Busted: PolitiFact catches Nikki Haley using hyperbole without a license

Some things never change.

Among those things, apparently, is PolitiFact's tradition of taking Republican hyperbole literally.

Case in point:

The hyperbole should have been easy to spot based on the context.

Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley appeared on Fox News' "Hannity" show with host Sean Hannity.




Transcript ours (starting at about 2:12):

Do you agree with, uh, listen I've always liked General Petraeus. He's a great, great general, hero, patriot in this country. He said it's impossible to overstate the importance of this particular action. It's more significant than the killing of bin Laden, even the death of al Baghdadi. And he said Soleimani was the architect, operational commander of the Iranian effort to solidify control of the so-called Shia Crescent stretching from Iran to Iraq through Syria and southern Lebanon. I think that's the reason why Jordanians, Egyptians and Saudis are now working with the Israelis, which I don't think anybody saw coming.

NH
Well, and I'll tell you this: You don't see anyone standing up for Iran. You're not hearing any of the Gulf members, you're not hearing China, you're not hearing Russia. The only ones mourning the loss of Soleimani are our Democrat leadership. And our Democrat presidential candidates. No one else in the world, because they knew that this man had evil veins. They knew what he was capable of and they saw the destruction and, and the lives lost (based?) from his hand. And so--

SH
What a dumb (?). We've been hearing "Oh, he's evil, he's a murderer he killed Americans and he, this is the No. 1 state sponsor of terror and they're fighting all these proxy wars but we don't want to make 'em mad." That's what it sounds like to me.

NH
You know, and you go tell that to the 608 American families who lost a loved one. Go tell that to the military members who lost a limb. This was something that needed to be done and should be celebrated. And I'll tell you right now, partisan politics should stop when it comes to foreign policy. This is about America united. We need to be completely behind the president, what he did, because every one of those countries are watching our news media right now seeing what everyone's saying. And this is a moment of strength for the United States. It's a moment of strength from President Trump.

Haley's "mourning" comment comes after her emphasis Iran received no support ("You don't see anyone standing up for Iran") regarding the killing of Soleimani. So it makes very good sense to take "mourning" as a hyperbolic amplification of that point.

Hannity's response to Haley's comment came in the same vein, in fact mocking Democrats who acknowledged Soleimani got what he deserved while questioning the wisdom of the move.

PolitiFact could legitimately check to see if world leaders offered statements much in the same vein leading Democrats offered. Instead of doing that, PolitiFact used a wooden-literal interpretation of Haley's remarks as a basis for its fact check.

How do mistakes like this (and these) make it past PolitiFact's exalted "Star Chamber" of experienced fact check editors?

Could be bias.

PolitiFact: The true half of Cokie Roberts' half truth is President Trump's half truth

Pity PolitiFact.

The liberal bloggers at PolitiFact may well see themselves as neutral and objective. If they see themselves that way, they are deluded.

Latest example:

PolitiFact's Aug. 3, 2019 fact check of President Trump finds he correctly said the homicide rate in Baltimore is higher than in some countries with a significant recent history of violence. But it wasn't fair of Trump to compare a city to a country for a variety of reasons, experts said.

So "Half True," PolitiFact said.

The problem?

Here at PolitiFact Bias we apparently remember what PolitiFact has done in the past better than PolitiFact remembers it. We remembered PolitiFact giving (liberal) pundit Cokie Roberts a "Half True" for butchering a comparison of the chance of being murdered in New York City compared to Honduras.

Roberts was way off on her numbers (to the point of being flatly false about them, we would say), but because she was right that the chance of getting murdered is greater in Honduras than in New York City, PolitiFact gave Roberts a "Half True" rating.

We think if Roberts' numbers are wrong (false) and her comparison is "Half True" because it isn't fair to compare a city to a country then Roberts seems to deserve a "Mostly False" rating.

That follows if PolitiFact judges Roberts by the same standard it applies to Mr. Trump.

But who are we kidding?

PolitiFact often fails to apply its standards consistently. Republicans and conservatives tend to receive the unfair harm from that inconsistency. Mr. Trump, thanks in part to his earned reputation for hyperbole and inaccuracy, tends to receive perhaps more unfair harm than anybody else.

It is understandable that fact checkers allow confirmation bias to influence their ratings of Mr. Trump.

It's also fundamentally unfair.

We think fact checkers should do better.

PolitiFact's Inconsistency on True-But-Misleading Factoids

People commonly mislead other people using the truth. Fact checkers have recognized this with various kinds of "True but False" designations. But the fact checkers tend to stink at applying consistent rules to the "True but False" game by creating examples in the "True but False but True" genre.

PolitiFact created a classic in the "True but False" genre for Sarah Palin (John McCain's pick for vice presidential nominee) years ago. Palin made a true statement about how U.S. military spending ranks worldwide as a measure of GDP. PolitiFact researched the ways in which that truth misled people and gave Palin a "Mostly False" rating.

On July 29, 2019, PolitiFact gave a great example of the "True but False but True" genre with a fact check of a tweet by Alex Cole (side note: This one goes on the report card for "Tweets" instead of a report card for "Alex Cole"):

PolitiFact rated Cole's tweet "Mostly True." But the tweet has the same kind of misleading features that led PolitiFact to give Palin a "Mostly False" rating in the example above. PolitiFact docked Palin for daring to compare U.S. defense spending as a percentage of GDP to very small countries as well as those experiencing strife.

But who thinks the deficit at the start and end of an administration serves as a good measure of party fiscal discipline?

Yet that's the argument in Cole's tweet, and it gets a near-total pass from PolitiFact.

Reagan took the deficit from 70 billion to 175 billion.
Bush 41 took it to 300 billion.
Clinton got it to zero.
Bush 43 took it from 0 to 1.2 trillion.
Obama halved it to 600 billion.
Trump’s got it back to a trillion.

Morons: “Democrats cause deficits.”

— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) July 23, 2019

And this isn't even one of those situations where PolitiFact focused on the numbers to the exclusion of the underlying argument. PolitiFact amplified Cole's argument by repeating it.

Note PolitiFact's lead:

A viral post portrays Democrats, not Republicans, as the party of fiscal responsibility, with numbers about the deficit under recent presidents to make the case.

PolitiFact sends out the false message that the above argument is "Mostly True."

That's ridiculous. For starters, the deficit is best measured as a percentage of GDP. Also, presidents do not have great control over the rise and fall of deficits. PolitiFact pointed out that second factor but without giving it the weight it should have had in undercutting Cole's argument. After all, the tweet suggests the presidents drove deficit changes without any hint of any other explanation.

Yes, this is the same fact-checking operation that laughably assured us back in November 2018 that "PolitiFact is not biased."

