Michael F. Cannon: "Clean Up Your Act, PolitiFact"

Michael F. Cannon, the heath care expert who started a boycott of PolitiFact years ago over its penchant for calling people liars (without proving it), has an article at Forbes showing how PolitiFact flubbed a Jan. 29, 2016 rating of Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz. Cruz called Obamacare the nation's No. 1 job killer and received a "Pants on Fire" rating from PolitiFact.

We can't do better than Cannon in summarizing his article:

In their rush to label Ted Cruz a liar, PolitiFact ignored economic theory, ignored economic consensus, ignored problems with the evidence they had amassed, ignored that some of the evidence they collected supports Cruz, ignored reams of anecdotal evidence, and dismissed Congressional Budget Office projections based on nothing more than a subjective and arbitrary distinction PolitiFact themselves invented.

But the summary's even better accompanied by the details, so please visit Forbes to read the whole thing.

Especially damning is PolitiFact's omission of Congressional Budget Office projections of labor loss as a result of the Affordable Care Act. PolitiFact's fact-check of Cruz does not mention the CBO but links to earlier PolitiFact fact checks dealing with the CBO's projections. Cannon succinctly explains the problem with PolitiFact's spin on the CBO's reports.

Our post just before this one talks about examining whether PolitiFact's corrections benefit Democrats more than Republicans. The other side of that coin whether PolitiFact acts more readily in response to strong criticisms from the left or from the right.

Here's betting PolitiFact will run no correction as a result of Cannon's criticisms. Indeed, we deem it very unlikely that PolitiFact will even publicly note Cannon's criticism.

That's just how PolitiFact rolls.


Afters

We can't resist attaching this howler from PolitiFact's fact check of Cruz.

Did you know the Affordable Care Act is actually a job creator? Read (bold emphasis added):

All of the job numbers have moved in a positive direction since April 2010, the first full month after President Barack Obama signed the bill into law. The unemployment rate has moved steadily from 9.9 percent to 5 percent. The economy has added about 10.7 million jobs. And the number of working people who have part-time work but would rather have full-time work has fallen by nearly 3 million. There was a brief rise in that number between April and September 2010, but the longer term trend is clearly one of decline.

That’s not to say the Affordable Care Act deserves all the credit. The fact is many factors drive the labor market and the overall recovery from the Great Recession is the dominant player in this regard.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that's PolitiFact arguing that correlation is evidence of causation despite the involvement of multiple causes. PolitiFact says that's a sin when conservative politicians do it.

 It's still sinful but not as much so when liberal politicians do it (research project is underway).

Nothing To See Here: The Obamacare architect two-step

When Romneycare/Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber was exposed on video affirming the ACA was designed to withhold subsidies for insurance policies not sold through an exchange established by a state, conservatives tended to connect that to a pair of relevant court cases.

So did we.  But at about the same time, we at PolitiFact Bias wondered whether there's anything to see here from a fact-checking perspective.

Sure, Gruber's remarks tend to pull the rug out from under the administration's insistence that it's appropriately following the law by extending insurance subsidies through the federal exchange system.  It's a big political story based on that alone.  But when Gruber insists that what he said was a "speak-o," the verbal equivalent of a typo, it seems like a fact checker might be interested.

On the other hand, a fact checker that leans left might have a special motivation for either ignoring the story or, even better, placing a special spin on it.

We're here to help.  Here's Gruber, as quoted in the left-leaning The New Republic:

It was never contemplated by anybody who modeled or worked on this law that availability of subsides would be conditional of who ran the exchanges.

And here's Gruber speaking in 2010 Jan. 2012:



Transcript ours (major hat tip to John Sexton for posting the audio), bold emphasis added:

The third risk and the one folks aren't talking about, what may be most important of all, is the role of the states.  Through a political compromise, the decision was made that states should play a critical role in running these health insurance exchanges.  And health insurance exchanges are the centerpiece of this reform.  Because they are the place the (citizens?) can go to shop for their new, securely priced health insurance.  But if they're not set up in a way which is transparent, and which is convenient for shoppers, and which allow people to take their tax credits and use them to (effectively?) buy health insurance, it will undercut the whole purpose of the bill.  Now, a number of states have expressed no interest in doing so.  A number of states, like California, have been a real leader, one of, I think it was the first state to pass an exchange bill.  It's been a leader in setting up its exchange--a great example.  But California's rare. Only about 10 states have really moved forward aggressively in setting up their exchanges.  A number of states have even turned down millions of dollars in federal government grants as a statement of some sort.  They don't support health care reform.  Now, I guess I'm enough of a believer in democracy to think that when the voters in states see that by not setting up an exchange, the politicians of the state are costing citizens in that state hundreds of millions and billions of dollars that they'll eventually throw the guys out.  But, I don't know that for sure. And that is really the ultimate threat is will, will people understand that, gee, if your government doesn't set up an exchange you're losing hundreds of millions of dollars in tax credits to be delivered to your citizens.  So that's the other threat, will states do anything to set it up.

