"The Most Notable Example" of PolitiFact's Bumbling Bias

Could the most notable example of PolitiFact Ohio's fact checking prowess be a claim they never actually rated?

We'll get to that, but first we'll point out that we're big fans of Jason Hart, the indefatigable PolitiFact Ohio critic. Hart's latest piece at Media Trackers doesn't disappoint. Hart takes aim at vocal Barack Obama supporter, conservative "wingnut" hater, and unbiased PolitiFact Ohio editor Tom Feran.

Feran recently wrote a piece celebrating three years of PolitiFact Ohio that showed a comical lack of self-awareness. Feran openly admits PolitiFact's selection bias (though he describes their political prejudice as the harmless sounding "curiosity bias"). Hart was there to point it out:

Feran’s curiosity bias, like that of his liberal peers at the Plain Dealer, skews in a predictable direction.

Hart's biggest get was his interview with Society of Professional Journalists ethics committee chairman, Kevin Smith. When presented with Feran's past remarks, Smith responded:

"That Mr. Feran can take ANY political stance and is then allowed to share his ‘objective assessment’ of news on the Politifact website where he passes judgment on the accuracy of news stories, is, at best, irresponsible and unethical journalism.”

We couldn't agree more, and kudos to Hart for interviewing someone with Smith's credibility.

Ultimately, our take on Feran's piece mirrors Hart's, and we consider it recommended reading. But we were surprised to see Hart miss Feran's glaring admission of PolitiFact's dishonesty. See if you can find it (we'll even add some emphasis to make it easier to spot):

Because we can't possibly check all claims, we give priority to the most newsworthy and significant.

The most notable example of the past year came in the closing days of the presidential campaign, when Mitt Romney told a crowd in Defiance that plans were afoot to shift the Jeep jobs in Ohio to China. "I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep — now owned by the Italians — is thinking of moving all production to China," he said.

With our partners at PolitiFact National, we rated the statement Pants on Fire.

It's beyond dispute that Mitt Romney said that exact quote to a crowd in Defiance, Ohio. Also beyond dispute is that PolitiFact claimed it was rating the Romney ad, not the speech in Defiance. How can "the most notable example" of PolitiFact selecting "the most newsworthy" item to check be an item PolitiFact never selected in the first place?

Our longtime readers probably recall that Mitt Romney's Jeep to China claim won PolitiFact's Lie of the Year in 2012, but as we pointed out at the time, PolitiFact rated Romney's campaign ad, not the statement he made in Defiance. It's true that in the Defiance speech, Mitt Romney cited a story, originating with Bloomberg News, that implied Jeep was moving production to facilities in China. That story was later clarified, and by the time Romney ran the commercial that earned the award the claim had been corrected.

Bottom line: The Romney ad that won the Lie of the Year for claiming Jeep was shipping production to China at the cost of American jobs never actually made that claim. PolitiFact acknowledged as much with their bogus headline (notice the carefully placed quotation marks):

You see, there's nothing really "newsworthy" about Mitt Romney accurately quoting a usually reliable media outlet, and then correcting an inaccurate claim as more information becomes available. Furthermore, it's difficult to give the Lie of the Year award to a claim that is unarguably true.

But don't tell that to Tom Feran.

Mark Twain once wrote: "If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything." If PolitiFact had told the truth about which claim they were rating, Feran might have avoided outing their deceit. Instead, Feran forgot that PolitiFact dishonestly morphed two stories into one and conjured up an entirely fictional claim to rate. Feran laid open an ugly reality that PolitiFact refuses to admit: Romney's Lie of the Year was entirely undeserved because they awarded it to him for something he didn't claim.

Make sure to check out Hart's piece at Media Trackers. There's plenty of good points we didn't mention here.



Bryan adds:

In a more general (and brief) treatment of the Romney ad controversy at Zebra Fact Check, I pointed out that Annenberg Fact Check and the Washington Post Fact Checker also allowed Romney's speech at Defiance to steer the direction of the fact check.

PolitiFact fact checkers misled in their judgments of the ad just as surely as the ad misled viewers in the first place–if not more so.  Romney’s ad, after all, did not make the explicit claim that fact checkers used as their pretext for condemning it.  In comparison, fact checkers deliberately conflated the ad with a speech in which Romney mischaracterized a news article he had seen.   Annenberg Fact Check did it.  The Washington Post Fact Checker did it.  PolitiFact did it.

This does nothing to excuse PolitiFact, of course.  It simply helps show how the mainstream fact checkers approached the story independently(?) with a groupthink streak.

Another Black Knight for PolitiFact

The comedy film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" is justly famous for its fight scene between King Arthur and the mysterious Black Knight who attempts to block his path.

