True statements ruled "Mostly False"

What happens when PolitiFact finds that a statement is literally true?

That issue was brought up indirectly when Jeff retweeted economist Howard Wall. Wall had tweeted:

.@jamestaranto I was an expert in Politifact once. Sole purpose of the interview was to illicit a few words to show pre-existing conclusion.

— Howard Wall (@GatewayEcon) January 10, 2016

We looked up the story where Wall was quoted as an expert. It was a fact check of Mitt Romney from the 2012 presidential election. The Romney campaign said women had suffered the greatest job losses under Obama, implying Obama's leadership had been bad for women.

PolitiFact ruled the claim "Mostly False."

The Romney campaign pushed back. PolitiFact looked at the issue again and ruled the claim "Mostly False." But at the same time, PolitiFact said "The numbers are accurate but quite misleading."

Don't blame the Romney campaign. It probably operated under the assumption that PolitiFact's definitions for its "Truth-O-Meter" ratings mean something.

Taking PolitiFact's definitions literally, the lowest rating one should receive for a literally true claim is "Mostly True." Once below that level, the definitions start talking about "partially true" statements that give a misleading impression ("Half True") and "The statement contains some element of truth" but ignores facts that could give a different impression ("Mostly False").

What's our point? We've always said PolitiFact's ratings reveal more about PolitiFact than they do about the entities receiving the ratings. It's a scandal that social scientists keep their eyes closed to that. Search PolitiFact's ratings for claims it says are literally true. Note the rating given to the claim. Then take a look at the ideology of the entity making the claim.

There's your evidence of journalistic bias by fact checkers.

This is an important issue. If social scientists aren't looking at it, it suggests they don't care.

Why wouldn't they care?



Jeff Adds: We highlighted a Mark Hemingway critique of PolitiFact's Romney claim back in 2012 that is still worth a read. It would seem little has changed at PolitiFact since then.



Update 0956PST 1/12/2016: Added "Jeff Adds" portion - Jeff

Flub & Scrub: Mitch McConnell edition, Part II

On May 28 PolitiFact published a new version of its May 24 fact check of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

It's mostly bad, but we'll start with the good.

The good

PolitiFact republished its first version of the story and archived it while publishing a new version.  PolitiFact improved its reporting in the new version by responding to criticism from healthcare expert Michael F. Cannon of the Cato Institute.  Cannon noted that HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent a potentially intimidating letter to America's Health Insurance Plans:

An HHS spokesman told PolitiFact that the letter was in response to insurance companies using Obamacare as an excuse to raise premiums, and that the law gave the agency the authority to scrutinize excessive premium increases and require justifications from insurance companies. But we find Cannon's interpretation more accurate. The letter chastised the insurers for anti-Obamacare messages and threatened them with regulatory action.

Basely largely on Cannon's argument and the AHIP letter, PolitiFact upgraded its ruling from "Mostly False" to "Mostly True."

The bad

In its "Editor's note" preceding the new version of its McConnell fact check, PolitiFact blamed its failure on McConnell's office (bold emphasis added):

Editor's note: This item was initially published May 24, 2013, as a Mostly False because of the limited supporting information we received Sen. Mitch McConnell's office. The office cited a letter sent to Humana, a government contractor for Medicare Advantage. We found that letter provided relatively little support for the senator's claim and rated it Mostly False.

PolitiFact's failure was not the fault of McConnell's office.  We pointed out in our previous post that PolitiFact omitted key information from its original fact check--information readily available from a Government Accountability Office report that PolitiFact itself cited in the original reporting.  We failed to credit PolitiFact with its fractional disclosure of the key information:

[T]he Humana mailing prompted CMS to send a memo to all other Medicare Advantage and Part D contractors, warning them "to suspend potentially misleading mailings to beneficiaries about health care and insurance reform."

That doesn't sound so much like a "gag order," does it?  But the GAO report related a different account (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.