PolitiFact could easily have justified giving Cole the same treatment it gave Palin. But it did not. And this type of scenario plays out repeatedly at PolitiFact, with conservatives getting the cold shoulder from PolitiFact's star chamber.

Whether or not the liberal bloggers at PolitiFact are self-aware to the point of seeing their own bias, it comes out in their work.


Afters

Hilariously, in this article PolitiFact dinged the deficit tweet for using a figure of $1.2 trillion for the end of the George W. Bush presidency:

"(George W.) Bush 43 took it from 0 to 1.2 trillion." This is in the ballpark. Ignoring the fact that he actually started his presidency with a surplus, Bush left office in 2009 with a federal deficit of roughly $1.41 trillion.

Why is it funny?

It's funny because one of the PolitiFact articles cited in this one prefers the $1.2 trillion figure over the $1.4 trillion figure:

The Great Recession hit hard in 2008 and grew worse in 2009. In that period, the unemployment rate doubled from about 5 percent to 10 percent. With Democrats in charge of both houses of Congress and the White House, Washington passed a stimulus package that cost nearly $190 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That included over $100 billion in new spending and a somewhat smaller amount in tax cuts, about $79 billion in fiscal year 2009.

George W. Bush was not in office when those measures passed. So a more accurate number for the deficit he passed on might be closer to $1.2 trillion.

But it's just fact-checking, so inaccuracy is okay so long as it's in the service of a desirable narrative.

?

Reporting on the Mueller Report from the Liberal Bubble

PolitiFact's treatment of things Mueller has fit well with its left-leaning reputation.

A PolitiFact fact check from July 24, 2019 serves as our example.

We would first draw the reader's attention to the way PolitiFact altered Rep. Ratcliffe's claim. Ratcliffe  said Mueller did not follow the special counsel rules. Not following rules may take place though omission or by elaborating on what the rules stipulate. But PolitiFact says Ratcliffe claimed Mueller broke the rules.

We think it's fairly clear that elaborating on the rules counts as failing to follow the rules. It's less clear that elaborating on the rules counts as breaking the rules.

So right off the bat, PolitiFact is spinning Ratcliffe's claim into a straw man that is more easily attacked.

Missing the Point?

Rep. Ratcliffe was repeating a point pretty familiar to conservatives, that the Mueller report failed to follow the special prosecutor statute because Mueller punted on deciding whether to recommend prosecution for obstruction of justice. Conservative pundit and legal expert Andrew McCarthy, for example, has written on the topic.

It's hard to see how PolitiFact's fact check addresses a position like McCarthy's.

PolitiFact contacted three legal experts for comment. But only Mark Osler (University of St. Thomas) was quoted on Ratcliffe's key issue:

Federal regulations say, "At the conclusion of the Special Counsel's work, he or she shall provide the Attorney General with a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions reached by the Special Counsel."

"It clearly includes declinations, which is taking no action," Osler said.

We humbly submit to the expert Osler that a declination is not merely a lack of action. Declination, in context, is a decision not to prosecute. An explanation of Special Counsel's decision not to prosecute meets the requirements of the statue. But an unexplained decision not to decide whether to prosecute should not meet the requirements even though it is lack of action.

And, hypothetically, taking no action at all as by not filing the report is taking no action but does not satisfy the statute.

A July 24, 2019 article in Washington Post helps make clear that Mueller pretty much declined to spell out why he declined to recommend prosecution for obstruction of justice:

John Yoo, a former top official in the George W. Bush Justice Department, said he found Mueller’s explanation “rather vague and somewhat mysterious,” and that he may have felt he should defer to the attorney general.

“Like everyone else, I have been trying to infer why he did what he did,” Yoo said.

But Mueller offered little elaboration on his reasoning as he was pressed Wednesday by lawmakers in both parties.

Again, the declination description required in the statute concerns the decision not to prosecute, not the decision not to explain the decision not to prosecute. Lack of action is not an explanation.

PolitiFact's Big Whiff

PolitiFact showed the true quality of its fact-checking by apparently knowing nothing about widely-published reasoning like McCarthy's. It's the Bubble!

Check out this faux pas in PolitiFact's summary:

We found no legal scholar who agreed with Ratcliffe.

PolitiFact could not find articles by Andrew McCarthy?

Couldn't find the comments by David Dorsen in this Newsweek article?

Couldn't find this piece by Alan Dershowitz for The Hill?

Trust fact checkers? Why?

PolitiFact: 'Tweets' is to blame!

As if we needed a new reason to condemn the utility of PolitiFact's "report card" featurettes.

PolitiFact, once a candidate has accumulated 10 or more "Truth-O-Meter" ratings, features a page showing a graphic display of the distribution of those ratings. Here's a typical one:

We've always objected to these "report cards" because PolitiFact allows selection bias to serve as the basis for its datasets. In other words, the set of statements making up the basis for the graph is not representative. PolitiFact makes no effort to ensure that it is representative.

Today we ran across a fresh reason for regarding the report cards as unrepresentative. A PolitiFact fact check found that a charge against President Trump, that he was calling illegal immigrants "animals," was "False." PolitiFact's fact check notes that Democratic presidential candidates Kirsten Gillibrand and Pete Buttigieg retweeted the falsehood along with comments condemning Trump's supposed choice of words. Trump, it turned out, was referring to gang members and not ordinary illegal immigrants.

By blaming the falsehood on "Tweets," PolitiFact need not sully the report cards of Gillibrand and Buttigieg.



Bad, naughty "Tweets"!

Good, virtuous Gillibrand. Just look at that report card! No "False" and no "Pants on Fire."

The likewise good and virtuous Buttigieg does not yet have enough Truth-O-Meter ratings to qualify for a report card. He has just one "True" rating and one "Half True" rating. And you can rest assured that when Buttigieg does have a report card graphic that his retweet of a falsehood about Trump will not appear on his record. "Tweets" gets the blame instead.

With just a glance at "Tweets'" report card, one can tell "Tweets" is less virtuous than either Gillibrand or Buttigieg.

Except we're kidding because comparing the report cards is a worthless exercise.

We've repeatedly called on PolitiFact to add disclaimers to its "report cards" informing readers that the report cards serve as no useful guide in deciding which candidate to support.

We believe PolitiFact resists that suggestion because it wants its worthless report cards to influence voters. Don't vote for naughty "Tweets." Vote for virtuous Kirsten Gillibrand. Or virtuous Pete Buttigieg. It's from PolitiFact. And it's science-ish.

The underlying point saves the day for Bernie Sanders falsehood?

For some reason there are people who believe that if a fact checker checks both sides that means that the fact checker is neutral.

We've kept pointing out that checking both sides is no kind of guarantee of nonpartisanship. It's a simple matter to give harsher ratings to one side while rating both sides. Or softer ratings to one side while rating both sides.

