PFB Smackdown: Tommy Christopher and Maddow's abortion critique of Romney

We use the PFB Smackdown feature to critique the worst of the left's best critiques of PolitiFact.


Perhaps inspired by my assertion earlier this week that the criticism of PolitiFact from the political Left lack punch, Mediaite's Tommy Christopher jumps in the ring again, trying to float like Rachel Maddow and punch like, well, Rachel Maddow.

Christopher:

On Monday night’s The Rachel Maddow Show, host Rachel Maddow accused Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney of supporting a law that would outlaw abortions, even in cases of rape and incest, while also tying freshly-crowned VP nominee Rep. Paul  Ryan to extreme measures related to reproductive freedom. What’s curious is that Pulitzer Prize-winning Politifact just got done incinerating President Obama‘s trousers over the same claim. Who’s right?

Good question.  Which one is right?

Politifact rated the claim “Pants on Fire,” based on the “logic” that some personhood amendments contain exceptions for rape and incest, and the life of the mother, and since Romney didn’t mention such exceptions when he expressed support for personhood, that must mean he supports such exceptions. It’s an idiotic bit of logic, like concluding that if I say I like Pepsi, I must really be saying I like Diet Pepsi.

Christopher is wrong about PolitiFact's logic.  Rather than using Romney's ambiguity to insist that Romney was specific about allowing for exceptions, PolitiFact criticized the Obama ad for assuming that Romney's ambiguity meant that he specifically favored no exceptions in his opposition to abortion.

PolitiFact:

(T)he Obama campaign has a problem in extrapolating Romney's position from that comment. Support for the amendment does not necessarily equate to opposing abortion when pregnancy is due to rape or incest.

So the Obama campaign, to use Christopher's illustration, was saying that if Romney says he likes Pepsi then he's really saying he likes Diet Pepsi.  PolitiFact and Christopher criticize forms of the same error, but PolitiFact does so accurately in this case.

Was the "Pants on Fire" rating harsh?  Sure.  As we argue, all of PolitiFact's "Pants on Fire" ratings are ultimately subjective and amount to an opinion.  But the basic criticism of the Obama campaign ad was on target.

Weak attacks like Christopher's Maddowesque flailing don't amount to much, however.  If Christopher was interested in the truth of the matter we could expect to see him refrain from blatantly misrepresenting PolitiFact's logic.  Complaints like Christopher's tend to look like attempts to work the referee.

Tommy Christopher: "My conclusion isn't all that different from yours"

We panned Mediaite's Tommy Christopher over his critique of PolitiFact earlier this week.  Christopher has responded via Twitter, resulting in a correction and update of our original item.

Christopher responded again via Twitter not long ago, in response to our tweet about the update:

Gasp! @tommyxtopher responds by pointing out...a typo. Will he address actual flaws in his analysis? Here's our update: politifactbias.blogspot.com/2012/08/pfb-sm…

@PolitiFactBias Well, you don't seem to have read it. My conclusion isn't all that different from yours.

Christopher accurately notes that PolitiFact's ratings make for an inconsistent and unsatisfactory whole.  But our conclusions based on that common observation are fundamentally dissimilar.

Christopher (bold emphasis added):

Fact-checkers like Politifact are tremendously valuable for the research that they aggregate and conduct themselves, but inconsistent, contradictory, and capricious rulings badly undercut that value, especially when those are what politicians and media outlets pay the most attention to. Either a more consistent ratings scale is needed, or they ought to scrap them entirely, and let each fact-check stand on its own merits.

Until then, though, these are the numbers we have to work with, so if these presidential campaigns are going to rely on Politifact when it’s convenient, then they ought to live with these results, and media organizations who constantly quote Politifact should report them.

In our original review of Christopher's piece, we noted the following:

In short, contrary to Christopher's suggestion, aggregating PolitiFact's ratings is a useless exercise for purposes other than evaluating PolitiFact.

Christopher says, despite the problems with PolitiFact's inconsistency, that the media should report the aggregated "Truth-O-Meter" results as if they tell us something valuable about the candidates, hence his headline about Romney's supposed dominance of Obama in the lying department.

We say that the flaws in PolitiFact's process preclude useful comparison of the aggregated results except as a means of evaluating PolitiFact.

