PolitiFact looking VOXier every day! (Updated)

Remember how Ezra Klein took his Washington Post Wonkblog act independent, starting the fact-challenged left-wing 'splainer site VOX?

PolitiFact is taking pages from the VOX playbook.

PolitiFact has always had VOX's ability to get things remarkably wrong, so the latest new sign of Voxiness comes from PolitiFact stories that venture into 'splaining instead of fact-checking. The item that especially caught our eye was one saying Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is incorrect for saying the United States should have taken Iraq's oil.

Trump's suggested policy on Iraq's oil is a choice with a moral, right/wrong dimension. As such PolitiFact's condemnation of the proposal amounts to moralizing. And isn't that exactly what we want from fact checkers?

We suspect the real reason PolitiFact is delving into overt PolitiSplaining has to do with its desire to share parts of expert interviews like this one:

"Insofar as Mr. Trump's proposals are coherent enough to be subject to analysis and judgment, they appear to be practically impossible, legally prohibited, and politically imbecilic," said Barnett Rubin, associate director of New York University’s Center on International Cooperation.

PolitiFact didn't say that about Trump! It was the expert! The expert did it! Was PolitiFact supposed to not print such a memorable quotation?

At PolitiFact Bias, we have long charged that PolitiFact's fact-checking routinely crosses the line from objective reporting into the realm of opinion journalism. An interview posted recently at Poynter.org, which owns PolitiFact through the Tampa Bay Times, underscores the accuracy of our assessment. Brad Scribner interviewed Lucas Graves, a recognized expert on fact-checking who did intern stints at PolitiFact and FactCheck.org. Scribner asked Graves about the relationship between fact-checking and the traditional "opinion page" in newspapers.

Graves:

It’s actually a misnomer to call the opinion page the opinion page. Really it’s the argument page. People are laying out fact-based arguments. We often confuse that sense of opinion with opinion as taste — where there’s no objective way to say which flavor of ice cream is better, but that’s not true of the kinds of points being made on the opinion page. They do involve facts — facts arrayed into arguments — and those arguments require interpretation. But any important or interesting factual question usually requires interpretation.

PolitiFact founder Bill Adair once called fact checking "reported conclusion journalism" and that’s a really good description.

 Find the whole interview at Poynter's website.


Update/Afters Sept. 12, 2016

We quoted PolitiFact's gem of a quotation from expert Barnett Rubin in our post above. It was quite uncomplimentary to Trump, so much so that we felt it reasonable to question Rubin's neutrality on that basis alone.

In our opinion, PolitiFact did Rubin no favors by quoting him.

We looked up Rubin's record on the FEC database. No surprise: He donates to Democrats.

Is it fine that PolitiFact does not inform its readers about stuff like this?

We wouldn't have that big a problem with it if it didn't represent such a marked pattern.


Correction Sept. 13, 2016: Our final mention of Barnett Rubin misspelled his last name as "Rubion." We apologize for the error, which is now corrected. Same day additional correction: The problem was worse than we noticed: We called Barnett Rubin "Barret" Rubin. We treble our apology.

Did PolitiFact do Internet research in the 3rd century?

In a Feb. 9, 2016 fact check of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, PolitiFact twice claimed its research took place in the 3rd century.

• "Best College Reviews, "8 colleges where students attend for free," Accessed Feb. 8, 206"
• "Interview, Jeffrey D. Marshall, University of Vermont director of research collections, Feb. 8, 206"

PolitiFact's source list shows that the bulk of writer Amy Sherman's research was done in February 2016. But on two occasions Sherman evidently went back in time about 1,800 years to do her research, both times apparently representing Internet research.

But seriously, why are we getting on PolitiFact's case over a pair of typographical errors?

That's simple. This is a test of PolitiFact's communications with its critics.

We contacted PolitiFact director Aaron Sharockman about messages we sent to PolitiFact editor Angie Drobnic Holan and PolitiFact Colorado writer Alan Gathright. We pointed out to Holan and Gathright that a fact check they produced skipped a critical step or two. The normal response from Holan to our criticisms, going back years, is silence. Gathright's new to PolitiFact, via the new Colorado franchise, so this was our first attempt to contact him.

Our message to Sharockman was sent following a message under the same heading forwarding to him our attempts to contact Holan and Gathright.

Sharockman recently used Twitter to express disdain at a critic who failed to contact PolitiFact before publishing a criticism:

Hah! How many times have you have asked for our comment before writing about us? https://t.co/kUxkZOWJxJ

— Aaron Sharockman (@asharock) February 8, 2016

Over the years, we've often attempted to obtain comment from PolitiFact about our criticisms. PolitiFact's favored response, by far, is none. In fairness to Sharockman, he's probably the easiest PolitiFact figure to draw out for a response. But Sharockman tends not to provide detailed responses, and even if he did we don't see how that excuses the rest of the PolitiFact crew.

Academic Lucas Graves (former FactCheck.org and PolitiFact guest worker, left-leaning) addressed the way fact checkers reply to critics in the exhaustive overview of fact-checking he produced as his doctoral dissertation at Columbia University (bold emphasis added):

Fact-checkers anticipate criticism and develop reflexes for trying to defuse it. “We’re going to make the best calls we can, in a pretty gutsy form of journalism,” Bill Adair told NPR. “And when we do, I think it’s natural that the people on one side or the other of this very partisan world we live in are going to be unhappy.”  One strategy is to responding [sic] only minimally or in carefully chosen venues, and always asserting their balance, often by showing the criticism they receive from the other side of the spectrum.

We judge that Graves gives a highly accurate account of the strategy PolitiFact uses to address its critics, and we would highlight the "responding only minimally" element of the strategy Graves lays out.

Did PolitiFact do Internet research in the 3rd century?

No. But if PolitiFact fixes the typos in its resource list, then we at least have some evidence our criticism was received. And regarding the criticism we sent to Holan and Gathright, we will have more evidence that criticism was heard and ignored.

We think that's how PolitiFact rolls. Giving good explanations of its work to critics normally just does not count as a high priority.