 And here's Gruber in 2012, via Forbes and Michael F. Cannon:

"I think what’s important to remember politically about this, is if you’re a state and you don’t set up an Exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits."

I'll be completely impressed if PolitiFact treats Gruber to anything lower than a "Half True" on this.  It cuts too deeply a health care reform bill PolitiFact has tried to defend from attacks both real and imagined.

More likely there's nothing to see here.


Jeff adds:

We won't hold our breath waiting for them to weigh in on such a comically embarrassing situation for the liberal side of this debate. But, as we tweeted out on Friday, Angie Holan has several options available to her:

Flub & Scrub: Mitch McConnell edition

[Also see "Flub & Scrub:  Mitch McConnell edition Part II"]

On Friday May 24 PolitiFact posted a fact check of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).  I won't quote from it because PolitiFact, perhaps only temporarily, has scrubbed the story from its website with apparently only an announcement on Twitter in explanation:

We're revising our fact-check on Sen. McConnell's claim on health insurers. New item will be posted later today.

PolitiFact later tweeted that it would publish the revised item next week.  We'll see.

So what happened?

PolitiFact rated "Mostly False" a claim from McConnell that HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had forbidden insurance companies from sending information to policyholders about the effects of Obamacare.  Then Michael F. Cannon happened.  Cannon sent out a tweet of his own:

You forgot this ow.ly/lmRNK MT @politifact: Ins co's told not to tell about Obamacare impact. Mostly False ow.ly/lmS5U
— Michael F. Cannon (@mfcannon) May 24, 2013

Cannon's URL led to his 2010 article "Secretary Sebelius Slips on the Brass Knuckles," where he detailed Sebelius' demands that insurers not communicate to policyholders information about the Affordable Care Act she considered false or misleading.

I ran across the McConnell rating on PolitiFact's Facebook page that afternoon, well after Cannon had tweeted about it.  I spot-checked the story as I sometimes do.  The story claimed a GAO report said the HHS office "in general" acted properly in responding to what it regarded as a misleading taxpayer-funded message the insurer Humana sent out to Medicare Advantage policyholders.

I looked at the report.  I confirmed that PolitiFact reported more-or-less accurately that the report "in general" found nothing amiss in the handling of situation.

But I also found a significant caveat PolitiFact failed to mention (bold emphasis added):

Although CMS’s actions generally conformed to its policies and procedures, the September 21, 2009, memorandum instructing all MA organizations to discontinue communications on pending legislation while CMS conducted its investigation was unusual. Officials from the MA organizations and CMS regional offices that we interviewed told us they were unaware of CMS ever directing all MA organizations to immediately stop an activity before CMS had determined whether that activity violated federal laws, regulations, or MA program guidance. When asked about this directive, officials from CMS’s central office stated that, given the degree of potential harm to beneficiaries, the action was appropriate for the circumstances.

A source PolitiFact cited provided information supporting McConnell's claim.  And PolitiFact didn't mention it.

I posted this evidence to PolitiFact's Facebook page, arguing that PolitiFact's story was more misleading than McConnell's statement.

As it happens, PolitiFact scrubbed its Facebook page of the link to the scrubbed article at its main website.  So those Facebook comments are gone along with PolitiFact's wall post about its McConnell article.  Mostly gone, that is.  We have a few screen captures.

I argue that a reporter's background knowledge and ideology predispose the reporter to make mistakes of this type--missing obvious evidence mentioned in a source document--in cases where that ideology is threatened or attacked.  This applies even if journalists otherwise keep their ideology secret.

This was a big mistake.  Journalistic organizations do not lightly pull entire articles from a website.  Count it as yet another evidence helping to show PolitiFact's liberal bias.

And now we'll get another opportunity to gauge PolitiFact's transparency as it deals with a big mistake.  The past record isn't particularly good.