We say our conclusion is quite different from Christopher's.  It's irresponsible for the media, including PolitiFact, to slap together the results in a way that suggests to readers something about the tendency of candidates to lie. 

Christopher, despite providing some legitimate caveats, places himself in the irresponsible camp.

PFB Smackdown: Mediaite's Tommy Christopher (Updated/Corrected)

We use the PFB Smackdown feature to critique the worst of the left's best critiques of PolitiFact.


I get another excuse to say the political Left's critiques of PolitiFact are generally poor, thanks to Mediaite's political editor and White House correspondent Tommy Christopher.

Take it away, Christopher:

Political ads have been an especially hot topic this week, with surrogates from both presidential campaigns alternately citing, and arguing with, vaunted fact-checking outfits like the Pulitzer Prize-winning Politifact. Although controversial rulings have eroded the magic of such efforts, it is worth noting that, by Politifact’s numbers, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is 58% more likely to lie than President Obama.

What magic?

PolitiFact's ratings have always drawn well-deserved criticism, from Bill Adair's brain-dead analysis of Joe Biden's hyperbole through last week's continuation of PolitiFact's series of misdirections about effective tax rates.  Why is it worth noting PolitiFact's comparison of Romney to Obama after we add the problem of selection bias to PolitiFact's inability to apply consistent standards or even achieve a reasonable minimum standard of quality?

Other than the fact that it might serve Christopher's politics, that is?  It's hard not to notice that both of Christopher's examples of supposed "controversial rulings" allegedly caused unfair harm to the Left.

It doesn't take many blown calls to produce an 58 percent difference between two individuals' "Truth-O-Meter" report cards, nor does it take much selection bias to produce that type of difference.

In short, contrary to Christopher's suggestion, aggregating PolitiFact's ratings is a useless exercise for purposes other than evaluating PolitiFact.

We have at least two examples of the latter so far:


"Selection Bias? PolitiFact Rates Republican Statements as False at 3 Times the Rate of Democrats"
"Bias in PolitiFact’s ratings: Pants on Fire vs. False"

The utility of its "report cards" stands as one of PolitiFact's most spectacular lies.  Don't buy it.


Update Aug. 14, 2012:  

Tommy Christopher tweets in response:

@PolitiFactBias Before you "smack" anyone "down," you ought to learn some math. It was a 17-point difference, not 8. Romney 46% Obama 29%

Christopher has a point in that the numbers I used were incorrect.  The passage was intended from the first to read "a 58 percent difference," and with this update that reading shows above.  My primary mistake was in failing to see a typographical error instead of a math error when I did yesterday's correction.

The change in percentage does not significantly affect the thrust of the criticism of Christopher's claim.  Without a control on selection bias,--and there is no good evidence of any such control--using PolitiFact's ratings other than to find out things about PolitiFact just doesn't make sense.

Will Christopher address that point or allow the typographical error to serve as a red herring covering for his mushy thinking?


Correction Aug. 13, 2012:  Math mistake:  Was:  "an 8 percent difference."  Is:  "an 8 percentage point difference."  Apologies for the error.
Correction correction Aug. 14, 2012:  See update above. 
Corrected update Au. 14, 2012:   Thanks to Jeff Dyberg for pointing out that I had incorrectly posted the original intent as "a 58 percentage point difference.  Rather, the intended figure was as Christopher expressed it, as a 58 percent difference.

 

Bill Hallowell (Mediaite): "PoltiFact ‘Lie of the Year’ Falls Flat"

I'm not sure how I missed seeing this column on PolitiFact's "Lie of the Year" for 2010.  It might be my favorite so far.

Bill Hallowell scores direct hits on the most important points, so be sure to read it all:

Last Week, PolitiFact designated the term “government takeover of health care” as its “lie of the year”.  While this title certainly holds some surface merit (the final Congressional product does not denotatively constitute a takeover), the way in which PolitiFact dismisses the Republican attack line as a total fabrication is troubling.  Furthermore, PolitiFact brushes off public reaction as a mere byproduct of campaign politics, rather than an overt rejection of big government philosophy.  Accusing Republicans of flat out lying without offering a full context is journalistically irresponsible.