Note the difference between suspending "potentially misleading mailings" with "communications on pending legislation."  GAO uses language like the latter twice in its report.

But what about the version PolitiFact quotes?  All the CMS did was ask MA insurers to stop potentially misleading mailings.  Right?

Most likely the GAO has it right.  PolitiFact quoted from a CMS press release announcing the Sept. 21, 2009 memo, not the memo itself.  The press release does not appear to use language directly from the memo.  PolitiFact presents the press release quotation as though it comes from the memo.  The CMS press release does not express the type of policy the GAO highlighted in its report.  PolitiFact blew the reporting.

The new version of the McConnell fact check doesn't even mention the CMS memo or the GAO report (the latter remains among the sources listed on the sidebar).  The CMS memo, based on the GAO report detailing its instructions, serves as the best evidence supporting McConnell's claim.


We applaud PolitiFact for keeping the original version of the article available to the public, even if the posting followed a disappointing delay.  It should be a simple matter to archive the post as soon as the decision was made to replace it.  The original page URL could link to the archived version, explain why it was archived and assure the reader a new version is in the works.

We condemn PolitiFact for blaming its poor reporting on McConnell's office and for publishing a new version that's almost as defective as the first version.  Certainly the new "Mostly True" rating appropriately gives McConnell more credit, but it's inexcusable for journalists to simply leave out easily accessed information that supports McConnell.  That's just poor journalism.


Correction May 29, 2013:  Fixed title to agree with original title (added "Mitch" and reversed "Scrub" with "Flub") aside from the "Part II."

When is a tax that isn't a tax a tax?

On Oct. 5, 2012 PolitiFact published a fact check examining Vice President Joe Biden's claim that the Ryan budget would result in a $460 annual tax on Social Security recipients.

Biden's claim was based on filling in blanks of  Romney's budget plan based on extrapolations.  PolitiFact ruled the claim "Mostly False."

On Oct. 26, 2012 PolitiFact published a fact check examining a Romney campaign claim that President Obama's policies place a $4000 tax hike on middle class families.

The Romney campaign's claim was based on translating the accumulated interest from Mr. Obama's spending programs into a tax collected over a 10-year period.  In other words, the Romney campaign extrapolated from the ongoing costs to place a number on a tax that Mr. Obama has not proposed.  PolitiFact ruled the claim "Pants on Fire."

We think the comparison helps illustrate the arbitrary nature of PolitiFact's rating system.  In both cases, the claim is based on the made-up existence of a proposed tax.

Update Nov. 6, 2012:  The image did not behave as hoped when clicked upon, so it's been re-sized and embedded at its actual size to make it easier to read.  The page may load more slowly than average as a result.

The burden of the burden of proof

Often we have criticized PolitiFact for employing a potentially fallacious criterion among its principles (emphasis added):

Burden of proof -- People who make factual claims are accountable for their words and should be able to provide evidence to back them up. We will try to verify their statements, but we believe the burden of proof is on the person making the statement.

In practice this often means that if a person makes a statement and has no evidence to back it up, as with Harry Reid claiming that Mitt Romney paid no income taxes for 10 consecutive years by the account of an anonymous friend, then Harry Reid receives a rating along the lines of "Pants on Fire."

While it was extremely unlikely that Romney escaped income taxes for 10 straight years, part of the reasoning PolitiFact used in its judgment comes from the burden of proof fallacy (bold emphasis added):

Burden of Proof is a fallacy in which the burden of proof is placed on the wrong side. Another version occurs when a lack of evidence for side A is taken to be evidence for side B in cases in which the burden of proof actually rests on side B.

Which brings us to PolitiFact's latest bending of its own rules.  In rating a claim by Vice President Joe Biden, PolitiFact removed the burden of proof from Biden and placed it on Biden's target, Mitt Romney:

Biden said that under Romney’s tax plan "the average senior would have to pay $460 a year more in tax for their Social Security."