Arthur defeats the Black Knight, first chopping off an arm, then another arm, then a leg and then the other leg.  As the Black Knight suffers each stage of defeat he defiantly continues to challenge Arthur to continue the fight.

PolitiFact's efforts to defend itself from criticism often run parallel to the Black Knight's fighting prowess against Arthur.

The latest duel pits PolitiFact editor Bill Adair against critics who say Fiat's confirmation that it will produce over 100,000 Jeep vehicles annually at a Chinese manufacturing plant undercuts PolitiFact's 2012 choice for "Lie of the Year."  The Romney campaign produced an ad saying Obama sold Jeep to Italians who will build Jeeps in China.  PolitiFact ruled the ad "Pants on Fire" in October before selecting it as the "Lie of the Year" in December.

The original ruling drew plenty of criticism, and the recent confirmation of the deal to produce Jeeps in China produced a renewal of that criticism, perhaps best expressed by Mark Hemingway of The Weekly Standard.

"It's just a flesh wound."

On Jan. 18 Adair responded to the latest round of criticism:

A number of readers emailed us this week about news reports that Chrysler is moving forward with a partnership in China to produce Jeeps. They wondered: Doesn’t that disprove our Lie of the Year -- that Mitt Romney said Barack Obama "sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China" at the cost of American jobs?
No, it doesn’t.

It bears emphasis that Jeep sold about 50,000 American-made Jeeps in China in 2012. Somehow no mention of Jeep exports to China crept into any of PolitiFact's fact checking of the Romney ad.

Adair's right about one thing, at least.  All of PolitiFact's "Lie of the Year" selections contain a significant element of truth, so of course it doesn't matter to PolitiFact if the ad is true.  It can still qualify as "Lie of the Year."  The tough thing for Adair to explain, which he doesn't attempt, is how the ad can be technically true yet receive a "Pants on Fire" rating as election day approached.

It's just another dismal defense of a PolitiFact blunder.

Mark Hemingway, by the way, responded with Arthurian effectiveness to Adair's post the same day it was published.

We'll give away the ending:

PolitiFact has a reputation for alternately being unresponsive or inadequately responding to criticisms. And they haven't done anything to remedy that today.

Exactly.

(The video contains language some may find offensive.  Oh, and there's lots of obviously fake blood.)






Jeff adds (1/30/13):
Adair's most recent CYA/non-response to Hemingway is typically awful of the genre, and PolitiFact has had some stinkers. Chock full of evasions and denials, it would seem that Adair is completely unable to confront the facts that lurk in front of his face. Take a look at the opening paragraph of his nada culpa, and pay special attention to the quotation marks:

[Readers] wondered: Doesn’t that disprove our Lie of the Year -- that Mitt Romney said Barack Obama "sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China" at the cost of American jobs?

No, it doesn’t.

The entire basis for the Pants of Fire rating is something the Romney ad never claimed. If it did, why didn't PolitiFact quote the relevant portion? The portion that Adair quotes is entirely accurate, even by PolitiFact's own admission. The only falsehood here is PolitiFact's invention that the Romney ad claimed it would cost American jobs.

Another comically dishonest diversion from Adair is his assertion that PolitiFact isn't making a value judgement on Obama's policy. He writes:

We should be clear, we are not defending President Obama’s auto policy. As independent fact-checkers, we don’t take positions on policy issues. So whether it was advisable to bail out the auto companies, and or whether the bailout  was done with proper safeguards was beyond the scope of our fact-check.

As I pointed out in our original review of this claim back in November, PolitiFact was much more smitten with the Presidents performance back then (emphasis added):

With Ohio’s 18 electoral votes very much in play, the Mitt Romney campaign aims to blunt one of Barack Obama’s key advantages in that state -- his rescue of the auto industry.

Let me be clear: PolitiFact has determined that Barack Obama single-handedly rescued the entire auto industry...they're just not taking a position it.

 

Hans Bader: PolitiFact Is The Liar Of The Year

One of the most vocal critics of PolitiFact happens to be one of the best. Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute let loose today on CEI's blog, Open Market. Here's a just a fraction of Bader's thorough dressing-down:

PolitiFact routinely rated claims that were entirety true, indisputable, and not misleading, as “half-true” because they failed to include additional “context,” i.e., liberal spin. For example, Senator “Ted Cruz claims national debt is bigger than the nation’s GDP. Yes, our national debt absolutely, incontrovertibly exceeds the nation’s GDP. But claiming that gets you a ‘Half-True’ because Politifact’s Gardner Selby” thought that saying that was mean-spirited. Similarly, PolitiFact said it was “misleading” and dishonest for a conservative politician to make the true factual observation that Obama “refuses to recognize Jerusalem” as Israel’s capital, even though that fact was concededly true, because the politician did not provide additional context that PolitiFact wanted: namely, that Obama is not the first president to take this position.