Latest case in point: Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

Sanders claimed that the single-payer health care system in Canada offers "quality care to all people  without out of pocket expenses."

PolitiFact found that the Canadian system does not eliminate out-of-pocket expenses (contradicting Sanders' claim).

And then PolitiFact gave Sanders' claim a "Half True" rating.

Seriously. That's what PolitiFact did.

PolitiFact's summary is remarkable for not explaining how Sanders managed to eke out a "Half True" rating for a false statement. PolitiFact describes what's wrong with the statement (how it's false) and then proclaims the "Half True" ruling:

Sanders said, "In Canada, for a number of decades they have provided quality care to all people without out-of-pocket expenses. You go in for cancer therapy, you don't take out your wallet."

So long as the care comes from a doctor or at a hospital, the Canadian system covers the full cost. But the country’s public insurance doesn’t automatically pay for all services, most significantly, prescription drugs, including drugs needed to fight cancer.

Out-of-pocket spending is about 15 percent of all Canadian health care expenditures, and researchers said prescription drugs likely represented the largest share of that.

The financial burden on people is not nearly as widespread or as severe as in the United States, but Sanders made it sound as though out-of-pocket costs were a non-issue in Canada.

We rate this claim Half True.

See?

PolitiFact says Sanders made it sound like Canadians do not pay out-of-pocket at all for health care. But Canadians do pay a substantial share out of pocket, therefore making it sound like they don't is "Half True."

Republicans, don't get the idea that you can say something PolitiFact describes as false in its fact check and then skate with a "Half True" rating on the "Truth-O-Meter."

PolitiFact and the Contradiction Fiction

We consider it incumbent on fact checkers to report the truth.

PolitiFact's struggles in that department earn it our assessment as the worst of the mainstream fact checkers. In our latest example, PolitiFact reported that President Donald Trump had contradicted his claim that he had never said Mexico would pay for the border wall with a check.

We label that report PolitiFact's contradiction fiction. Fact checkers should know the difference between a contradiction and a non-contradiction.

PolitiFact (bold emphasis added):

"When during the campaign I would say ‘Mexico is going to pay for it,’ obviously, I never said this, and I never meant they're going to write out a check," Trump told reporters. "I said they're going to pay for it. They are."

Later on the same day while visiting the border in Texas, Trump offered the same logic: "When I say Mexico is going to pay for the wall, that's what I said. Mexico is going to pay. I didn't say they're going to write me a check for $20 billion or $10 billion."

We’ve seen the president try to say he never said something that he very much said before, so we wondered about this case.

Spoiler: Trump has it wrong.

We found several instances over the last few years, and in campaign materials contradicting the president’s statement.

PolitiFact offers three links in evidence of its "found several instances" argument, but relies on the campaign material for proof of the claimed contradiction.

We'll cover all of PolitiFact evidence and show that none of it demonstrated that Mr. Trump contradicted himself on this point. Because we can.

Campaign Material

PolitiFact made two mistakes in trying to prove its case from a Trump Campaign description of how Trump would make Mexico pay for the border wall. First, it ignored context. Second, it applied spin to one of the quotations it used from the document.

PolitiFact (bold emphasis added):

"It's an easy decision for Mexico: make a one-time payment of $5-10 billion to ensure that $24 billion continues to flow into their country year after year," the memo said.

Trump proposed measures to compel Mexico to pay for the wall, such as cutting off remittances sent from undocumented Mexicans in the U.S. via wire transfers.

Then, the memo says, if and when the Mexican government protested, they would be told to pay a lump sum "to the United States to pay for the wall, the Trump Administration will not promulgate the final rule, and the regulation will not go into effect." The plan lists a few other methods if that didn’t work, like the trade deficit, canceling Mexican visas or increasing visa fees.

We placed bold emphasis on the part of the memo PolitiFact mentioned but ignored in its reasoning.

If the plan mentions methods to use if Mexico did not fork over the money directly, then how can the memo contradict Trump's claim he did not say Mexico would pay by check? Are fact checkers unable to distinguish between "would" and "could"? If Trump says Mexico could pay by check he does not contradict that claim by later saying he did not say Mexico would pay by check.

And what's so hard to understand about that? How can fact checkers not see it?

To help cinch its point, PolitiFact quotes from another section of the document, summarizing it as saying Mexico would pay for the wall with a lump sum payment: "(Mexico) would be told to pay a lump sum 'to the United States to pay for the wall'"). Except the term "lump sum" doesn't occur in the document.

There's reason for suspicion any time a journalist substitutes for the wording in the original document, using only a partial quotation and picking up mid-sentence. Here's the reading from the original:

On day 3 tell Mexico that if the Mexican government will contribute the funds needed to the United States to pay for the wall ...

We see only one potential justification for embroidering the above to make it refer to a "lump sum." That's from interpreting "It's an easy decision for Mexico: make a one-time payment of $5-10 billion to ensure that $24 billion continues to flow into their country year after year" as specifying a lump sum payment. We think confirmation bias would best explain that interpretation. It's more reasonable to take the statement to mean that paying for the wall once and having it over with is an obvious choice when it helps preserve a greater amount of income for Mexico annually after that. And the line does not express an expectation of a lump-sum payment but instead the strength (rightly or wrongly) of the bargaining position of the United States.

In short, PolitiFact utterly failed to make its case with the example it chose to emphasize.

... And The Rest

 (these are weak, so they occur after a page break)

Taylor Swift's Candidates Lag in Polls--PolitiFact Hardest Hit?

We noted pop star Taylor Swift's election endorsement statement drew the selective attention of the fact checkers left-leaning bloggers at PolitiFact.

We've found it hilarious over the past several days that PolitiFact has mercilessly pimped its Swiftian fact check repeatedly on Twitter and Facebook.

Now with polls showing Swift's candidates badly trailing the Republican counterparts we can only wonder: Is PolitiFact the entity hardest hit by Swift's failure (so far) to make a critical difference in putting the Democrats over the top?

The Biggest Problem with PolitiFact's Fact Check of Taylor Swift

The Swift claim PolitiFact chose to check was the allegation that Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn voted against the Violence Against Women Act. We noted that PolitiFact's choice of topic, given the fact that Swift made at least four claims that might interest a fact checker, was likely the best choice from the liberal point of view.

Coincidentally(?), PolitiFact pulled the trigger on that choice. But as we pointed out in our earlier post, PolitiFact still ended up putting its finger on the scales to help its Democratic Party allies.

It's true Blackburn voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act (PolitiFact ruled it "Mostly True").

But it's also true that Blackburn voted to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act.

Contradiction?

Not quite. VAWA came up for reauthorization in 2012.Blackburn co-sponsored a VAWA reauthorization bill and voted in favor. It passed the House with most Democrats voting in opposition.

