In all fairness to PolitiFact, subsequent to Hoy's post, they backtracked explained that they weren't really checking Obama's claim at all. They issued this editors note clarification correction update:

We have adjusted the statement to clarify that we are fact-checking the Crossroads GPS claim that "millions could lose their health care coverage and be forced into a government pool." The ruling is unchanged.

This PolitiFact rating is only the latest in a long string of examples showcasing their defense of ObamaCare. (Not to mention their symbiotic defense of RomneyCare). Readers would be hard pressed to find unfavorable ratings of the law in PolitiFact's archives. It's enough to leave discerning observers with the impression that PolitiFact loves the ACA and is willing to protect it with the sophistry and semantic hair-splitting common among partisan actors.

Hoy's trenchant observations and wonderful way with words make it well worth heading over to his site and reading the whole thing.   Don't miss out on the rest.

Flip-Flopping Your Way to Consistency: A Constant Evolution

"Whatever words I say, I will always love you."
-The Cure

When President Obama came out of the closet as a supporter of gay marriage last week it was little surprise that PolitiFact weighed in with a "Full-Flop" rating. Considering the widespread attention Obama's announcement received, coupled with his vacillation, the rating appears to be a no-brainer:

Image from PolitiFact.com

Obama's many different positions on gay marriage are common knowledge. We joked on Twitter that PolitiFact would be unveiling the Evolv-O-Meter, but how could PolitiFact have given any rating other than "Full-Flop"? The problem is that, according to PolitiFact, Obama's flip-flop is actually an example of how constant his views have been:

While the president has consistently supported civil rights for gay couples-

Wait, what? Could you repeat that?

 Obama, a consistent supporter of civil rights for gay couples...

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Only PolitiFact could manage to shower praise on Obama for consistency, twice, in an article that describes his current position as a Full-Flop. This also raises an interesting question: Has PolitiFact determined that gay marriage is not a civil rights issue? That's a rating I missed.  PolitiFact has  minimized Obama's changing view of gay marriage and presented it as a minor nuisance in the statutory minutiae of the debate. Heck, Obama has always been pro-gay rights! Just not that right. Obama's positions cannot be simultaneously consistent and evolving. If Obama has always been a consistent supporter of civil rights for gay couples, and Obama's stance on gay marriage has changed, then it follows that gay marriage is not a civil right. Considering the controversial nature of the gay marriage issue, you'd think PolitiFact would let us know when they determined the status of such a key sticking point in the debate. It also puts PolitiFact at odds with Andrew Sullivan. Check out his over-the-top article in which he describes Obama's announcement as leaving him teary-eyed and speechless. Sullivan notes the contradiction in Obama's evolving positions:

"[Obama] said he was for equality, but not marriage. Five years later, he sees - as we all see - that you cannot have one without the other."

Sorry, Mr. Sullivan, but according to Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact you can.

Another question Obama's comments raise is just what is he supporting? A recent state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in North Carolina was overwhelmingly passed after only a nominal effort from Obama (robocalls) opposing it. Notice too, that despite PolitiFact referring to the announcement as a "historic shift", Obama's support is personal, not policy.

At a certain point, I've just concluded that-- for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that-- I think same-sex couples should be able to get married...And I continue to believe that this is an issue that is gonna be worked out at the local level, because historically, this has not been a federal issue...

This is starting to sound more like a Truth-O-Meter item: Is it true that Obama supports gay marriage? While it's unlikely Obama will "introduce legislation making gay marriage legal in all 50 states" as Megan McCain suggested, one wonders if it's true that an evolution in personal feelings while simultaneously rejecting political involvement actually qualifies as "support." Unfortunately, PolitiFact declined to sort out the truth of these questions.

To repeatedly commend Obama for his consistency in an article highlighting his contradictions is puzzling. It gives the impression PolitiFact wants to present his new, contradictory position as a minor adjustment rather than the Full-Flop they put on the meter. This type of sugarcoating is more consistent with an editorial piece than an objective review of the facts.


The bottom line is no matter what Obama says, PolitiFact will be there to put it in the best light. As the election approaches, readers should remember that PolitiFact is not a dispassionate witness to the political process. They are cheerleaders pulling for the home team, adept at turning every setback into a positive rally. Their motivations are expressed in gratuitous commentary best reserved for the opinion pages.

Don't believe the hype.

Shots Across the Bow: "PolitiFact Tennessee Fails Again"

Blogger "Rich" at Shots Across the Bow hits PolitiFact Tennessee amidships with a precisely aimed critique.