Bader reviews several of PolitiFact's most embarrassing displays of ineptitude over the past year, and his article is recommended reading.

We've highlighted Bader's work in the past and we've always been impressed with his critiques. We're flattered to be mentioned in his article with the many other excellent sites. Many thanks!

All is once again right with the world

Recognizing as we do the subjective nature of PolitiFact's "Lie of the Year" awards, the annual award itself offers little of interest.

Last year's award was better than most, however, because of the reaction it provoked on the political left.  The left reacted with outrage because, it claimed, the supposed "Lie of the Year"--that Republicans voted to end Medicare--was true.

We sympathized with that complaint.  We agreed that, read charitably, there was a shred of truth in the claim that Republicans wanted to end Medicare.  But we also noted that the complaints from the left were very similar in character to the complaints Republicans have made about PolitiFact's "Lie of the Year" ever since the first award.

Every single winning "lie" has contained a substantial nugget of truth:

2009:  "Death panel"--The original remark and most subsequent versions reference the principle expressed by economist Thomas Sowell that the government regulation of health care results in rationing of services--death panel by regulation.

2010:  "Government takeover of healthcare"--The PPACA establishes government rules insurers and many employers must follow in providing healthcare.  The administration is still writing the thousands of pages of regulations that implement the law.

2011:  "Republicans voted to end Medicare."  Democrats defined "Medicare" as a single-payer plan administered by the government.  Providing subsidized care to the elderly by relying on private insurers would end that arrangement and thus "end Medicare."

For 2012 it's hard to come up with a short quotation that encapsulates the supposed lie, since PolitiFact had to infer the inaccuracy in the midst of a series of accurate statements in the Mitt Romney ad that won the award.  Watch PolitiFact staffer Angie Drobnic Holan wrestle with the presentation in the body of her story announcing the award:

PolitiFact has selected Romney's claim that Barack Obama "sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China" at the cost of American jobs as the 2012 Lie of the Year.

Did President Obama's administration broker a deal giving control of Jeep to Fiat, an Italian company?

Yes. In its original story, PolitiFact quibbled over the notion that the company was sold to Fiat since Fiat didn't pay for the company. But I didn't pay for the company, either, yet I didn't end up owning it. Fiat was expected to assume debts and help provide capital to run Chrysler and its affiliates. It was a sale by barter if nothing else.

Are Jeep's Italian owners going to build Jeep vehicles in China?

Yes. The company has stated its intention to build Jeeps in China for the Chinese market, which currently receives over 19,000 vehicles annually shipped fully assembled in the United States by American workers.

Now we're done with with the quotations from the Romney ad, and we're down to PolitiFact's inferences.

Will Fiat's Jeep production lines in China cost American jobs?

Sending Jeep production for China to the Chinese may cost American jobs. It's hard to say how many, because duties on imports would cap Chinese demand for Jeep vehicles. That's one of the advantages of moving production for China to China. But demand in China grew in 2012 so that Jeep delivered over 30,000 Jeeps to China despite the import duty. The labor to produce those vehicles will be lost to the U.S., so it's true that the planned Chinese plant will have a cost in terms of American labor.


The Romney ad was factual, probably more so than any other "Lie of the Year" winner. That's not to say that the ad was without problems. A person could think after seeing the ad that all Jeep production would move to China, just like ads from the Democrats in 2011 could lead voters to believe Republicans were ending anything resembling Medicare, pure and simple.

But here's the thing: So far we don't see liberals complaining that PolitiFact chose the Romney ad as its "Lie of the Year" despite the fact that it's true. Apparently since it's not a claim from Democrats it doesn't matter if the "Lie of the Year" consists of true statements given a inferential twist by the journalistic judges.

But maybe I just need to let a bit more time elapse. I'll wait.


Footnote:

"They used to produce Jeeps in China and they were about to go broke so they had to quit," Clinton said. "You can’t make a Jeep in America and send it to China – it weighs too much, it costs too much to send over there. All they are going to do is reopen their operations there and try to sell Jeeps there too. We’re doing fine here."

On PolitiFact's "Lie of the Year" selection for 2012

PolitiFact has selected its "Lie of the Year" for 2012.  It's the claim from the Mitt Romney campaign that the administration sold Chrysler to the Italians, Fiat, and that Chrysler would build Jeeps in China.

PolitiFact's Angie Drobnic Holan opens the announcement with a falsehood:

It was a lie told in the critical state of Ohio in the final days of a close campaign -- that Jeep was moving its U.S. production to China. It originated with a conservative blogger, who twisted an accurate news story into a falsehood. Then it picked up steam when the Drudge Report ran with it. Even though Jeep's parent company gave a quick and clear denial, Mitt Romney repeated it and his campaign turned it into a TV ad.