Addendum 5/27/2013

J.D. points out something that helps cinch the stink factor on PolitiFact's move to unpublish.

The article I provided about unpublishing stories includes quoted material from Craig Silverman.  Silverman works for the Poynter Institute, which owns the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact.

Here's Silverman in his Poynter Institute "Regret the Error" column dealing with issue of pulling a story offline (leading off with a quotation from the Washington Post):

* We should never “unpublish” stories from the Web. Once a story is up, however, the content can be removed with the approval of a senior editor. In those rare cases when we remove the content of a story from the page, it must be replaced with an editor’s note explaining the reason for the deletion. For example if an embargo has been broken, the note would read: “Editors’ Note: This article was published inadvertently and has been removed.”

This is the right standard when it comes to unpublishing. First of all, you try to never unpublish. But if you do have to remove content, be sure to publish an explanation/apology at the same URL.

Why doesn't PolitiFact follow Poynter Institute-recommended standards for unpublishing a story?

Here's what I don't want to see:  "We did follow our guidelines.  We published an explanation/apology to the same URL.  A few days after we unpublished."


Meh.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/may/24/mitch-mcconnell/mitch-mcconnell-says-hhs-put-gag-order-insurers-ab/

Edit 5/28/13: Corrected "Friday May 25" to "Friday May 24"-Jeff

Michael F. Cannon: "I Have Been False*"

Health care policy expert Michael F. Cannon of the Cato Institute brings us yet another astonishing display of fact-check incompetence from PolitiFact.

PolitiFact Georgia is the culprit this time.
 
Cannon:

In an unconscious parody of everything that’s wrong with the “fact-checker” movement in journalism, PolitiFact Georgia (a project of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution) has rated false my claim that operating an ObamaCare Exchange would violate Georgia law.

Cannon offers a devastating and conclusive rebuke of PolitiFact Georgia, and it's so elegant that putting the argument in our own words is pointless.  But to sum up, PolitiFact committed one of its traditional sins by incomprehensibly misinterpreting what the subject was saying.  PolitiFact charges Cannon with claiming that it is illegal for anyone to operate an insurance exchange in Georgia.  Cannon was talking specifically about the states setting up their own exchanges.

Here's the original context, for comparison (bold emphasis added):

State-created exchanges mean higher taxes, fewer jobs, and less protection of religious freedom. States are better off defaulting to a federal exchange. The Medicaid expansion is likewise too costly and risky a proposition. Republican Governors Association chairman Bob McDonnell (R.,Va.) agrees, and has announced that Virginia will implement neither provision.

There are many arguments against creating exchanges.

Could the context make it any clearer that Cannon refers to state-created exchanges with the arguments that follow?  The subsequent arguments augment the clarity.

PolitiFact (bold emphasis added):

[Cannon] wrote a claim we hadn’t heard before.

"[O]perating an Obamacare exchange would be illegal in 14 states," he wrote. "Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, and Virginia have enacted either statutes or constitutional amendments (or both) forbidding state employees to participate in an essential exchange function: implementing Obamacare’s individual and employer mandates."

Is that correct? PolitiFact Georgia decided to conduct an examination of the claim.

Does the federal government propose to operate a federal exchange in Georgia using Georgia government state employees?  How is that supposed to work?

Don't let our brief summary prevent you from reading Cannon's whole response.

It's just another example of amazing incompetence from PolitiFact.  Props to Cannon for standing up to this form of media tyranny.


Jeff adds:
Despite Bill Adair's assurance that PolitiFact "publishes a list of sources with every Truth-O-Meter item" in order to "to help readers judge for themselves whether they agree with the ruling," Cannon notes that the context of his original article "was lost on PolitiFact readers, because PolitiFact provided neither a citation nor a link to the opinion piece it was fact-checking."

As of the time we write this, there is in fact a link to Cannon's National Review article posted on the PF Georgia source list. This means either Cannon was wrong, or PF Georgia amended their article without informing readers of an update, correction, or even an editor's note to document the change.

Considering PolitiFact's long history of inconsistent application of their corrections policy, we're inclined to take Cannon's word for it.

Michael F. Cannon: "Strike Three for PolitiFact"

Better late than never, we take note of Cato's Michael F. Cannon's take on PolitiFact's 2011 "Lie of the Year":

 The annual unveiling of its “Lie of the Year” award garners PolitiFact more attention than anything else. Hopefully, it will garner so much attention that people will recognize this award, which is supposed to improve political discourse, instead degrades it.