And the amazing thing is that the non-partisan fact checkers liberal bloggers at PolitiFact didn't mention it. Not a peep. Instead, PolitiFact began its history of the reauthorization of the VAWA in 2013:

The 2013 controversy
The Violence Against Women Act was two decades old in 2013 when Congress wrestled with renewing the funds to support it. The law paid for programs to prevent domestic violence. It provided money to investigate and prosecute rape and other crimes against women. It supported counseling for victims.

The $630 million price tag was less the problem than some specific language on non-discrimination.

The Senate approved its bill first on Feb. 12, 2013, by a wide bipartisan margin of 78 to 22. That measure redefined underserved populations to include those who might be discriminated against based on religion, sexual orientation or gender identity.

Starting the history of VAWA reauthorization in 2013 trims away the bothersome fact that Blackburn voted for VAWA reauthorization in 2012. Keeping that information out of the fact check helps sustain the misleading narrative that Republicans like Blackburn are okay with violence against women.

As likely as not that was PolitiFact's purpose.

This Is How Selection Bias Works

Here at PolitiFact Bias we have consistently harped on PolitiFact's vulnerability to selection bias.

Selection bias happens, in short, whenever a data set fails to serve as representative. Scientific studies often simulate random selection to help achieve a representative sample and avoid the pitfall of selection bias.

PolitiFact has no means of avoiding selection bias. It fact checks the issues it wishes to fact check. So PolitiFact's set of fact checks is contaminated by selection bias.

Is PolitiFact's selection bias influenced by its ideological bias?

We don't see why not. And Taylor Swift will help us illustrate the problem.

PolitiFact looked at Swift's claim that Sen. Marsha Blackburn voted against the Violence Against Women Act. That fact check comes packed with the usual PolitiFact nonsense, such as overlooking Blackburn's vote in favor of VAWA in 2012. But this time our focus falls on PolitiFact's decision to look at this Swift claim instead of others.

What other claims did PolitiFact have to choose from? Let's have a look at the relevant part of Swift's statement:

I cannot support Marsha Blackburn. Her voting record in Congress appalls and terrifies me. She voted against equal pay for women. She voted against the Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which attempts to protect women from domestic violence, stalking, and date rape. She believes businesses have a right to refuse service to gay couples. She also believes they should not have the right to marry. These are not MY Tennessee values.

 Now let's put the different claims in list form:

• Blackburn voted against equal pay for women.
• Blackburn voted against the Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act
• Blackburn believes businesses have a right to refuse service to gay couples
• Blackburn also believes they should not have the right to marry

PolitiFact says it checks claims that make it wonder "Is that True?" 

The first statement regarding equal pay for women makes a great candidate for that question. Congress hasn't had to entertain a vote that would oppose equal pay for women (for equal work) for many years. It's been the law of the land since the 1960s. Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act? Don't make me laugh.

The second statement is a great one to check from the Democratic Party point of view, for the Democrats made changes to the VAWA with the likely intent of creating voter appeals based on conservative opposition to those changes.

The third statement concerns belief instead of the voting record, so that makes it potentially more challenging to check. On its face, Swift's claim looks like a gross oversimplification that ignores concerns about constitutional rights of conscience.

The fourth statement, like the third, involves a claim about belief. Also, the fourth statement would likely count as a gross oversimplification. Conservatives opposed to gay marriage tend to oppose same-sex couples asserting every legal advantage that opposite-sex couples enjoy.

PolitiFact chose its best candidate for finding the claim "True" instead of one more likely to garner a "False" rating. It chose the claim most likely to electorally favor Democrats.

Commonly choosing facts to check on that type of basis may damage the election prospects of those unfairly harmed by partisan story selection. People like Sen. Blackburn.

It's a rigged system when employed by neutral and nonpartisan fact checkers who lean left.

And that's how selection bias works.

False Stuff From Fact Checker (PolitiFact)

A funny thing happened when PolitiFact fact-checked a claim about a bias against conservative websites: PolitiFact did not fact check its topic.

No, we're not kidding. Instead of researching whether the claim was true, PolitiFact spent its time undermining the source of the claim. And PolitiFact even used a flatly false claim of its own toward that end (bold emphasis added):

The chart is not neutral evidence supporting Trump’s point, and it labels anything not overtly conservative as "left. In the "left" category are such rigorously mainstream outlets as the Associated Press and Reuters. The three big broadcast networks — ABC, NBC, CBS — are considered "left," as are the Washington Post and the New York Times. Other media outlets that produce a large amount of content every day, including CNN, NPR, Politico, USA Today, and CNBC, are labeled "left."

The statement we highlighted counts as hyperbole at best. On it's face, it simply counts as a false statement exposed as such by the accompanying graphic:

If PolitiFact's claim was true then any outlet not labeled "left" would overtly identify itself as conservative. We can disprove PolitiFact's claim easily by simply looking down the line at the middle. If a media outlet straddles the line between left and right then that organization is not classified as "left." And if such media organizations do not overtly identify as conservative then PolitiFact's claim is false.

Overtly conservative? Let's go down the line:

• C-SPAN
• Roll Call
• UPI
• Real Clear Politics
• Military Times
• Stars & Stripes
• CQ Roll Call
• Mediaite

And for good measure: The Economist, located on the right side of the chart. Is The Economist overtly conservative (See also Barron's, McClatchy)?

Did PolitiFact even bother to research its own claim? Where are the sources listed? Or did writer Louis Jacobson just happen to have that factoid rattling around in his cranium?

But it's not just Jacobson! The factoid gets two mentions in the fact check (the second one in the summary paragraph) and was okayed by editor Katie Sanders (recently promoted for obvious reasons to managing editor at PolitiFact) and at least two other editors from the PolitiFact "star chamber" that decides the "Truth-O-Meter" rating.

As we have asked before, how can a non-partisan and objective fact checker make such a mistake?

Inconceivable!

And how does a fact checker properly justify issuing a ruling without bothering to check on the fact of the matter?

All About That Base(line)

When we do not publish for days at a time it does not mean that PolitiFact has cleaned up its act and learned to fly straight.

We simply lack the time to do a thorough job policing PolitiFact's mistakes.

What caught our attention this week? A fact check authored by one of PolitiFact's interns, Lucia Geng.

We were curious about this fact check thanks to PolitiFact's shifting standards on what counts as a budget cut. In this case the cut itself was straightforward: A lower budget one year compared to the preceding year. In that respect the fact check wasn't a problem.

But we found a different problem--also a common one for PolitiFact. At least when PolitiFact is fact-checking Democrats.

The fact check does not question the baseline.

The baseline is simply the level chosen for comparison. The Florida Democratic Party chose to compare the 2011 water management districts' collective budgets with the ones in 2012 and found that they were about $700 million lower. Our readers should note that the FDP started making this claim in 2018, not 2012.