The PolitiFact Tennessee fact-check on a new farm labor rule from the Department of Labor went on at length musing about the reasons behind opposition to the new rule.  Rich points out that reading the text of the proposed rule should have put the musing to bed early:

Given that almost half of his piece on Alexander's statement consisted of Sullivan attempting to show nefarious motivations behind the statement, rather than its accuracy, and that a five minute perusal of the rules demonstrated that Sullivan's assumption was without factual basis, maybe it's time for PolitiFact to give  [writer Bartholomew] Sullivan a "Liar, Liar Pants on Fire" rating.

The piece is short, so set aside a minute and visit Shots Across the Bow to read it all.

Big Tent: "A PolitiFact Example"

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

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

Bruscino found Jacobson's questions leading:

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So technically Obama is right.


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

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

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

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

Here's similar text from the Romney rating:

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anchor Rising: "Do They Even Read What They Write?"

"Anchor Rising" contributor Patrick Laverty gives us yet another anecdote illustrative of PolitiFact's bias, thanks to PolitiFact Rhode Island:

This one was just too easy. First Politifact accuses Terry Gorman of RIILE of issuing a "Mostly False" statement, and then they actually explain how their own ruling is wrong!

RIILE is Rhode Islanders for Immigration Law Enforcement, and the issue is the decision by the Rhode Island Board of Governors for Higher Education to provide in-state tuition rates to at least some illegal immigrants.

Laverty makes a condensed but essentially accurate case in finding PolitiFact "pants on fire" for its ruling on Gorman.  The federal law, Laverty points out, allows a state legislature to provide secondary education benefits so long as the method complies with the rest of the federal statute.  But the federal law does not make that same exception for the Rhode Island Board of Governors for Higher Education.

PolitiFact makes an effort to legitimize the Rhode Island policy by playing up a key court decision in California:

In their decision, the California judges concluded that the basis upon which California granted the in-state tuition exemption -- which includes having attended a California high school for at least three years and obtaining a high school diploma or GED from California -- constituted criteria other than residency. Therefore, the judges wrote, "it does not violate section 1623."

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case on appeal.

The California court did not, however, rule on whether granting in-state tuition for undocumented students amounted to a "benefit" as defined in the federal law. That remains an open question.

There are two things of note in this portion of PolitiFact's analysis.

The first is the journalist offering a piece of legal analysis without directly sourcing it to an expert.  Journalists reporting in the objective style rarely set themselves forward as a definitive source of information.

Second, does it remain an open question?

On the face of it, the question doesn't seem so open.  The court's decision was the result of an appeal, and the lower court had ruled against the California law, finding it unconstitutional.  That court, it seems safe to say, operated on the premise that granting in-state tuition for undocumented students was a benefit under the applicable federal law.

It seems counterintuitive for the higher court to leave that issue unaddressed if it objected to that facet of the lower court's ruling.

One wonders why PolitiFact presented it as an open question, though it's clear enough in the context of the story that it serves as one of the keys to the unfavorable ruling Gorman received.

Peach Pundit: "Former Senator Dan Moody Responds To PolitiFact"

Georgia's Peach Pundit, from Jan. 27:

On Tuesday, PolitiFact weighed in on a statement made by House Ethics Committee Chairman Joe Wilkinson. Politifact declared Wilkinson’s statement that Georgia’s Ethics laws are among the toughest in the nation is “false.”

Peach Pundit went on to publish an answering message from former Georgia state senator Dan Moody.  Moody makes a great point that PolitiFact's grading of Wilkinson falls into the realm of editorial judgment, deciding what criteria qualify as the proper ones to rank the strength of state ethics laws.

Wilkinson and Moody argued that disclosure laws serve as the foundation of state ethics law.  PolitiFact disagreed and pinned the "False" on Moody.

Hilariously, PolitiFact didn't even bother to quote Moody in its fact check.  It graded Moody based on a paraphrase appearing in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the PolitiFact affiliate in Georgia.

Didn't the reporter retain notes that would have allowed readers access to Moody's actual statement?

Unbelievable.

We always try to get the original statement in its full context rather than an edited form that appeared in news stories.

About PolitiFact

Visit Peach Pundit to read Moody's riposte in full.


Edit 11/13/11: While doing some formatting work on the site after midnight I accidentally spilled some water on Gizmo and somehow this review re-posted with a new date. I "corrected" the date to 9-27-11, the day prior to when this articles "tweet" was sent, which is standard for us. Sorry for the confusion. Jeff

Michael F. Cannon: "PolitiFact Just Called, Again. I Declined to Help, Again."

