PolitiFact, Lauren Carroll, pathetic CYA

With a post on July 1, 2017, we noted PolitiFact's absurdity in keeping the "True" rating on Hillary Clinton's claim that 17 U.S. intelligence agencies "all concluded" that Russia intervened in the U.S. presidential election.

PolitiFact has noticed that not enough people accept 2+2=5, however, so departing PolitiFact writer Lauren Carroll returned within a week with a pathetic attempt to justify her earlier fact check.

This is unbelievable.

Carroll's setup:

Back in October 2016, we rated this statement by then-candidate Hillary Clinton as True: "We have 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin, and they are designed to influence our election."

Many readers have asked us about this rating since the New York Times and Associated Press issued their corrections.

Carroll then repeats PolitiFact's original excuse that since the Director of National Intelligence speaks for all 17 agencies, it somehow follows that 17 agencies "all concluded" that Russia interfered with the U.S. election.

And the punchline (bold emphasis added):

We asked experts again this week if Clinton’s claim was correct or not.

"In the context of a national debate, her answer was a reasonable inference from the DNI statement," Cordero said, emphasizing that the statement said, "The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident" in its assessment.

Aftergood said it’s fair to say the Director of National Intelligence speaks for the intelligence community, but that doesn’t always mean there is unamity across the community, and it’s possible that some organizations disagree.

But in the case of the Russia investigation, there is no evidence of disagreement among members of the intelligence community.

Put simply, either the people who work at PolitiFact are stupid, or else they think you're stupid.

PolitiFact claims it asked its cited experts whether Clinton's claim was correct.

PolitiFact then shares with its readers responses that do not tell them whether the experts think Clinton's claim was correct.

1) "In the context of a national debate, her answer was a reasonable inference from the DNI statement" 

It's one thing to make a reasonable inference. It's another thing whether the inference was true. If a person shows up at your home soaking wet, it may be a reasonable inference that it's raining outside. The inference isn't necessarily correct.

The quotation of Carrie Cordero does not answer whether Clinton's claim was correct.

How does a fact checker not know that?

 2) PolitiFact paraphrases expert Steven Aftergood: "Aftergood said it’s fair to say the Director of National Intelligence speaks for the intelligence community, but that doesn’t always mean there is unamity [sic] across the community, and it’s possible that some organizations disagree."

The paraphrase of Aftergood appears to make our point. Even if the Director of National Intelligence speaks for all 17 agencies it does not follow that all 17 agencies agreed with the finding. Put another way, even if Clinton's inference was reasonable the more recent reports show that it was wrong. The 17 agencies did not all reach the same conclusion independently, contrary to what Clinton implied.

And that's it.

Seriously, that's it.

PolitiFact trots out this absolutely pathetic CYA attempt and expects people to take it seriously?

May it never be.

The evidence from the experts does not support PolitiFact's judgment, yet PolitiFact uses that evidence to support its judgment.

Ridiculous.



Afters

Maybe they'll be able to teach Carroll some logic at UC Berkeley School of Law.



Correction July 7, 2017: Removed an extraneous "the" preceding "PolitiFact" in our first paragraph following our first quotation of PolitiFact.

PolitiFact absurdly keeps "True" rating on false statement from Hillary Clinton

Today we were alerted about a story from earlier this week detailing a New York Times correction.

Heavy.com, from June 30, 2017:

On June 29 The New York Times issued a retraction to an article published on Monday, which originally stated that all 17 intelligence organizations had agreed that Russia orchestrated the hacking. The retraction reads, in part:

The assessment was made by four intelligence agencies — the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community.”

It should be noted that the four intelligence agencies are not retracting their statements about Russia involvement. But all 17 did not individually come to the assessment, despite what so many people insisted back in October.

The same article went on to point out that PolitiFact had rated "True" Hillary Rodham Clinton's claim that 17 U.S. intelligence agencies found Russia responsible for hacking. That despite acknowledging it had no evidence backing the idea that each agency had reached the conclusion based on its own investigation:

Politifact concluded that 17 agencies had, indeed, agreed on this because “the U.S. Intelligence Community is made up of 17 agencies.” However, the 17 agencies had not independently made the assessment, as many believed. Politifact mentioned this in the story, but still said the statement was correct.

We looked up the PolitiFact story in question. Heavy.com presents PolitiFact's reasoning accurately.

It makes for a great example of horrible fact-checking.

Clinton's statement implied each of the 17 agencies made its own finding:

"We have 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin, and they are designed to influence our election."

It's very easy to avoid making that implication: "Our intelligence agencies have concluded ..." Such a phrasing fairly represents a finding backed by a figure representing all 17 agencies. But when Clinton emphasized the 17 agencies "all" reached the same conclusion it implied independent investigations.

PolitiFact ignored that false implication in its original rating and in a June 2017 update to the article in response to information from FBI Director James Clapper's testimony earlier in the year:

The January report presented its findings by saying "we assess," with "we" meaning "an assessment by all three agencies."

The October statement, on the other hand, said "The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident" in its assessment. As we noted in the article, the 17 separate agencies did not independently come to this conclusion, but as the head of the intelligence community, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence speaks on behalf of the group.

We stand by our rating.

PolitiFact's rating was and is preposterous. Note how PolitiFact defines its "True" and "Mostly True" ratings:

TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing.
MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.

It doesn't pass the sniff test to assert that Clinton's claim about "17 agencies" needs no clarification or additional information. We suppose that only a left-leaning and/or unserious fact-checking organization would conclude otherwise.

Another day, another deceptive PolitiFact chart

On election day, PolitiFact helpfully trotted out a set of its misleading "report card" graphs, including an updated version of its comparison between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump.

What is the point of publishing such graphs?