It's just crazy for a fact checker to perform a fact check without looking at other potential baselines. Usually politicians and political groups choose a baseline for a reason. Comparing 2011 to 2012 appears to make sense superficially. The year 2011 represents Republican-turned-Independent Governor Charlie Crist. The year 2012 represents the current governor, also a Republican, Rick Scott.

But what if there's more to it? Any fact checker should look at data covering a longer time period to get an idea of what the claimed cut would actually mean.

We suspected that 2010 and before might show much lower budget numbers. To our surprise, the budget numbers were far higher, at least for the South Florida Water Management District whose budget dwarfs those of the other districts.

From 2010 to 2011, Gov. Crist cut the SFWMD budget by about $443 million. From 2009 to 2010 Gov. Crist cut the SFWMD budget by almost $1.5 billion. That's not a typo.

The message here is not that Gov. Crist was some kind of anti-environmental zealot. What we have here is a sign that the water management district budgets are volatile. They can change dramatically from one year to the next. The big question is why, and a secondary question is whether the reason should affect our understanding of the $700 million Gov. Scott cut from the combined water management district budgets between 2011 and 2012.

A fact checker who looked at the volatile changes in spending could then use that knowledge to ask officials at the water management districts questions that would help answer our two questions above. Geng listed email exchanges with officials from each of Florida's water management districts. But the fact check contains no quotations from those officials. It does not even refer to their responses via paraphrase or summary. We don't even know what questions Geng asked.

We did not contact the water management districts. But we looked for a clue regarding the budget volatility in the SFWMD's fiscal year 2011 projections for its future budgets. The agency expected capital expenditures to drop by more than half after 2011.

Rick Scott had not been elected governor at that time (October 2010).

This suggests that the water management districts had a budget cut baked into their long-term program planning, quite possibly strongly influenced by budgeting for the Everglades restoration project (including land purchases). If so, that counts as critical context omitted from the PolitiFact Florida fact check.

We flagged these problems for PolitiFact on Twitter and via email. As usual, the faux-transparent fact checkers responded with a stony silence and made no apparent effort to fix the deficiencies.

Aside from the hole in the story we felt the "Mostly True" rating was very forgiving of the Florida Democratic Party's blatant cherry-picking. And somehow PolitiFact even resisted using the term "cherry-picking" or any close synonym.



Afters:
The Florida Democratic Party, in the same tweet PolitiFact fact-checked, recycled the claim that Gov. Scott "banned the term 'Climate Change.'"

We suppose that's not the sort of thing that makes PolitiFact editors wonder "Is that true?"

The Phantom Cherry-pick

Would Sen. Bernie Sanders' Medicare For All plan save $2 trillion over 10 years on U.S. health care expenses?

Sanders and the left were on fire this week trying to co-opt a Mercatus Center paper by Charles Blahous. Sanders and others claimed Blahous' paper confirmed the M4A plan would save $2 trillion over 10 years.

PolitiFact checked in on the question and found Sanders' claim "Half True":

PolitiFact's summary encapsulates its reasoning:

The $2 trillion figure can be traced back to the Mercatus report. But it is one of two scenarios the report offers, so Sanders’ use of the term "would" is too strong. The alternative figure, which assumes that a Medicare for All plan isn’t as successful in controlling costs as its sponsors hope it will be, would lead to an increase of almost $3.3 trillion in national health care expenditures, not a decline. Independent experts say the alternative scenario of weaker cost control is at least as plausible.

We rate the statement Half True.

Throughout its report, as pointed out at Zebra Fact Check, PolitiFact treats the $2 trillion in savings as a serious attempt to project the true effects of the M4A bill.

In fact, the Mercatus report use what its author sees as overly rosy assumptions about the bill's effects to estimate a lower boundary for the bill's very high costs and then proceeds to offer reasons why the bill will likely greatly exceed those costs.

In other words, the cherry Sanders tries to pick is a faux cherry. And a fact checker ought to recognize that fact. It's one thing to pick a cherry that's a cherry. It's another thing to pick a cherry that's a fake.

Making Matters Worse

PolitiFact makes matters worse by overlooking Sanders' central error: circular reasoning.

Sanders' takes a projection based on favorable assumptions as evidence that the favorable assumptions are reasonable assumptions. But a conclusion one reaches based on assumptions does not make the assumptions more true. Sanders' claim suggests the opposite, that when the Blahous paper says it is using unrealistic assumptions the conclusions it reaches using those assumptions makes the assumptions reasonable.

A fact checker ought to point out whaten a politician peddles such nonsensical ideas.

PolitiFact made itself guilty of bad reporting while overlooking Sanders' central error.

PolitiFact Corrects, We Evaluate the Correction

PolitiFact corrected an error in one of its fact checks this past week, most likely in response to an email we sent on June 20, 2018.

Dear PolitiFact,

A recent PolitiFact fact check contains the following paragraph (bold emphasis added):

Soon after, in February 2017, Nehlen wrote on Twitter that Islam was not a religion of peace and posted a photo of a plane striking the World Trade Center with the caption, "9/11 would’ve been a Wonderful #DayWithoutImmigrants." In the following months, Nehlen also tweeted that "Islam is not your friend," implied that Muslim communities should be bombed and retweeted posts saying Bill and Hillary Clinton were murdering associates.

The hotlink ("implied") leads to an archived Twitter page. Unless I'm missing somelthing [sic], the following represents the best candidate as a supporting evidence:

Unless "Muslim no-go zones" represent typical Muslim communities, PolitiFact's summary of Nehlen's tweet distorts the truth. If a politician similarly omitted context in this fashion, would PolitiFact not mete out a "Half True" rating or worse?

If PolitiFact excuses itself from telling the truth where people accused of bigotry are involved, that principle ought to appear in its statement of principles.

Otherwise, a correction or clarification is in order. Thanks.

We were surprised to see that PolitiFact updated the story with a clarification within two days. And PolitiFact did most things right with the fix, which it labeled a "clarification."

Here's a checklist:

1. Paid attention to the criticism
2. Updated the article with a clarification
3. Attached a clarification notice at the bottom of the fact check
4. Added the "Corrections and Updates" tag to the article, ensuring it would appear on PolitiFact's "Corrections and Updates" page

Still, we think PolitiFact can do better.

Specifically, we fault PolitiFact for its lack of transparency regarding the specifics of the mistake.

Note what Craig Silverman, long associated with PolitiFact's owner, the Poynter Institute, said in an American Press Institute interview about letting readers know what changed:

News organizations aren’t the only ones on the internet who are practicing some form of journalism. There are a number of sites or blogs or individual bloggers who may not have the same standards for corrections. Is there any way journalists or anyone else can contribute to a culture of corrections? Where does it start?