That figure is just one way to fill in the blanks in Romney’s largely unexplained tax proposal. It’s an average of a hypothetical, and it’s at odds with what Romney has said he’ll do, which is to protect deductions for the middle class and not raise taxes.

When Biden moves to "fill in the blanks" he's making stuff up.  Otherwise there's no blank to fill.  Romney is not obligated to fill in the blanks, yet PolitiFact lets Biden skate essentially because Romney's failure to provide detail supposedly provides some justification for Biden making stuff up.

That's not fact checking, and it does not represent consistent adherence to PolitiFact's statement of principles.  It adds another brick to the edifice indicating a liberal bias at PolitiFact.

PolitiFact and the gutting of Welfare reform (Updated)

Many of us on the political right heard about the Obama administration's proposed waivers for Welfare work requirements cast in a frame suggesting Obama had rolled back a significant aspect of the Republican-led Welfare reform plan Clinton signed into law in the 1990s.

The Romney campaign didn't take long to produce ads criticizing the change.

Almost as quickly, mainstream fact checkers found fault with such ads.

PolitiFact:

The ad’s claim is not accurate, and it inflames old resentments about able-bodied adults sitting around collecting public assistance. Pants on Fire!

 We were suspicious.  But to call the fact checkers on a mistake takes research.

Enter Mickey Kaus, piggybacking on The New York Times:

Here’s how the Times describes what Nevada wants to do:

[Nevada] asked to discuss flexibility in imposing those requirements. Perhaps, the state asked, those families hardest to employ could be exempted from the work requirements for six months while officials worked with them to stabilize their households. [E.A.]

“Exempted from the work requirements for six months.” That’s not just “weakening” work requirements–the safe, milder charge I chose to make a couple of days ago. It’s explicitly tossing them out the window for an extended period–“to allow time for their barriers to be addressed and their household circumstances stabilized”, in Nevada’s words.

Nevada, recall, was one of the states the Obama administration cited as requesting waivers from the Welfare reform work requirements.

This piece of evidence alone doesn't make the Romney ad accurate.  But it does render the "Pants on Fire" verdict very questionable.

And then there's Robert Rector, writing for the National Review:

(I)t appears the administration intends to do away with standards of the reform law that require 30 to 40 percent of the work-eligible TANF caseload to engage in clearly defined activities for 20 to 30 hours per week. It will replace those standards with a new standard urging that the work-eligible caseload engage in vaguely defined activities for as little as one hour per week. This sounds a lot like “gutting” to most reasonable people.

Read all of Rector's argument and look for additional information before making a final judgment.  Don't trust in mainstream fact checkers like PolitiFact.

We'll keep following this issue as it develops.


Update 9/11/2012:

Our apologies for neglecting information pointed out in August by Senior Attorney Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute:

The Obama Administration’s move to gut welfare reform puzzled Kaus, who voted for Obama in 2008. But perhaps it shouldn’t have baffled him, since it reflects Obama’s longstanding antipathy to reforms of the welfare system aimed at reducing dependency on welfare and requiring welfare recipients to work. “For example, in the years immediately after passage of the [1996 reform] law, Barack Obama himself pledged to do all he could to undo it,” noted the Washington Examiner. As the Examiner's Chief Political Correspondent, Byron York, noted, on July 12, the Obama administration ‘released an official policy directive rewriting the welfare reform law of 1996’” to allow the “Department of Health and Human Services to waive the work requirement at the heart of welfare reform.”

Obama also gutted welfare reform in other ways, such as supporting and signing into law a stimulus package that rewarded states for promoting welfare dependency, giving state governors an incentive to try to water down any work requirements for welfare recipients to keep federal welfare money flowing.