The graphs make an implicit argument to prefer the Democratic Party nominee in the general election. See how much more honest she is! Or, alternatively, see how the Republican tells many falsehoods!

The problem? This is the same PolitiFact deception we have pointed out for years.

The chart amounts to a political ad, making the claim Clinton is more truthful than Trump. But to properly support that conclusion, the underlying data should fairly represent typical political claims from Clinton and Trump--the sort of thing scientific studies capture by randomizing the capture of data.

In the same vein, a scientific study would allow for verification of its ratings. A scientific study would permit this process by using a carefully defined set of ratings. One might then duplicate the results by independently repeating the fact check and reaching the same results.

Yet none of that is possible with these collected "Truth-O-Meter" ratings.

Randomly selected stories aren't likely to grip readers. So editors select the fact-checks to maximize reader interest and/or serve some notion of the public good.

So much for a random sample.

And trying to duplicate the ratings through following objective scientific procedure counts as futile. PolitiFact editor Bill Adair recently confirmed this yet again with the frank admission that "the decision about a Truth-O-Meter rating is entirely subjective."

So much for objectively verifying the results.

PolitiFact passes off graphs of its opinions as though they represent hard data about candidate truthfulness.

This practice ought to offend any conscientious journalist, and that should go double for any conscientious fact-checking journalist.

We have called for PolitiFact to include some type of disclaimer each time it publishes this type of item. Such disclaimers happen only on occasion. The example embedded in this post contains no hint of a disclaimer.

Wonder why Republicans and Trump voters do not trust mainstream media fact-checking?

Take a look in the mirror, PolitiFact.

Adding an annotation to PolitiFact's annotation of the third 2016 presidential debate

Is it news that fact-checkers are far from perfect?

Behold, a screen capture from PolitiFact's annotated version of the third presidential debate, hosted at Medium. PolitiFact says you can't see it unless you follow PolitiFact on Medium. If our readers can't see it without following PolitiFact, then maybe they're right (we have our doubts about that, too):

PolitiFact highlights Trump's claim that Clinton wants open borders. By hovering over an asterisk on the sidebar, a window appears showing PolitiFact's comment. PolitiFact says it rated Trump's claim that Clinton wants open borders "False."

Click on the link and you eventually end up on PolitiFact's web page and PolitiFact's fact check of Trump's claim about wanting open borders, where it is rated "Mostly False."

There's no editor's note announcing a change in the rating, so we assume that no issue of timing excuses PolitiFact for falsely reporting its own finding.

PolitiFact. The best of the best. Right?

Notes on PolitiFact's debate night blogging

It's the night of the third presidential debate, and PolitiFact is doing its so-called fact checking thing.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton says Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is the first major party nominee in 40 years not to release his tax returns. PolitiFact rules this "Mostly True" because there's only one exception out of 22.

Nearly 5 percent of the major party presidential nominees do not release their tax returns over the past 40  years.

That's right. There have been only 22 major-party presidential candidates nominated in the past 40 years. Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama were each nominated twice. So this mighty precedent touches 16 candidates. Saying "40 years" makes it seem like more.

Using 16 nominees for the calculation edges the percentage up over 6 percent.

We're actually a little surprised PolitiFact didn't give Clinton a "True" rating, considering that her claim that she released all her emails was only off by about 30,000 but still received a "Half True" rating.

PolitiFact's presidential "Pants on Fire" bias

PolitiFact Bias has tracked for years a measure of PolitiFact's bias called the "Pants on Fire" bias. The presidential election gives us a fine opportunity to apply this research approach in a new and timely way.

This measure, based on PolitiFact's data, shows PolitiFact's strong preference for Democrat Hillary Clinton over the Republican candidate Donald Trump. When PolitiFact ruled claims from the candidates as false (either "False" or "Pants on Fire"), Trump was 82 percent more likely than Clinton to receive a "Pants on Fire" rating.

Why does this show a bias at PolitiFact? Because PolitiFact offers no objective means of distinguishing between the two ratings. That suggests the difference between the two ratings is subjective. "Pants on Fire" is an opinion, not a finding of fact.

When journalists call Trump's falsehoods "ridiculous" at a higher rate than Clinton's, with no objective principle guiding their opinions, it serves as an expression of bias.

 

How does the "Pants on Fire" bias measure work?

PolitiFact doubles down on deception

Back in May 2016 we pointed out a particularly deceptive fact check from PolitiFact, calling it "Mostly True" that Donald Trump had hoped for the housing crisis that led to the "Great Recession."

Recycled garbage, courtesy of PolitiFact:

It's no surprise to see PolitiFact's deception recycled, as Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton used a similar version of the same line during the first presidential debate, inviting PolitiFact to give her another nearly glowing "Mostly True" rating:

In the opening skirmish of the first presidential debate, Hillary Clinton cast her rival as a man who put his own business interests ahead of the welfare of average Americans."Donald was one of the people who rooted for the housing crisis," Clinton said. "He said back in 2006, ‘Gee, I hope it does collapse because then I can go in and buy some and make some money.’["]

As we explained in our earlier post, Clinton was committing a fallacy of equivocation. The deflation of a housing bubble is not the same thing as a "housing crisis." Clinton erases the distinction between the two to create the appearance Trump hoped for bad times for millions of Americans. Clinton surely knows the difference, so her knowing deception would qualify as a "lie" in the worst sense of the word.

Such a lie PolitiFact rates as "Mostly True." More than once.

Our capture of part of a PolitiFact video shows PolitiFact repeating a similar fallacy of equivocation. What is "the situation"? When Trump was speaking in 2006, "the situation" was the potential for a deflation of the housing bubble. The housing market inflates and deflates in a way parallel to the rise and fall of the stock market. Lower prices attract investors in both cases. But in the video, PolitiFact allows "the situation" to refer to the housing crisis, not the mere deflation of the housing bubble.