SILVERMAN: Bloggers actually ended up doing a little bit of correction innovation. In the relatively early blogging days, you’d often see <strike>strikethrough</strike> used to cross out a typo or error. This was a lovely use of the medium, as it showed what was incorrect and also included the correct information after. In that respect, bloggers modelled good behavior, and showed how digital corrections can work. We can learn from that.

It all starts with a broad commitment to acknowledge and even publicize mistakes. That is the core of the culture, the ethic of correction.

We think Silverman has it right. Transparency in corrections involves letting the reader know what the story got wrong. In this case, PolitiFact reported that a tweet implied that somebody wanted to bomb Muslim communities. The tweet referred, in fact, to a small subset of Muslim communities (so small PolitiFact says they do not exist hey that one failed its fact check and I forgot to remove it from the first published draft) referred to as "no-go zones"--areas where non-Muslims allegedly face unusual danger to their person and property.

PolitiFact explained its error like this:

This fact-check has been updated to more precisely refer to a previous Nehlen tweet

That notice is transparent about the fact the text of the fact check was changed and transparent about the part of the fact check that was changed (information about a Nehlen tweet). But it mostly lacked transparency about what the fact check got wrong and the misleading impression it created.

We think journalists, including PolitiFact, stand to gain public trust by full transparency regarding errors. Though that boost to public trust assumes that errors aren't so ridiculous and rampant that transparency instead destroys the organization's credibility.

Is that what PolitiFact fears when it issues these vague descriptions of its inaccuracies?

Still, we're encouraged that PolitiFact performed a clarification and mostly followed its corrections policy. Ignoring needed corrections is worse than falling short of best practices with the corrections.

PolitiFact 2016: Despite No Evidence Supporting Our Conclusion, It's "Half True" Donald Trump Doesn't Believe in Equal Pay for Equal Work

Our part-time effort to hold PolitiFact accountable allows many problems to slip through the cracks. Sometimes our various research projects bring a problematic fact check to our attention.

Case in point:

PolitiFact's Nov. 2, 2016 "fact check" found Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's claim "Half True" despite finding no evidence supporting it other than a fired campaign organizer's complaint of gender discrimination.

We must be exaggerating, right?

We challenge anybody to find concrete evidence of Trump's disbelief in equal pay in PolitiFact's "fact check" apart from the allegation we just described.

In fact, PolitiFact's fact check makes it look like the fact checkers have difficulty distinguishing between the raw pay gap and differences in pay stemming from discrimination. Trump comes across looking like he makes that distinction. PolitiFact comes across looking like it interprets Trump's insistence on that distinction as support for Clinton's claim.

Take for example this unsupportive piece of supporting evidence PolitiFact received from the Clinton campaign:

Clinton’s campaign pointed to another August 2015 interview, in which CNN’s Chris Cuomo asked Trump if he would pass equal pay legislation.

Trump said he was looking into it "very strongly."

"One of the problems you have is you get to have an economy where it's no longer free enterprise economy," Trump said.

Trump said he favored the concept, but that it’s "very complicated."

"I feel strongly -- the concept of it, I love," Trump said. "I just don't want it to be a negative, where everybody ends up making the same pay. That's not our system. You know, the world, everybody comes in to get a job, they make -- people aren't the same."

Trump says he favors the concept (PolitiFact's paraphrase) and in Trump's own words he "loves" the concept. Trump cautions that everybody might end up making the same pay. Does that sound like equal pay for equal work? Is all work equal?

If anything, Clinton's evidence against Trump helped undermine its own case.

Making this fact check even more bizarre, PolitiFact's summary fails to reference its best evidence of Trump's disbelief in equal pay--the went-nowhere gender discrimination case:

Our ruling

Clinton said Trump "doesn't believe in equal pay."

Trump’s campaign website does not have a stipulated stance on equal pay for men and women, but his campaign says he supports "equal pay for equal work." Trump has said men and women doing the same job should get the same pay, but it’s hard to determine what’s "the same job," and that if everybody gets equal pay, "you get away from capitalism in a sense."

Trump has also said pay should be based on performance, not gender -- so he does appear to favor uniform payment if performance is alike.

Clinton’s statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context. We rate it Half True.

Put bluntly, PolitiFact put nothing in its summary in support of Clinton's claim.

Noting that "Trump's campaign website does not have a stipulated stance on equal pay for men and women" counts as an argument from silence. Making matters worse for Clinton, the campaign breaks its silence to endorse the concept of equal work for equal pay.

PolitiFact claims it places the burden of proof on the one making the claim, in this case Hillary Clinton. The evidence suggests PolitiFact instead placed the burden of proof on the Trump campaign.

PolitiFact makes a snippet mosaic out of Trump's statements that appear to show that he doesn't believe men and women should make equal pay regardless of whether they do equal work. Is that supposed to serve as evidence Trump does not believe in equal pay for equal work?

In the end, PolitiFact gave Clinton a "Half True" rating despite finding no real evidence in support of her claim and an abundance of evidence contradicting it.


Afters I

The 2016 discrimination complaint from Elizabeth Mae Davidson was never litigated and was dropped earlier this year.

Afters II

PolitiFact's description of the gender wage gap in the Clinton fact check puts it somewhat at odds with some of its own past fact checks. Note this from the Clinton fact check:

We’ve detailed key issues about the gender wage gap in our PolitiFact Sheet, but a consistent argument is that women earn 77 cents on the dollar that men earn.

(...)

The Institute for Policy Women’s Research says discrimination is a big factor for why the gender wage gap still persists. Experts consider "occupational segregation" another reason for the wage gap, which means women more often than men work in jobs that pay low and minimum wages.

If you've got a "big reason" and "another reason" which reason should you expect to have the greatest effect? The "big reason," right? Some of PolitiFact's past fact checks have correctly cast serious doubt on that proposition. PolitiFact's summary article on the gender wage gap  (the same "PolitiFact Sheet" referenced above in the Clinton fact check) features a fine example (bold emphasis added):

THE BIG PICTURE

Just before Obama took office in 2009, the Department of Labor released a study because, as a deputy assistant secretary explained it, "The raw wage gap continues to be used in misleading ways to advance public policy agendas without fully explaining the reasons behind the gap." The study by CONSAD Research Corp. took into account women being more likely to work part-time for lower pay, leave the labor force for children or elder care, and choose work that is "family friendly" with fuller benefit packages over higher pay. The study found that, when factoring in those variables, the gap narrows to between 93 cents and 95 cents on the dollar.

We would remind readers that the CONSAD study is not saying that gender discrimination accounts for 5 to 7 percent of the raw gender wage gap. It estimates that 5 to 7 percent of the gender wage gap is not explained by a combination of women's occupational and family choices. Those aren't the only factors influencing the raw wage gap.

So about two-thirds of the raw wage gap is explained by the job choices women make, and 7 percent remains unexplained with part of that 7 percent perhaps explained by gender discrimination.

