PolitiFact Tweezes Green New Deal Falsehoods

In our post "PolitiFact's Green New Deal Fiction Depiction" we noted how PolitiFact had decided that a Democrat posting a falsehood-laden FAQ about the Green New Deal on her official congressional website escaped receiving a negative rating on PolitiFact's "Truth-O-Meter."

At the time we noted that PolitiFact's forbearance held benefits for Democrats and Republicans alike:

Many will benefit from PolitiFact's apparent plan to give out "Truth-O-Meter" mulligans over claimed aspects of the Green New Deal resolution not actually in the resolution. Critics of those parts of the plan will not have their attacks rated on the Truth-O-Meter. And those responsible for generating the controversy in the first place by publishing FAQs based on something other than the actual resolution also find themselves off the hook.

 We were partly right.

Yes, PolitiFact let Democrats who published a false and misleading FAQ about the Green New Deal off the hook.

But apparently PolitiFact has reserved the right to fault Republicans and conservatives who base their criticisms of the Green New Deal on the false and misleading information published by the Democrats.

PolitiFact Florida tweezed out a such a tidbit from an editorial written by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.):

False? It doesn't matter at all that Ocasio-Cortez said otherwise on her official website? There is no truth to it whatsoever? And Ocasio-Cortez gets no "False" rating for making an essentially identical claim on her website?

This case will get our "tweezers or tongs" tag because PolitiFact is once again up to its traditional shenanigan of tweezing out one supposed falsehood from a background of apparent truths:

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., outlined his opposition to the Democrats’ Green New Deal in a Feb. 25th Orlando Sentinel op-ed:

"If you are not familiar with it, here’s the cliff notes version: It calls for rebuilding or retrofitting every building in America in the next 10 years, eliminating all fossil fuels in 10 years, eliminating nuclear power, and working towards ending air travel (to be replaced with high-speed rail)."

...

Let’s hit the brakes right there -- do the Democrats want to end air travel?

See what PolitiFact did, there?

Scott can get three out of four points right, but PolitiFact Florida will pick on one point to give Scott a "False" rating and build for him an unflattering graph of  "Truth-O-Meter" ratings shaped by PolitiFact's selection bias.

The Jestation Hypothesis

How does PolitiFact Florida go about discounting the fact that Ocasio-Cortez claimed on her website that the Green New Deal aimed to make air travel obsolete?

The objective and neutral fact checkers give us the Jestation Hypothesis. She must have been kidding.

No, really. Perhaps the idea came directly from one of the three decidedly non-neutral experts PolitiFact cited in its fact check (bold emphasis added):

"It seems to me those lines from the FAQ were lighthearted and ill-considered, and it’s not clear why they were posted," said Sean Hecht, Co-Executive Director, Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA law school.

Hecht's FEC contributions page is hilariously one-sided.

Does anyone need more evidence that the line about making air travel obsolete was just a joke?

"No serious climate experts advocate ending air travel -- that's simply a red-herring," said Bledsoe, who was a climate change advisor to the Clinton White House.

Former Clinton White House advisor Bledsoe is about as neutral as Hecht. The supposed "red-herring," we remind readers, was published on Ocasio-Cortez's official House of Representatives website.

The neutral and objective fact-checkers of PolitiFact Florida deliver their jestational verdict (bold emphasis added):

Scott wrote in an op-ed that the Democrats’ Green New Deal includes "working towards ending air travel."

The resolution makes no mention of ending air travel. Instead, it calls for "overhauling transportation systems," which includes "investment in high-speed rail." Scott seized on a messaging document from Democrats that mentioned, perhaps in jest, getting rid of "farting cows and airplanes." But we found no evidence that getting rid of airplanes is a serious policy idea from climate advocates.

Apparently it cannot count as evidence that Democrats have advocated getting rid of airplanes if a popular Democratic Party representative publishes this on her website:

The Green New Deal sets a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, at the end of this 10-year plan because we aren’t sure that we will be able to fully get rid of, for example, emissions from cows or air travel before then. However, we do believe we can ramp up renewable manufacturing and power production, retrofit every building in America, build the smart grid, overhaul transportation and agriculture, restore our ecosystem, and more to get to net-zero emissions.