What good is a fact checker that cannot sniff out so obvious a lie?

Not much, we would say.

More unprincipled principles from PolitiFact (Updated)

When PolitiFact released its politisplainer video on its fact-checking process, "The PolitiFact Process," we responded with an annotated version of that video. We made one of our key points by contradicting Editor Angie Drobnic Holan's claim that "These ratings are not arbitrary. Each one has a specific definition." We pointed out that PolitiFact's "Truth-O-Meter" definitions are ambiguous, making it impossible for Holan to support her denial that the ratings are arbitrary.

With hardly a week having passed, PolitiFact serves up an example proving our point.

PolitiFact's fact check titled "Hillary Clinton says none of her emails had classification headers," makes a number of its typical mistakes (such as ignoring PolitiFact's "Burden of Proof" principle), but we would draw attention to the conclusion of the piece (bold emphasis added):

Clinton’s carefully worded statement is partially accurate but leaves out important context. For that, we rate her claim Mostly True.

Is the problem obvious?

Let's review PolitiFact's definition of "Mostly True":

MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.

To us, that does not seem like a perfect match for the "Mostly True" rating Clinton received.

What about the definition of "Half True," then?

HALF TRUE – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.

This one is closer, but still not quite a perfect match. Sure, we've got  "partially accurate," "details," and "context" mentioned, but PolitiFact's specific definition mentions "important details or taking things out of context," not the mere absence of "important context."

This 'tweener language underscores a point my co-editor Jeff D. made on Twitter earlier this week:

What is the objective difference between "needs additional information" and "leaves out important details"? pic.twitter.com/llbWqHkeFU

— PolitiFact Bias (@PolitiFactBias) September 6, 2016

Fact checks like this one help illustrate Jeff's point: There is no objective difference between "needs additional information" and "leaves out important details."

PolitiFact can take exactly the same story detail and write the conclusion with a "Mostly True" or "Half True" ending.

In this case, it looks like writer Lauren Carroll (bless her heart) may have recommended a "Half True" rating for Clinton before the story went before PolitiFact's exalted "star chamber" (bless its heart) for a final determination of its "Truth-O-Meter" rating. The group of editors may have wanted a softer rating for Clinton, doubtless in devotion to objectivity and non-partisanship, and so decided on the "Mostly True" rating. Then Carroll presumably did an incomplete revision of the concluding paragraph.

We could be wrong in our hypothesis, of course, but there's little doubt the conclusion Carroll attached jibes better with a "Half True" rating than the "Mostly True" rating Clinton gets on her PolitiFact report card (bless its heart).

In the end, we get a timely example supporting our point that Angie Drobnic Holan spoke falsely when she claimed PolitiFact's ratings are not arbitrary.

Afters:

While it should not surprise us at all if the wrong rating description stays in the story (like it did for PolitiFact fact check of Mitt Romney), it's possible PolitiFact will "fix" this problem by changing the description of the rating to match the definition of "Mostly True."

That change would not truly fix the problem nor blunt our point.

Why?

Because unless the facts of the story change no justification exists for changing the rating or its description. Changing the wording of the rating description does not alter the facts of the story.



Correction Sept. 8, 2016 6:30 p.m. EDT:
In the first paragraph of the "Afters" section, changed "Half True" to "Mostly True" to match the intent of the sentence.


 
Update Sept. 8, 2016 (6:30 p.m. EDT):

Jeff hinted to PolitiFact's Katie Sanders, the editor of the story, that something was amiss:

Hi @KatieLSanders! Can you plz clarify why you gave Clinton a Mostly True but had definition of a Half True rating? https://t.co/f7n9kbq8sf

— PolitiFact Bias (@PolitiFactBias) September 8, 2016

So far as I can tell, we received no clarification why Clinton's claim received a "Mostly True" rating with the "Half True" definition. We see no other difference in the story, and PolitiFact mentions no other changes in its editor's note.

How did the definition of "Half True" get into a fact check making the finding of "Mostly True"? That's the kind of transparency you don't normally get from PolitiFact.

"Trump Effect" reveals PolitiFact as mindless partisans

Need proof that PolitiFact is staffed and run by mindless partisans? Read on.

PolitiFact thoroughly butchered the truth with a fact check of one of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's claims last week. Clinton said parents and teachers were complaining of a "Trump Effect" in our schools. The "Trump Effect" described by Clinton involved a rise in bullying and harassment targeting "students of color, Muslims, and immigrants.”

Clinton used a survey report from the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center as evidence supporting her statement. PolitiFact rated Clinton's claim "Mostly True," despite the fact that the report offered no real support for the claim. I fisked the report and PolitiFact's fact check with an article at Zebra Fact Check.

The final point in that article leads to some strong evidence of PolitiFact's liberal tilt. I charged that PolitiFact used a different standard for Clinton's claim about the "Trump Effect" than it used for a recent claim Trump made about rising crime.

PolitiFact's wildly different approaches to the two claims make a great case that PolitiFact allows liberal bias to influence its work. Given the likely role of bias in slanting the fact-check, I elected to expand on the point here at PolitiFact Bias.

Parallel Statistical Claims

Trump said crime is rising, and implicitly placed blame on the Obama administration.

Clinton said, by implication, that bullying and harassment are on the rise in our schools and placed explicit blame on Trump's campaign.

PolitiFact's eye-grabbing presentations

Supporting Evidence?

FBI crime statistics supported Trump's claim with respect to violent crime, and a number of newspaper articles directly supported that aspect of Trump's claim.

The only data supporting Clinton's claim came from a small number of anecdotes (less than 100) collected from a biased sample of teachers.

PolitiFact's interpretation of the claims

PolitiFact decided Trump was claiming the rise in crime was a trend and not simply an anomalous bump (we are unable to detect the evidence that helped PolitiFact make that determination).