Short and to the point, Cato Institute's Michael J. Cannon reminds us that his boycott of PolitiFact continues.  As he notes in his title, PolitiFact sometimes seeks his services as an expert source.  Follow the links to see why Cannon no longer cooperates with PolitiFact.

Pressroom Buzz @ Inside Milwaukee: "No Comment"

Jeff tipped me off to a blog post at Inside Milwaukee's "Pressroom Buzz."  At first I thought it was fodder for a PFB Smackdown feature.  But with respect to any kind of credible charge of a bias against the left at PolitiFact Wisconsin there's just no "there" there.

The blog post, by Erik Gunn, discloses the decision of some Democratic Party politicians in Wisconsin to stop cooperating with PolitiFact, a la Cato Institute's Michael F. Cannon.

The decision by the Democrats seems a bit more self-serving and a bit less principled than Cannon's--at least to me. Your mileage may vary:

The party doesn’t intend to enforce a uniform stance against PolitiFact among Democratic candidates, and (Democratic Party of Wisconsin's communications director Graeme) Zielinski says officials also didn’t plan any sort of big campaign to publicize the party’s decision to stop cooperating with the feature’s reporters. “We’re not going to make a big deal of it,” Zielinski says. “We just think there’s no utility in dealing with them anymore.”

To help illustrate the DPW's discontent with PolitiFact Wisconsin, Gunn tosses in a couple of recent complaints about PFW's impartiality.  But they're both duds.

The first is barely long enough to qualify as a blog post.  The criticism amounts to an assertion that a PolitiFact story about a voter ID issue can't be taken seriously, not counting linked material of dubious value.  If the author's serious about being taken seriously then he won't farm out the argument.

The second blog post at least invests a good number of words, but it amounts to a complaint about selection bias.  Selection bias is ubiquitous at PolitiFact.  Lone examples mean nothing or next to nothing. Larger sets of data however, such as the collection we present on this blog, may carry some weight.

Gunn also obtained a pair of recent examples from Zielinski.  Those were marginally more compelling than the blogged complaints:

PolitiFact labeled as “Pants on Fire” the statement by Democratic state Rep. Sandy Pasch – who is challenging Republican Sen. Alberta Darling in a recall election – that Paul Ryan’s plan to change Medicare to a voucher system with a fixed government contribution “would end health care for our seniors.”

 And:

PolitiFact labeled as “Pants on Fire” a Democratic Party assertion that windows at the state Capitol were bolted in response to protests in February, and said that party Chairman Mike Tate didn’t respond to PolitiFact inquiries.

We share some sympathy for any figure who receives a "Pants on Fire" rating from PolitiFact, since the rating by definition cannot be justified objectively.  But for political entities for which I could easily assign a political position the Republicans and conservatives had 12 Pants on Fire ratings compared to 15 for the Democrats and progressives.  The difference, I expect, is borderline for statistical significance.

Granted, in comparison to other PolitiFact operations the Democrats have received harsher grading in Wisconsin. As a result the Wisconsin branch has received the brunt of the "PolitiFact has a right-wing bias" complaints. That doesn't necessarily say anything about an ideological bias at PolitiFact Wisconsin.

Despite the weak examples, Gunn does have some good points to make.  They just don't add up to an argument for an anti-liberal bias.  Rather, they resonate with some of the criticisms of PolitiFact's journalistic model made standard here at PolitiFact Bias.

For example:

PolitiFact’s critics have a point, but it’s a bit more complicated than partisan bias. The larger problem remains in its simplistic rating system and especially the incendiary “Pants on Fire” category, which doesn’t appear to be consistently applied.

It's hard for PolitiFact to apply it consistently when PolitiFact's statement of principles describes the rating category in subjective terms.

Gunn also noted what I've referred to as PolitiFact's snark:

Finally, there’s an air of smugness in the tone of many PolitiFact pieces that condescends not just to the objects of criticism but to readers. I have a hunch that tone alone accounts for some of the hostility toward the operation, from whatever corner.

Where smugness of tone occurs as a result of opinionated language, readers can be forgiven for their impression that the journalists responsible for the story have compromised their objectivity.

While journalists overall have a ideological tilt to the left, of course they are not monolithically liberal.  We at PFB welcome careful criticism of PolitiFact from the left--such little as there is at present--confident in the expectation that when all the facts are in the evidence will show PolitiFact predisposed to favoring the left on balance.  Significantly so.