Oh! Ha ha ha ha ha! Get it? We may not be able to fully get rid of emissions from cows or air travel in only 10 years! Ha ha ha!

So the claim was quite possibly a joke, even if no real evidence supports that idea.

But it's all PolitiFact needs to give a Republican a "False" rating and the Democrat no rating at all for saying essentially the same thing.

This style of fact-checking undermines fact checkers' credibility with centrists and conservatives, as well as with discerning liberals.



Afters

There was one more expert PolitiFact cited apart from the two we showed/noted were blatantly partisan.

That was "David Weiskopf, climate policy director for NextGen Climate America."

Here's a snippet from the home page for NextGen Climate America:

So basically neutral, right?

PolitiFact Florida "fact checker" (liberal blogger) Amy Sherman seems to have a special gift for citing groups of experts who skew hilariously left.

PolitiFact and the 'Green New Deal' Fiction Depiction

What if the GOP released a FAQ that gave false or misleading information about the Democrats' "Green New Deal" resolution? Would that be fair game for fact checkers?

We don't see why not.

But what if one of the bill's proponents released a FAQ that gave false or misleading information about the Democrats' "Green New Deal" resolution? Would that be fair game for fact checkers?

For PolitiFact, apparently the answer is "no."

A week after Green New Deal proponent Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez released a FAQ about the proposal on her website, including its supposed proposal to provide "economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work," PolitiFact published a Feb. 12, 2019 article on the Green New Deal that apparently shows that publishers of the false information will not face PolitiFact's "Truth-O-Meter."

PolitiFact toed the line on the media narrative that somehow, some way, incorrect information was published by someone. Okay, it was Ocasio-Cortez's staff, but so what?

We should distinguish the official resolution with some additional documents that were posted and shared by Ocasio-Cortez’s staff around the time the resolution was introduced. Once they became public, portions of these additional documents became grist for ridicule among her critics.

Some critics took aim at a line in one of the FAQs that said "we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes." The same document promised "economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work."

Under normal circumstances, PolitiFact makes politicians accountable for what appears on their official websites.

Are these special circumstances? Why doesn't PolitiFact attribute the false information to Ocasio-Cortez in this case? Are the objective and neutral fact checkers trying to avoid creating a false equivalency by not fact-checking morally-right-but-factually-wrong information on Ocasio-Cortez's website?

A round of Mulligans for everyone!

Many will benefit from PolitiFact's apparent plan to give out "Truth-O-Meter" mulligans over claimed aspects of the Green New Deal resolution not actually in the resolution. Critics of those parts of the plan will not have their attacks rated on the Truth-O-Meter. And those responsible for generating the controversy in the first place by publishing FAQs based on something other than the actual resolution also find themselves off the hook.

Good call by the fact checkers?

We think it shows PolitiFact's failure to equally apply its standards.

A Morally Right Contradiction?

If Ocasio-Cortez's website says the Green New Deal provides economic security for persons unwilling to work but the Green New Deal resolution does not provide economic security for persons unwilling to work, then the resolution contradicts Ocasio-Cortez's claim. That's assuming PolitiFact follows past practice in making politicians accountable for what appears on their websites.

So PolitiFact could have caught Ocasio-Cortez in a contradiction, and could have represented that finding somehow with its rating system.

In January we pointed out how PolitiFact falsely concluded that President Trump had contradicted himself in a tweet. The false finding of a contradiction resulted in a (bogus) "False" rating for Mr. Trump.

What excuse could possibly dress this methodology up as objective and unbiased? What makes a contradictory major policy FAQ unworthy of a rating compared to a non-contradictory presidential tweet?

Guess what? PolitiFact is biased. And we're not going to get coherent and satisfactory answers to our questions so long as PolitiFact insists on presenting itself as objective and unbiased.