PolitiFact made no suggestion that Clinton was claiming a trend.

PolitiFact's approach to the evidence

In Trump's case, PolitiFact used data from 2014 and before to judge Trump's 2016 claim that crime is rising. PolitiFact for some reason did not consider preliminary data from 2015 that supported Trump's claim with respect to violent crime.

In Clinton's case, PolitiFact ignored evidence of dropping school bullying and harassment prior to 2016 to focus on the evidence available from 2016: A handful of anecdotes. It's worth noting that one of the experts PolitiFact cited in its Clinton fact check says no real consensus exists on the reliability of bullying/harassment metrics.

PolitiFact reaches its conclusions

On Trump:

If you look at overall violent and property crimes -- the only categories that would seem inclusive enough to qualify as "crime," as Trump put it -- he is flat wrong. In fact, crime rates have been falling almost without fail for roughly a quarter-century. We rate his claim Pants on Fire.

The Trump addendum (after critics pointed out PolitiFact ignored data from 2015):

While the preliminary data shows spikes in crime rates in some cities, Trump’s statement was broad, without qualifiers, and it came amid comments that painted an overarching image of a nation in decline. Trump didn’t say that crime was rising "recently" or "in recent months" or "over the past year" or "in some places."

PolitiFact kept its "Pants on Fire" rating for Trump in spite of the supporting evidence.

On Clinton:

The term Trump Effect is a product of the survey’s authors. And the survey is unscientific because it's based on anecdotal reports. But experts in bullying told us the Southern Poverty Law Center’s survey and their sense of current trends in schools supports Clinton’s point.

PolitiFact's artistic license

The Trump and Clinton claims differ in that Trump's claim lacks specifics. As we see in the Trump addendum above,  PolitiFact takes what Trump did not say as its license to interpret the "crime is rising" claim as a broad trend instead of a observation supported by contemporary news reports--news reports PolitiFact did not bother to mention in its own reporting.

The two claims also differ in that Trump flatly stated crime was rising while Clinton implied it by attributing it to "parents and teachers." Would PolitiFact have been forced to give Trump a "Mostly True" rating if he had said "Newspapers are reporting crime is rising"?

We deeply doubt it. PolitiFact would assuredly have focused on the point Trump was implying, that crime is rising, not on the mere fact that newspapers were reporting it. Maybe Trump could have raised his rating all the way up to "False" with that rephrasing?

Yet if Trump had used that phrasing, we would have an extremely close parallel between the two claims. Both politicians would imply a statistical trend. But only Trump would have widely-accepted data to partially support his claim. Clinton would not, the alleged opinions of PolitiFact's experts notwithstanding.

The blame game?

 In Trump's case, the "Pants on Fire" ruling canceled any need to deal with Obama's responsibility for rising crime. If crime isn't rising, obviously Obama is not at all to blame for rising crime.

But what about that "Trump Effect" that parents and teachers are worried about? Is the "Trump Effect" Trump's fault if a handful of teachers say it is?

PolitiFact opted to simply drop the issue of causation in Clinton's case. Clinton was able to explicitly blame implicitly rising harassment ("Mostly True") on Trump without any consequences from PolitiFact.

Conclusion

PolitiFact's inconsistency favors the left. See the "Afters" section for even more evidence of the same.

Afters: The needs of the "many"

PolitiFact's hard-left defense of Clinton contained another notable inconsistency involving a comparison to a different fact check of Donald Trump.

PolitiFact exaggerated the survey evidence supposedly supporting Clinton by claiming "many" teachers blamed Trump for increasing bullying and harassment:

Many of these teachers, unsolicited, cited Trump’s campaign rhetoric and the accompanying discourse as the likely reason for this behavior.

The Zebra Fact Check investigation suggests PolitiFact was misled about the number of teachers saying Trump was responsible for increasing bullying or harassment. Out of almost 2,000 teachers participating in the survey, 849 answered the question about bullying or biased language and of those 123 mentioned Trump. A fraction of those placed any kind of blame on Trump for anything. We would generously estimate that 25 teachers blamed Trump for something (not necessarily bullying or harassment) in answering that question. This implies that, to PolitiFact, "many" can be less than 1.25 percent of 2,000.

Yet when Donald Trump said "many" of the celebrities supporting Hillary Clinton weren't so hot lately, PolitiFact offered no hint that it would allow the bar to be set so low:

Trump has a point that out of hundreds of celebrities endorsing Clinton, some have faded.

Whether Trump had a point or not, PolitiFact rated his claim "Mostly False."

Not bothering to actually fact check whether "many" (l.25 percent?) of Clinton's Hollywood supporters aren't so hot lately seems to be the key to the "Mostly False" rating.

We invite readers to do the fact-checking PolitiFact apparently did not do: Count how "many" teachers blamed Trump for an increase in minority-targeted bullying in their schools. But don't tell PolitiFact what you find. Make them do their own research.

Why PolitiFact flip-flopped on Clinton

We've dedicated two items to PolitiFact's "Half True" gift to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on her claim she never sent or received classified information via her primate email account.

First we argued that PolitiFact's defense of its "Half True" rating made no sense following FBI Director James Comey's statement on July 5.

PolitiFact, whether influenced by our post or not, apparently agreed and reversed itself the next day while erasing nearly all the evidence of its embarrassing decision from the day before.

We, namely Jeff D, responded to PolitiFact's reversal by documenting the evidence that PolitiFact had continued its habit of changing stories without posting correction notices.

We have addressed what happened. Now we will consider why it happened.