Did PolitiFact not make that clear?

Afters III

In the search from some charitable explanation for PolitiFact's fact-checking, I had to consider the possibility that Clinton's claim is literally correct: Trump does not believe in equal pay if "equal pay" means paying everyone equally regardless of the job or the quality of the work.

Using that interpretation of "equal pay" would make Clinton's claim literally true but at the same time a whopper of deceit. PolitiFact appeared to take Clinton to mean "equal pay for equal work" except possibly when it used Trump's statements in support of Clinton's claim.

If it was PolitiFact's position that Clinton was saying Trump did not believe men and women should earn the same regardless of the job or the work performed then it should have stated so clearly.

Either way, PolitiFact's fact check looks incoherent.

PolitiFact: Senior White House Officials Exist (Contrary to What Trump Said)

Apparently PolitiFact is beyond understanding why people regard news and fact-checking skeptically.

PolitiFact and The New York Times provided a handy 'Splainer of the problem, if they would only pay attention to themselves.

The New York Times reported that "senior White House official" said Trump's summit with North Korea, which Trump had called off, would be "impossible" to keep on its original date.

The Times used that reporting as part of a story supporting a narrative of administrative infighting within the Trump White House.

Trump went to Twitter in response:

The Failing @nytimes quotes “a senior White House official,” who doesn’t exist, as saying “even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed.” WRONG AGAIN! Use real people, not phony sources.

PolitiFact fact checked Trump's claim, noting that even if the Times went too far with its paraphrase that Trump did not complain about that. PolitiFact ruled Trump's claim "Pants on Fire" because the Times' source exists even if the source did not say what the Times claimed.

That's a Crazy Way to Check Facts, PolitiFact

PolitiFact reasoned (!) that if the Times had a source for its article even if the source did not say what the article claimed, then it was ridiculously false to say that the source did not exist.

Trump is wrong that the senior White House official cited by the New York Times "doesn’t exist" and is "phony." In fact, the official in question, Pottinger, gave an authorized background briefing to dozens of reporters in person and via phone.

The New York Times article that Trump criticized may have gone too far by paraphrasing Pottinger as saying that a June 12 summit would be impossible, since Pottinger didn’t use that specific word. However, Pottinger did express a significant degree of skepticism about the prospect of a June 12 summit.

If that was Trump's gripe, it isn't what he said. The White House source did exist. We rate Trump’s statement Pants on Fire.

PolitiFact admitted the Times might have "gone too far" with its paraphrase of the source and despite that rated Trump's claim "Pants on Fire."

But in the real world of political communication, Trump's point was clear: No representative of the White House said the meeting was impossible.

A real fact check of Trump could have noted that Trump said the Times "quoted" its source. The Times paraphrased its source instead of using a quotation, so Trump was wrong about that.

But Trump was right that having the summit on its original date was not deemed impossible. And, taken literally, Trump accurately claimed that the White House source of the "impossible" claim does not exist.

PolitiFact does The New York Times a solid

PolitiFact told its readers it was giving them a "transcript" of the audio journalists produced to support the Times' reporting. But PolitiFact's supposed transcript was missing a key line that helps make the story easier to understand.

We're using the transcript posted by Mollie Z. Hemingway at the Federalist, using bold emphasis for the parts PolitiFact left out. We emphasize that the audio posted at PolitiFact matches the Federalist's version:

REPORTER: Can you clarify that…the President obviously announced in the letter and at the top of the bill signing that the summit is called off. But then, later, he said it’s possible the existing summit could take place, or a summit at a later date. Is he saying that it’s possible that June 12th could still happen?

WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL: That’s…

REPORTER: Or has that ship sailed, right?

WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL: I think that the main point, I suppose, is that the ball is in North Korea’s court right now. And there’s really not a lot of time. We’ve lost quite a bit of time that we would need in order to, I mean, there’s been an enormous amount of preparation that’s gone on over the past few months at the White House, at State, and with other agencies and so forth. But there’s a certain amount of actual dialogue that needs to take place at the working level with your counterparts to ensure that the agenda is clear in the minds of those two leaders when they sit down to actually meet and talk and negotiate, and hopefully make a deal. And June 12 is in 10 minutes, and it’s going to be, you know. But the President has said that he has — someday, that he looks forward to meeting with Kim.

With the missing part of the transcript, one can see that the unidentified reporter was asking a leading question ("that ship sailed, right?"). The "White House Official" did not affirm the leading question in so many words, but the foregone conclusion appeared in the so-called paraphrase of that official.

That's how the journalistic sausage is made.

And PolitiFact hid that from its readers for some mysterious reason.

That's what we call fact-checking, right?

That, PolitiFact, is why people distrust you and The New York Times. You don't tell the whole story and you don't tell it straight.

PolitiFact's apples and oranges make Zinke a liar?

Fact checkers often mete out harsh ratings to politicians who employ apples-to-oranges comparisons to make their point.

Mainstream media fact checkers often find themselves immune from the principles they use to find fault with others, however.

Consider PolitiFact's March 19, 2018 fact check of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

Zinke said a Trump administration proposal "is the largest investment in our public lands infrastructure in our nation's history."

PolitiFact found that Civilian Conservation Corps program under President Franklin Roosevelt would far exceed the proposed Trump administration spending if adjusted for inflation:

The CCC’s director wrote in 1939 that it had cost $2 billion; that was two-thirds of the way through the program’s life. And according to a Park Service study, the annual annual cost per CCC enrollee was $1,004 per year. If you assume that the average tenure of the CCC’s 3.5 million workers was about a year, that would produce a cumulative cost around $3 billion.

Such calculations "sound right — millions of young men, camps to house them, food and uniforms, and they were paid," said Steven Stoll, an environmental historian at Fordham University.

Once you factor in inflation, $3 billion spent in the 1930s would be the equivalent of about $53 billion today — about three times bigger than even the fully funded Trump proposal.

When a spokesperson for the Trump administration pointed out that the CCC included lands controlled at the state and local level, PolitiFact brushed the objection aside (bold emphasis added):

Interior Department spokeswoman Heather Swift pointed out that the CCC "also incorporated state and local land."

It’s true that the CCC created more than 700 state parks and upgraded many others, in addition to its efforts on federally owned land. Ultimately, though, the point is moot: Zinke didn’t say the proposal is the largest investment in federal lands infrastructure. He said "public lands infrastructure," and state and local parks count as "public lands."

The key to the "False" rating PolitiFact gave Zinke comes entirely from its insistence that Zinke's statement covers all public lands.