Holan's delivery is sneaky.  The news story about opening a Jeep plant was misconstrued early on.  But by the time the story appeared in the Romney campaign ad, the facts were correct.  PolitiFact today calls that "a grain of truth."  We covered the issue here by highlighting a post from anonymous blogger "counterirritant," and I did an item over at my fact check site as well.

Here's the bottom line:  Fiat plans to start building Jeeps in China.  It doesn't mean Jeep production will cease in the United States, but the Romney ad doesn't claim otherwise.  It does mean that the Chinese will assemble more than 25,000 Jeep vehicles per year (if sales trends do not shockingly reverse) that are currently shipped fully assembled overseas.  That will affect American jobs.

These criticisms of the PolitiFact fact check are not new.  They've appeared across the media from Forbes to the National Legal and Policy Center and many places in between.

How does PolitiFact respond to the criticism?  It ignores it and continues to publish stories that mislead about the Romney ad.

Ironic, isn't it?



Correction 12/13/2012:  Omitted part of the name of the National Legal and Policy Center, omitting the "Legal."  Apologies to the National Legal and Policy Center for the error.

Dustin Siggins: The Most Overlooked 'Lie of the Year"

Persistent PolitiFact critic Dustin Siggins wrote up a piece over at Red Alert Politics asking why the GOP's supposed War on Women was left out of PolitiFact's Lie of the Year contenders. Siggins makes some solid points and it's well worth the read, but his big get was his interview with PolitiFact editor Bill Adair. Adair's response to Siggins was typical, and by typical, I mean comically inconsistent with reality.

Siggins quotes Adair:

"We rate the ‘Lie of the Year’ as the boldest statement or the statement with the biggest reach. Obviously, it’s subjective,” he said. “We didn’t do a fact-check on a statement that there was a War on Women. It was an opinion, and we don’t fact-check opinions. People used it as a sum-up of a variety of aspects of the 2012 campaigns, but it was an overall opinion, not a statement of policy fact.”

Siggins makes the case that the War on Women meme was a policy statement, and points out its wide reaching impact on the election. You should read Siggins argument in his own words and in their entirety. For us though, the rest of Adair's response is a howler.

"It was an opinion, and we don’t fact-check opinions."

This statement is from the same guy that gave Mitt Romney a Pants on Fire rating for saying "We're inches away from no longer having a free economy." (Note: Romney actually earned three Pants on Fire ratings for that same claim, something to keep in mind when PolitiFact pimps out their "report cards") What about Rick Perry's opinion that Barack Obama is a socialist? Bill Adair worked on that one too. Oops! PolitiFact calls both of those statements "hyperbole" (coincidentally, PolitiFact claims to have a policy against rating hyperbole as well). I guess hyperbole doesn't count as opinion.

Unfortunately, Adair doesn't fill us in on the objective metric PolitiFact used when they gave Obama a Half True for his claim that Romney's cuts to education would be "catastrophic." Of course, when Obama claimed that his tax plan only asked millionaires to "pay a little more," PolitiFact "decided that "a little more" is an opinion, not a checkable fact."

"Catastrophic"=Verifable fact. "A little more"=Opinion.

The most hilarious part of this is Adair evades the most obvious problem. The Pants on Fire label itself is entirely subjective. The rating is predicated on a claim being "ridiculous." To this day, Adair has never offered up an objective definition of what makes a claim "ridiculous." So the bottom line is PolitiFact doesn't check opinions, but they do use opinions to assign ratings of fact. (Read Bryan's study on the Pants on Fire/False issue here.)

Adair doesn't clarify the issue by adding yet another version of the Lie of the Year criteria:

"We rate the ‘Lie of the Year’ as the boldest statement or the statement with the biggest reach."

Last year, Angie Drobnic-Holan explained the Lie of the Year was a claim PolitiFact rated "that played the biggest role in the national discourse." Which is it?

Regardless, it's hard to imagine some of PolitiFact's finalists even being in the top 20 claims that fit either definition. In what world does Jack Markels (who?) claim that "Mitt Romney likes to fire people" rank as a "bold" statement that has "the biggest reach," let alone played "the biggest role in the national discourse." Of course, don't waste your time looking for any administration comments on Benghazi in the top ten. The reality is that the finalists for PolitiFact's Lie of the Year exemplifies the problems of PolitiFact's selection bias. I've previously said that I suspect the LOTY is predetermined, and a grab bag of nine ratings is thrown in for looks. The competition PolitiFact selected this year does nothing to change my mind.

Finally, I'll give Adair credit for the most honest thing I've ever heard him say about his body of work thus far:

"Obviously, it’s subjective”

Subjective indeed.

Siggins argues the "War on Women" campaign from the Democrats meets key aspects of Adair's criteria and makes a fine Lie of the Year candidate.  He makes a good argument that's worth reading.