A stupid idea whose time has come

It was just plain stupid of PolitiFact to say that it could not change Clinton's "Half True" rating in view of its policy of doing its ratings according to information available at the time (bold emphasis added):

(After this fact-check published, FBI Director James Comey released details of the Feb's investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. This claim will remain rated Half True, because we base our rulings on when a statement was made and on the information available at that time. But the FBI investigation clearly undercuts Clinton’s defense if she makes a similar claim again. You can read more about the findings of the FBI investigation here.)

Applying that policy as PolitiFact did as described above could justify avoiding any number of corrections. Did an article misuse a word? Sure, but we're not going to correct it because we did not know any better at the time.

Yes, it's silly. But it beyond likely that a group of PolitiFact's editors agreed, at least for a time, that it was the right thing to do for this Clinton fact check.

Why the do-over?

PolitiFact reversed itself pretty quickly. But what kind of impetus could reverse the considered wisdom of PolitiFact's elite editorial group?

We'll consider some possibilities:

• A trusted figure condemned PolitiFact's defense of its "Half True" rating

This option seems the most likely. But PolitiFact's lack of transparency about its reversal leaves us in the dark as to whether anybody inside the organization was independent enough to rock the boat.

Alternatively, the editors at PolitiFact may have felt distress that they were out of step with the Washington Post Fact Checker. The Post promptly changed its rating of Clinton's email claim from two Pinocchios to four. Despite their claims of independence, the mainstream fact checkers can't avoid seeing each others' work and doubtless feel pressure to make similar findings of fact.

• PolitiFact changed because of our criticisms?

We condemned PolitiFact's reasoning and explained what was wrong with it before PolitiFact executed its reversal. However, it's not typical for PolitiFact to agree with and act on our criticisms.

• "Lie of the Year" implications

PolitiFact horribly embarrassed itself with the 2014 "Lie of the Year." President Obama's promise that people could keep their insurance plans under his health care reform bill took the award, or at least PolitiFact tried to make it look that way, despite the fact that PolitiFact never rated the claim worse than "Half True."

Clinton's email fib easily qualifies as the early leader in the "Lie of the Year" sweepstakes. It's high-profile. It was deeply investigated by the FBI. It carries yuge implications for the 2016 election.

Did PolitiFact belatedly realize that it might have another Democratic claim rated "Half True" winning the Lie of the Year award? Two words: bad optics.

Conclusion

We don't know for sure why PolitiFact acted the way it did. We can only offer some possibilities. But one thing is certain. PolitiFact has not acted like a fact checker in this. It has acted like it loves its own reputation better than it loves the truth.

The Cover Your Butt Cover Up: PolitiFact's Stealth Edits and Incoherent Defense of Hillary Clinton

PolitiFact's recent treatment of the Hillary Clinton email scandal has been busy and bizarre. PolitiFact issued a "Half True" rating on a Clinton claim, the FBI director poked holes in PolitiFact's story, PolitiFact stood by its "Half True" rating, then hours later reversed itself and issued a new fact check calling Clinton's claim false.

Timeline:

-July 3: A fact check by PolitiFact writer Lauren Carroll rates Clinton's claim that she "never received nor sent any material that was marked classified" on her private email server Half True (original version at the Internet Archive).

-July 5: FBI Director James Comey issues a statement effectively refuting Clinton's claims and exposing her outright falsehoods regarding the email scandal.

-July 5: After Comey's statement, PolitiFact publishes an update by Carroll laying out Comey's evidence and explaining how it undermines Clinton's claims. Despite this, Carroll says there will be no changes and affirms the original "Half True" rating.

-July 6: PolitiFact and Carroll publish an entirely new fact check on the same claim, this time rating Clinton False. PolitiFact archives a version of the "Half True" fact check.

Each iteration of Carroll's reporting has problems, so we'll address them in order:

Original July 3 Half True Fact Check:

Carroll is Clintonian in her defense of Clinton, weaving a web of wordsmithing to determine it's "Half True" Clinton did not send or receive any emails marked as classified. One of the several problems with Carroll's fact check troubles us the most:

Carroll's conclusion ignores Catherine Herridge's report last month that Clinton did in fact send an email marked classified. Carroll also fails to enlighten readers by explaining whether Clinton's emails were marked classified is moot to the overall implications of the scandal.

Carroll goes on to assert that "There is no evidence Clinton knowingly sent or received classified information" (emphasis mine). What Carroll fails to tell PolitiFact readers is that in a widely reported email exchange Clinton herself explicitly instructs an aide to intentionally remove classified markings from information before sending it to her via nonsecure methods. (1)

Apparently for PolitiFact, it's not misleading to intentionally remove classified markings and then say you didn't receive anything marked classified as a defense.


July 5 Update:

After FBI Director James Comey's "wowza" revelations, Carroll writes an update covering Comey's press conference. Like Comey, PolitiFact acknowledges Clinton's deceit. Also like Comey, PolitiFact declines to do anything about it. In light of all the evidence, PolitiFact insists Clinton's claim would remain rated "Half True."

The justification for keeping the "Half True" rating was indefensible if not incoherent (red box added for emphasis):

Again, the evidence available at the time indicated Clinton was lying. But even if we assume Comey released some new bombshell evidence, PolitiFact's excuse doesn't make sense. I pointed out on Twitter that PolitiFact's explanation seems to be that since PolitiFact didn't know Hillary Clinton was lying when she lied, she's telling the truth.

 

Clinton lied, and after Comey's statement even PolitiFact was forced to acknowledge that Clinton's claim was false, but since PolitiFact didn't have the evidence that Clinton was lying on July 3, it's a "fact" that Clinton's claim was half true. Or something.

There's circumstances where it may be legitimate to base a rating on information available at the time a claim was made, but in this case PolitiFact allows Clinton to benefit from her own deceit. Bryan pointed out in a post criticizing the update just how absurd Carroll's explanation was:

Clinton...had the very best position available to know whether she sent or received emails marked as classified. She had every reason to know the truth back in 2009-2013 as she served as secretary of state...Apparently the only reason PolitiFact gave Clinton credit for a half-truth is because Clinton lied.