In a subsequent essay, Bader delivers appropriate words for PolitiFact:

In arguing that waivers won’t lead to the gutting of the 1996 welfare reform law, since the Obama administration now says it won’t approve waivers unless it makes welfare reform more successful, left-leaning “independent” fact-checkers like PolitiFact and Factcheck.org chose to rely on political spin from the Obama administration in response to the furor over its action, and self-serving, unsubstantiated, and non-binding statements about its intentions, rather than on what the Obama administration actually did in claiming for itself the broad authority to waive the work requirements at the heart of the welfare-reform law (and what it actually said in its July 12 HHS memo claiming that authority, which discussed “the sort of waivers they want to grant,” which do indeed “weaken work requirements,” and did so in response to a waiver request by Nevada, which expressly sought to weaken work requirements, as Mickey Kaus has noted at The Daily Caller).

We echo Bader's question:  Why did PolitiFact remain effectively silent regarding contrary expert opinion?

This is the game we end up with so often from PolitiFact.  PolitiFact ends "he said/she said" journalism by arbitrarily picking the clear winner between two plausible opposing viewpoints.  The result gives us "PolitiFact says" journalism.


Jeff adds:

I looked through PolitiFact's source list but wasn't able to see a poll they cited that determined Romney's ad "inflames old resentments about able-bodied adults sitting around collecting public assistance." How did PolitiFact determine the reaction millions of viewers had to the ad? Unless they offer some evidence of the audience reaction, PolitiFact is simply editorializing.

PolitiFact takes another cue from the opinion pages in its summary:

Romney’s ad says, "Under Obama’s plan (for welfare), you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check."

That's a drastic distortion of the planned changes to Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.

How is that a drastic distortion? If Romney had used Nevada's language, and said "You could be exempt from work requirements and you'll still get a welfare check" would PolitiFact have awarded Romney with a shiny True? PolitiFact's hyperbolic description is raw opinion that shouldn't be confused with verifiable evidence of a falsehood.

And check out this gem describing the same policy that allows states to provide a six month exemption from work requirements:

"The requirement was for more work, not less."

That's a portion of a Bill Clinton statement that PolitiFact rated True.

I'm also struggling to imagine the fantasy world where PolitiFact would ever write this paragraph:

That's a drastic distortion of the planned changes to the Affordable Care Act. By granting waivers to states, the Romney administration is seeking to make health insurance mandates more successful, not end them. What’s more, the waivers would apply to individually evaluated pilot programs -- HHS is not proposing a blanket, national change to ObamaCare.

In PolitiFact's world of facts, illegally granting waivers and exemptions to laws is a way to strengthen policy. Keep that in mind should the GOP control the White House and Congress next year.
 
Romney's claim is entirely accurate. Partisans can argue about whether or not it's misleading, or if it's a reasonable summation of Obama's policy. But Romney's statement that a person could still receive a welfare check without working or training is unarguably based on fact. Attempts to claim otherwise are pure editorial spin.

This is how the non-non-partisans at PolitiFact have always operated, though in the past they did better at keeping their campaign chaff out of their research wheat. They must be getting antsy, or perhaps they're getting cocky. Either way, their unabashed defense of liberal policies is less and less camouflaged as the election nears.

counterirritant: "Holy Misrepresentation, Batman!"

Alternate title:  "The unBainable lightness of Bane"

The intermittent "counterirritant" returns with another critique of PolitiFact, this time skewering Poynter's Pedants for ignoring the context of Rush Limbaugh's comments regarding the Bain-Bane connection Limbaugh mentioned on his radio program.

counterirritant (bold emphasis added):

The transcript PolitiFact used as a source offers more support for the radio host than it does the fact checkers. Only two sentences discuss whether the name Bane was selected because of Romney. The first is a question: “Do you think that it is accidental that the name of the really vicious fire breathing four eyed whatever it is villain in this movie is named Bane?” After asking that question, Limbaugh was interrupted and went off on a tangent. When he returned to the subject, he continued: “So, anyway, this evil villain in the new Batman movie is named Bane.  And there’s now a discussion out there as to whether or not this is purposeful and whether or not it will influence voters.” After noting it, Limbaugh never takes a side in the discussion of purposefulness.