PolitiFact’s past three Lies of the Year have been about health care.  Not one of them was a lie.

Cannon has boycotted PolitiFact because of the subjectivity of its "Lie of the Year" selections, turning down requests that he contribute is expert opinion to various stories.

We join others in calling for an expanded boycott of PolitiFact:  Don't cite PolitiFact as a dependable source of information.  Pressure it to reform by dumping the silly and misleading "Truth-O-Meter" and finding additional ways to separate objective reporting from news analysis and outright opinion.

Cannon's commentary is crisp and to-the-point.  Do read it all, and visit his links to appreciate the history of his principled boycott.

Michael F. Cannon repeats/clarifies: "PolitiFact Just Asked Me to Be a Source, Again. I Declined, Again."

Michael F. Cannon of the CATO Institute, in the past used by PolitiFact as an expert source, started boycotting PolitiFact based on its weighing in on opinion.

Cannon gave us an update on July 8 indicating that PolitiFact had called on him for expertise and he had declined to provide it.

On Oct. 12 Cannon posted a similar message clarifying his statement that he "declined to help" PolitiFact:

The whole purpose of my PolitiFact boycott is to help them.

We try to emphasize the same attitude at PolitiFact Bias.  A PolitiFact aware of and able to check its tendency toward ideological bias can properly serve a useful and essential role in our constitutional republic.

But PolitiFact's failure to address errors such as its flip-flop on the percentage of the payroll tax paid by employees and its blind support of Alan Grayson's ridiculous argument serve to discourage those of us hoping to see PolitiFact rise to a higher standard of fact checking.

Michael F. Cannon: "PolitiFact Just Called, Again. I Declined to Help, Again."

Short and to the point, Cato Institute's Michael J. Cannon reminds us that his boycott of PolitiFact continues.  As he notes in his title, PolitiFact sometimes seeks his services as an expert source.  Follow the links to see why Cannon no longer cooperates with PolitiFact.

Michael F. Cannon: "Why I'm Boycotting PolitiFact"

Michael F. Cannon of the CATO Institute has often served PolitiFact as an expert source.  Today he explained why he no longer cooperates with PolitiFact in that capacity:

Reporters at PolitiFact.com have used me as a resource half a dozen times or so when fact-checking something someone said about health care reform. Sometimes we disagree about where the truth lies, but I’ve always been happy to help. That changed recently, and I should let PolitiFact’s reporters know why.

read it all

Cannon's boycott is conditional:   He will lift it after he is satisfied that PolitiFact has addressed problems with its past two "Lie of the Year" selections.

I'll quote one more important passage, though Cannon's column ought to be read completely through:

Some conservatives think PolitiFact is a left-wing outfit. I don’t think that’s true, and I have defended PolitiFact against that charge. I believe that PolitiFact’s reporters are earnestly doing their best to get at the truth. But there’s a tension between that belief and these errors. Whether PolitiFact recognizes and addresses that tension will tell us a lot about PolitiFact.

I share Cannon's assessment.  It is extraordinarily unlikely that PolitiFact intends to do its fact checking any way other than impartially.  But on the other hand it's hard to reconcile that premise with some of the things PolitiFact puts to print and with some of the errors PolitiFact refuses to acknowledge.

I predict that Cannon will not end up lifting his boycott.  PolitiFact is too invested in its model, given its relative success, to risk tampering with it.

But I'd love to be proved wrong.  Just like Cannon wouldn't mind lifting his boycott under the right conditions.

Kaiser Health News: "Just Call Me Liar of the Year"

Kaiser Health News publishes Cato Institute's Michael F. Cannon's politely blistering rebuke of PolitiFact's Lie of the Year for 2010:

ObamaCare is not a government takeover, I learned from PolitiFact, because it "uses the private health insurance system to expand health care coverage."
 
But wait. In my research, I found that distinction between public and private to be illusory: what difference is there between a public system where the government taxes and spends your money, and a "private" system where the government forces you to spend your money in the same way?

 Cannon's column is a must-read.

Though Cannon makes the same point made by other critics including the Wall Street Journal, the Kaiser name carries a certain cachet that boosts the power of this critique.

To reiterate what I've written before, PolitiFact's "Lie of the Year" for 2010 will hurt them more in the long run than it will hurt anybody else.  It goes a long way toward cementing PolitiFact's reputation as a partisan news source.