Carroll's justification for keeping the rating "Half True" shows just how far PolitiFact will go to avoid giving Clinton an unfavorable rating. For PolitiFact, even acknowledging Clinton lied wasn't enough to give her a "False" rating.


July 6th False Fact Check:

The day after Comey's damaging press conference, PolitiFact scrubs its original "Half True" fact check from its website, and publishes an entirely new fact check on the exact same claim, this time rating it "False."

So what happened between PolitiFact's update and the new "False" rating? (Red box added for emphasis)

PolitiFact's justification for the new rating is at odds with its July 5 update.

Note that "the evidence FBI director James Comey presented" was cited by PolitiFact when they refused to change the Half True rating the day before! Now PolitiFact says it is the sole reason for issuing a "False" rating. Which is it?

That same evidence "was available to Clinton through her own emails" when PolitiFact rated it "Half True" in the first place.

The evidence has been available to Clinton the entire time she's been telling the lie.

We asked Lauren Carroll to explain the discrepancy on Twitter but she ignored us, as usual.

(We asked from my personal Twitter account as Carroll (like PolitiFact editors Angie Holan and Bill Adair) has blocked our PolitiFactBias account.) 

How can PolitiFact reconcile the new False fact check with Carroll's update refusing to change the "Half True" rating from the day before? 

The Cover Up:

The link to Carroll's original July 3rd Half True rating goes here. If you click through, you'll see the story has been replaced by PolitiFact's default Sorry, this page is not found Etch-a-Sketch gag PolitiFact uses when it deletes a story.


Not only is this error page partisan snark directed at Mitt Romney, it also facetiously implies a technical problem as opposed to PolitiFact intentionally deleting an article from the web.

(PolitiFact's original "Half True" rating can be found here. To PolitiFact's credit, the new "False" version of the story does link to an archived (but edited) version of the "Half True" rating.)

But what about Carroll's update from July 5, the one posted after Comey's press conference? Here's the key passage (red box added for emphasis):

Check out how that passage reads now (red box added for emphasis):

It seems that the way to reconcile PolitiFact's "False" rating with Carroll's update affirming the "Half True" rating is to simply delete it from the Web and hope nobody notices.

The change is a complete 180. The first version contradicts the second. It's also incongruous (They're changing the rating to "False," but the investigation undercuts her defense if she makes the claim again?)

There is no editor's note acknowledging the change. There is no update, no notice, no explanation indicating a change has been made.

This is a stealth edit. It deceives their readers. It's unethical journalism.

And PolitiFact does it all the time.

Think Carroll and her editors accidentally forgot to add a note indicating a change? What about the time a disingenuous liberal talking point about the Hobby Lobby decision was scrubbed out of a fact check without notice?

Is it possible the above stealth edit was the result of a misguided intern? The story was written by PolitiFact Deputy Editor Louis Jacobson, and edited by Senior Editor Angie Holan. Those are the two senior most writers at PolitiFact. Holan and Jacobson are the most influential at PolitiFact and one would think should know better. We asked Jacobson about PolitiFact's policy on stealth edits, and also brought this edit to his attention without ever getting a response.

Even minor errors are too much for PolitiFact to admit screwing up:

Sometimes the errors can be inaccurate by orders of magnitude, but no editors note, or even a change in rating is made. Bryan caught an example of this just last month and wrote about it:

A key figure in the story changed from $7.5 billion to $1.7 billion. Koster's exaggeration, by percentage, went from 20 percent to 429 percent. The new version of the story carries no correction notice, and the rating remains "Mostly True."

The reality is that PolitiFact routinely uses deceptive and opaque editing techniques to alter their stories after they've been published. So much so that we created a search tag for it: Now you see it - Now you Don't.

Much of PolitiFact's inconsistency and faulty reasoning can be attributed to their political bias or incompetence. But PolitiFact's routine use of stealth edits is inexcusable and unethical. Any reputable journalist should be embarrassed by such shenanigans, but PolitiFact has a long history of using them while also refusing to own up when they're caught red-handed.

PolitiFact embodies the disingenuousness they make their living accusing others of having. PolitiFact engages in the same type of deceptions it claims to expose.

PolitiFact is a dishonest and untrustworthy actor in the world of journalism. Their work should be recognized as the partisan hackery it is and disavowed as a reputable source.



Notes:
(1) It's possible there's a procedural argument to be made that, as the result of an executive order, Clinton had the authority to declassify information in very specific and narrow circumstances (including in the above mentioned case.) In any event, Clinton's defense that an email was not marked classified when she was the one directing it's declassification for the express purpose of sending it over nonsecure methods is grossly misleading.

PolitiFact's Hillary hilarity

PolitiFact's Pretzel of Play-Doh Principles

FBI Director James Comey's announcement on July 5, 2016 made clear that former secretary of state Hillary Clinton gave false reports of her handling of top secret and sensitive emails.

That created a problem for PolitiFact. PolitiFact had rated "Half True" Clinton's claim that she neither sent or received email marked as classified--at least not marked that way when it was sent. And PolitiFact just issued that rating on July 3, 2016 (Update July 7, 2016: PolitiFact has deleted the original story from its site, so find the archived version here).

Time for some steam-shoveled CYABS, courtesy of PolitiFact.

A scant two days later Lauren Carroll, yes the same Lauren Carroll from screen-captured byline, published an explanation of sorts, along the same lines as the editor's note that now accompanies the original story:

(After this fact-check published, FBI Director James Comey released details of the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. This claim will remain rated Half True, because we base our rulings on when a statement was made and on the information available at that time. But the FBI investigation clearly undercuts Clinton’s defense if she makes a similar claim again. You can read more about the findings of the FBI investigation here.)