But the context, which PolitiFact reported but ignored, clearly shows Zinke was talking specifically about spending on federal lands (bold emphasis added):

"The president is a builder and the son of a plumber, as I am," Zinke told the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee. "I look forward to working with the president on restoring America's greatness through a historic investment of our public lands infrastructure. This is the largest investment in our public lands infrastructure in our nation's history. Let me repeat that, this is the largest investment in our public lands infrastructure in the history of this country."

Zinke specified that he was referring to the president's budget proposal, which would create a fund to provide "up to $18 billion over 10 years for maintenance and improvements in our national parks, our national wildlife refuges, and Bureau of Indian Education funds."

We note a pair of irreconcilable problems with PolitiFact's reasoning.

If Zinke had claimed the CCC spending was greater than the spending proposed by the Trump administration, he would be guilty of using an apples-to-oranges comparison. Why? Because the scope of the two spending programs varies at a fundamental level.

Any would-be comparison between spending on federal lands only and spending on federal, state and local lands qualifies as an apples-to-oranges comparison.

If Zinke's statement was interpreted in keeping with his comments on the scope of the spending--kept to "federal lands"--then PolitiFact simply elected to avoid doing the appropriate fact check. That is, measuring the CCC spending on federal lands against the proposed Trump administration spending on federal lands. Apples-to-apples.

PolitiFact bases its fact check on the apples-to-oranges comparison: CCC spending on federal, state and local parks against proposed Trump administration spending on federal lands only.

Objective?

Nonpartisan?

Not hardly.



Afters: Multiple flaky layers

In its fact check PolitiFact stresses the enormity of CCC spending under Roosevelt by expressing it as a percentage of the federal budget. And compares that to the tiny percentage of the total budget taken up by Trump's proposed spending.

Hello?

Has the federal budget increased over time (try as a percentage of GDP)? Medicare? Medicaid? Hello?

PolitiFact loves it some apples and oranges.

PolitiFact's Jolly problem

PolitiFact hired David Jolly at some point in February, with the hire date depending on whether his job title was "reader representative" or "Republican guest columnist."

PolitiFact said the hire was intended to build trust in PolitiFact across party lines. We've viewed the experiment with justified skepticism. And Jolly's work so far as the "Republican guest columnist" only solidifies our skepticism.

Jolly's first guest column was published March 2, 2018. We noted that Jolly used that column to address a subject tied to his own advocacy of "common sense gun control." We doubted many PolitiSkeptical conservatives would hear their voices in that column. We judged that Jolly was using his position at PolitiFact to essentially write an op-ed about one of his pet political issues.

Jolly's March 7, 2018 column followed that pattern.

Instead of critiquing PolitiFact, Jolly used his column to attack the target of a PolitiFact fact check. The target of that fact check? President Donald Trump.

Jolly (bold emphasis added):

As the nation continues to debate which gun policies might provide for the safety of our schools and communities, PolitiFact demonstrated in a single column the critical importance fact-checkers serve in both informing the American public as well as holding politicians and advocates on both sides of the debate accountable for their assertions.

Jolly played his gun control theme song in the background again and again we ask: How does Jolly's approach to his columns build trust among conservatives skeptical of PolitiFact? Does he think that just having a Republican say something like "PolitiFact is right" will budge the needle of partisan mistrust?

We'll go out on a limb and predict that approach has a snowball's chance in hell of working.

Conservative mistrust in PolitiFact stems primarily from two factors:

• Conservatives see PolitiFact turning a blind eye to conservative arguments
• PolitiFact commonly makes errors of fact and logic damaging to conservatives

Jolly's column serves as an example of both problems, despite his willingness to identify as a Republican.

Jolly reinforces PolitiFact's left-leaning bias

Jolly lauded PolitiFact for rating "False" the claim that an armed civilian might have stopped the "Pulse" nightclub shooting in Orlando (bold emphasis added):

"You take Pulse nightclub," Trump said. "If you had one person in that room that could carry a gun and knew how to use it, it wouldn’t have happened, or certainly to the extent that it did."

The problem for both the president and his theory is that an armed officer and 15-year veteran of the Orlando Police Department, Adam Gruler, was actually working security at Pulse that fateful night, and indeed engaged the shooter directly with gunfire. Forty-nine people still lost their lives.

PolitiFact rightly rated as False the president's statement that an armed security guard could have saved those 49 victims.

The conservative would have read the PolitiFact fact check looking for evidence of fair treatment of the mainstream conservative point of view. That view is absent, and when Jolly fails to notice its absence and celebrates PolitiFact's fact check in spite of that, the conservative cannot take Jolly's columns any more seriously than the fact check in the first place.

The problem with the fact check

What's the problem with PolitiFact's fact check?

The fact check pretends that the armed guard working security in the Pulse parking lot counts as "one person in that room that could carry a gun and knew how to use it."

Is the Pulse parking lot inside the Pulse nightclub?

Shouldn't that make a difference for non-partisan fact checkers and GOP columnists alike?

Note PolitiFact's description of armed guard Anthony Gruler's involvement in the Pulse incident (bold emphasis added):

The Justice Department in 2017 released a nearly 200-page report detailing the Orlando police response to the shooting. Here’s the report’s account of Gruler’s initial confrontation with Mateen:

"Outside, in the Pulse parking lot, (Gruler), who was working extra duty at the club — to provide outside security and to provide assistance to security personnel inside the club if needed — heard the shots that were being fired; at 2:02:17 a.m., he broadcast over the radio, 'Shots fired, shots fired, shots fired,' and requested additional officers to respond.

"The detective told the assessment team that he immediately recognized that his Sig Sauer P226 9mm handgun was no match for the .223 caliber rifle being fired inside the club and moved to a position that afforded him more cover in the parking lot. Two patrons attempted to flee through an emergency exit on the south side of the club. When the detective saw the suspect shoot them, he fired at the suspect."

According to an Orlando Police Department report, additional officers arrived on the scene about a minute after Gruler’s call for backup was broadcast. A second backup officer arrived about a minute after that.

 PolitiFact's conclusion, sadly, serves as an adequate summary of its argument:

Talking about the Pulse nightclub shooting, Trump said, "If you had one person in that room that could carry a gun and knew how to use it, it wouldn’t have happened, or certainly to the extent that it did."

An armed, off-duty police officer in uniform was at the club during the shooting, and exchanged gunfire with the shooter, who managed to kill 49 people.

We rate this False.

Notice that PolitiFact says Gruler was "at the club," not "outside the club."

The "False" rating gets its premise from the fiction that Gruler was in the same room with Mateen while the latter was murdering club patrons. Jolly, PolitiFact's voice of the GOP, signs on with that falsehood.

In this case the deception comes from PolitiFact and Jolly. Not from Trump.

PolitiFact demonstrated nothing false in Trump's statement, yet pinned a "False" rating on his statement.

Jolly cheered PolitiFact's work, missing the key discrepancy in its fact check.

That's all kinds of wrong.