Since we're talking about PolitiFact, "clearly undercuts" means if PolitiFact knew three days earlier what we all know now, Clinton would have received a mere "Mostly False" rating.

Let's expose the BS for what it is.

Note that PolitiFact declares that Clinton's false claim from July 3 will keep its "Half True" rating. PolitiFact invokes one of its Play-Doh principles to justify the decision:

Timing – Our rulings are based on when a statement was made and on the information available at that time.

We imagine the justification may appear legitimate to some. It is not legitimate.

It's reasonable to base a ruling on information available at the time when somebody makes a claim like Ann Hathaway affirming "the majority of Americans now support gay marriage." Obviously a fact checker can't judge the truth of that statement based on a poll published after the claim was made. Or on a poll where the findings were within the margin of error. Well, PolitiFact did both, but our readers get the point: How could Ann Hathaway justify her claim ahead of the poll, assuming its results were outside the margin of error? If it takes two years after her statement for the majority to occur, should we expect fact-checkers to make corrections at that late date? No. That would be silly. And it's almost as silly three days later.

The case with Clinton is far different.

Hathaway could not have a justified belief that a majority favored gay marriage back on March 15, 2011. PolitiFact could have justified calling Hathaway's claim false (it received a "Mostly True" rating).

Clinton, in contrast, had the very best position available to know whether she sent or received emails marked as classified. She had every reason to know the truth back in 2009-2013 as she served as secretary of state.

Clinton's is not the sort of case where PolitiFact's timing issue makes sense. The fact was established weeks ago that Clinton received classified emails. Apparently the only reason PolitiFact gave Clinton credit for a half-truth is because Clinton lied. The excuse occurs in Lauren Carroll's PolitiSplaining:

"I never received nor sent any material that was marked classified," Clinton said July 2, after Clinton was interviewed by the FBI as part of its investigation. "And there is a process for the review of material before it is released to the public, and there were decisions made that material should be classified. I do call that retroactively classifying."

Clinton’s statements like this left open the question of whether she sent or received classified information that was inappropriately left unlabeled — or that Clinton, as head of the department, failed to recognize and deal with information that should have been classified. Because of that obfuscation, we rated her claim Half True.

See, the evidence said Clinton's claim was false, but Clinton insisted it was true, obfuscating the facts. So PolitiFact had to give Clinton a "Half True" because of the obfuscation.

Got it?

The "Timing" principle makes up only half  of PolitiFact's pretzel of Play-Doh principles. PolitiFact has another (ill-advised, in our opinion) principle relevant to this case:

Burden of proof – People who make factual claims are accountable for their words and should be able to provide evidence to back them up. We will try to verify their statements, but we believe the burden of proof is on the person making the statement.

How does that principle work in practice? Ask Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Reid, while serving as Senate Majority Leader, accused 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney of not paying any taxes. PolitiFact found no evidence to support Reid's claim and so rated it "Pants on Fire." PolitiFact did not have access to Romney's tax returns showing that Reid was wrong. Rather, PolitiFact used the opinions of tax experts to decide the question.

Don't ask us why Reid's insistence he was right failed to net him a "Half True." Sometimes PolitiFact is so unfair.

The burden of proof principle should have applied in Clinton's case. Was there evidence supporting Clinton's claim? The only way to know was to have access to Clinton's emails. But Clinton made sure that happened only in part. PolitiFact ended up having to take Clinton at her word to give her that "Half True" rating.

In conclusion, don't buy PolitiFact's BS that it's basing the enduring "Half True" for Clinton on some type of real principle. Even if the wording of the principles doesn't change, the principles change in meaning to fit the need of the moment.

It's the type of thing that gives fact-checking, and PolitiFact, a bad name.



Updated this item July 6, 2016 with some grammar and formatting tweaks. 

Mark of the Least: PolitiFact Avoids Hillary's Most Damaging Lies

Pictures of last night ended up online, I'm screwed. OH WELL!

Yeah I think we broke the law, always say we're gonna stop...

This Friday night do it all again. 

-Katy Perry

This Tuesday, PolitiBlogger Lauren Carroll did me the favor of making my prediction come true, thus cementing my status as the world's least daring fortune teller.

Carroll's post helped PolitiFact readers sort out the truth of a mystery that CNN, Reuters, NBC, AP, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Politico had already confirmed and reported on extensively a week before PolitiFact even touched it. 

Carroll offered up this lame excuse:

We haven’t yet put the issue on the Truth-O-Meter because there were too many unknowns.

Carroll explains the IG report was the smoking gun they finally needed to put Hillary to the scientific rigors of the Truth-O-Meter.

Carroll failed in "sorting out the truth" of what she was sorting out the truth of.

Readers didn't benefit in any way by PolitiFact's delayed press time. Carroll's post didn't include any exclusive or developing details that weren't already reported on by much more popular journalism outlets the week before. Carroll only succeeded in regurgitating a widely known story, included a weak defense for ignoring it earlier, then slapped a gimmicky "Truth-O-Meter" graphic on it.

Carroll continued:

But the inspector general’s report has clarified some of those unknowns and demonstrated that Clinton’s exclusive use of personal email was, in fact, not allowed.

We've known for years Clinton's exclusive use of a personal email account violates State Department policy. Who does Carroll think she's fooling? Here's the source:

First of all, the State Department’s policy as of 2005 (Clinton joined in 2009) is that all day-to-day operations are to be conducted on the official State Department information channel. Clinton never once used this State Department email system.

The quotation comes from Carroll herself. As far back as March, 2013 it was reported that Clinton was exclusively using her personal email account for government business, contrary to State Department policy. PolitiFact is just figuring this out now? The IG report didn't confirm Clinton's email impermissibility so much as it reiterated it.

Carroll's excuse that there wasn't enough information doesn't pass the laugh test.

And what spared Clinton from the dreaded "Pants on Fire" rating? On Twitter, I asked both PolitiFact and Carroll herself what objective criteria they used to determine Clinton's claim was false, but not ridiculously false (That's the only difference between a False and Pants on Fire rating, as Bryan explains here.)

Neither responded so we're left to assume Clinton's repeated, years long, blatant lie wasn't too offensive to the political sensibilities of PolitiFact staff. It's false, they admit, but not ridiculous.

Finally, we have the issue of selection bias. It's arguable that of all the sordid details of Clinton's private email practices, her lie that it was "allowed" is arguably the least politically damaging to her. Breaking a few rules for convenience is hardly something most Americans would become outraged over, especially when so many are dealing with voluminous and complicated email work rules themselves. A partisan may even be able to paint Clinton in a sympathetic light if all she did was use the wrong email.

Rating Clinton's "allowed" lie is almost as helpful as that other time PolitiFact dipped a tepid toe into the Clinton email scandal. In that case they informed readers that Hillary Clinton was not under investigation. Instead, the FBI was investigating her email server, an inanimate object.

Why not check this Clinton whopper?

“There is no classified marked information on those emails, sent or received by me." 

No need for an IG report here. That claim was demonstrably false when she made the claim. (Nor has PolitiFact provided so much as an "In Context" article to explain it's irrelevant if Top Secret information was marked or not.)

Oddly enough PolitiFact editors don't see any news value in determining if Clinton put American lives at risk by failing to protect our most valuable secrets. That's why you won't see it rated on the Truth-O-Meter.

Besides, it seems that Carroll has stayed busy trying to sort out the truth of much more important things.

PolitiFact isn't holding anyone accountable. They're pushing narratives based on their own political inclinations. And politicians that lie will do it all again.





Edits: 
0638 PST 6/3/2016: Fixed various text formatting errors. Deleted duplicate final sentence in antepenultimate paragraph. -Jeff
0840 PST 6/4/2016 While fixing formatting errors the text "Oddly enough PolitiFact editors don't see any news value in determining if" was inadvertently deleted in antepenultimate paragraph. It has been restored. -Jeff  

Hot Air: "Even lefty PolitiFact calls Hillary a liar over email scam"

Great minds think alike?

Hot Air's Larry O'Connor served up a healthy dollop of scathing PolitiFact criticism earlier today, treading much of the same territory the PolitiFact Bias twitter account (Jeff's baby) has covered recently: PolitiFact is behind the curve on detecting Hillary Clinton's email falsehoods.

O'Connor's best punches shadow those our own Twitter pugilist, Jeff:

Why is PolitiFact “fact-checking” Clinton’s “It was allowed” statement from 5 days ago? It makes it sound like she just made this remark and PolitiFact is “Johnny on the spot” with the truth.

Oh please.

Jeff's been pummelling PolitiFact over its foot-dragging for weeks. Months, even.

(O)nly now does PolitiFact decide to sneak a “fact-check” out to attempt to maintain a tad bit of credibility.

Don’t fall for it.

Exactly.

Visit Hot Air and read the whole thing. And/or follow @PolitiFactBias on Twitter.




Edits 6/1/2016 1306 PST: Fixed link in first paragraph. Added links to tweets in 5th graph. -Jeff

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.

PolitiFact's partisan correlation correlation

The co-founder and co-editor of PolitiFact Bias, Jeff D, noted this outstanding example of PolitiFact's inconsistency. Jeff's a bit too busy to write up the example and so granted me that honor.

The problem Jeff noted has to do with PolitiFact's treatment of factual correlations. A correlation occurs when two things happen near the same time. When the correlation occurs regularly, it is often taken as a sign of causation. We infer that one of the things causes the other in some way.

Correlation, however, is not a proof of causation. PolitiFact recognizes that fact, as we can see from the explanation offered in a fact check of Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick (R-Texas):

Lott’s study shows a 25 percent decrease in murder and violent crime across the country from 2007 to 2014, as well as a 178 percent rise in the number of concealed-carry permits. Those two trends may be correlated, but experts say there’s no evidence showing causation. Further, gun laws may have little to nothing to do with rates of falling crime.

PolitiFact ruled Patrick's statement "Mostly False," perhaps partly because Patrick emphasized open carry while Lott's research dealt with concealed-carry.

PolitiFact also noted that correlation does not equal causation while evaluating a claim from Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Clinton said recessions happen much more often under Republican presidents:

The numbers back up Clinton’s claim since World War II: Of the 49 quarters in recession since 1947, eight occurred under Democrats, while 41 occurred under Republicans.

It’s important to note, however, that many factors contribute to general well-being of the economy, so one shouldn’t treat Clinton’s implication -- that Democratic presidencies are better for the economy -- with irrational exuberance.

Okay, maybe PolitiFact was a little stronger with its warning that correlation does not necessarily indicate causation while dealing with the Republican. But that doesn't necessarily mean that PolitiFact gave Clinton a better rating than Patrick.

Clinton's claim received a "Mostly True" rating, by the way.

Was Patrick's potentially faulty emphasis on open carry the reason he fared worse with his rating? We can't rule it out as a contributing factor, though PolitiFact wasn't quite crystal clear in communicating how it justified the rating. On the other hand, Clinton left out details from the research supporting her claim, such as the fact that the claim applied to the period since 1947. We see no evidence PolitiFact counted that against her.

Perhaps this comparison is best explained via biased coin tosses.


Post-publication note: We'll be looking at PolitiFact's stories on causation narratives to see if there's a partisan pattern in their ratings.

 

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?