The point is inarguable:  PolitiFact fact checked Limbaugh on a statement he never made, unless one insists without reasonable supporting evidence that his question was rhetorical.  PolitiFact didn't bother making the argument and moreover decided against dealing with this issue through its "In Context" feature.  "In Context" functions for PolitiFact pretty much like a "nothing to see here" tag.

The critique by counterirritant serves as a fine bookend for my "PolitiFlub" critique of the same PolitiFact item.  I took a different tack, showing that even if Limbaugh was making the claim PolitiFact imagined the fact checkers went about their business in entirely the wrong way.


Jeff adds: (07/24/12): Lest there be any confusion about what PolitiFact accused Rush of saying, here's a screenshot of their twitter feed:

PolitiFact exaggerates its reluctance to grade hyperbole

Crossposted from Sublime Bloviations


Sometimes PolitiFact just can't bring itself to rate a statement on its cheesy "Truth-O-Meter."  Last week Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said of Mitt Romney "He not only couldn’t be confirmed as a Cabinet secretary, he couldn’t be confirmed as a dog catcher, because a dog catcher — you’re at least going to want to look at his income tax returns."

PolitiFact couldn't flip the switch on the "Truth-O-Meter."  Sure, PolitiFact published an article stating that Reid was wrong, but no "Truth-O-Meter" rating came with the story.

So what's going on?

PolitiFact:

We recognize Reid was using hyperbole, so we won't put his claim to the Truth-O-Meter. But we thought it was worthwhile to examine if many government officials and candidates have to file their tax returns to qualify for their jobs.

Our conclusion: Reid was barking up the wrong tree.

PolitiFact has called three different statements from Republicans "hyperbole" just since January, rating each of them "Pants on Fire."  The case involving Reid stands as the only one where PolitiFact explicitly refrained from grading a hyperbolic statement.

Naturally I was confused upon reading the following from PolitiFact at its Facebook page:

Mark FitzSimmons ‎"We recognize Reid was using hyperbole, so we won't put his claim to the Truth-O-Meter. "

What? Wasn't the first pants on fire Biden referring to Bush as brain-dead? How is that not recognized as hyperbole?

PolitiFact Mark, you have a very good memory! It was after that check (and partly because of that check) that we decided on a policy against it.

It was after the Biden "brain-dead" fact check from 2007 that PolitiFact decided on a policy against grading hyperbole.

Here we are in 2012 and PolitiFact has graded about 20 claims it recognized as hyperbole.  All occurred subsequent to the Biden claim.  The most recent occurred on June 29, 2012.

Now I'm stuck trying to figure out a charitable interpretation for "It was after that check (and partly because of that check) that we decided on a policy against it."

Progress is slow.

Left jab: Jared Bernstein and median income in Romney's Massachusetts

Much of the criticism of PolitiFact from liberals is lame.  On occasion, however, a liberal makes a pretty good point, and Jared Bernstein makes one of those in commenting on a PolitiFact rating about median income in Massachusetts while Mitt Romney served as governor.

The claim came from Ed Gillespie, who was defending Romney's record in Massachusetts by pointing out that median income in Massachusetts rose by $5,500.  The problem, as Bernstein pointed out and PolitiFact acknowledged in the story, comes from the fact that family income actually dropped slightly after adjusting for inflation.

Saying that income went up by thousands of dollars while it dropped in terms of real dollars is flatly misleading. Bernstein has a good foundation for a sense of outrage.

But even though Bernstein's basic point is accurate, he oversteps a bit by assigning the statement a rating of "Mostly False."  That's because PolitiFact gives each of the ratings a definition.  Here's the definition of "Mostly False":

MOSTLY FALSE – The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.

Gillespie's statement did not simply contain an element of truth.  It was true and misleading.  The "Mostly False" rating serves as an ill fit for claims like Gillespie's because the rating itself is only half true.

When PolitiFact started out, the "Half True" rating appeared to fit statements like Gillespie's:

HALF TRUE – The statement is accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.

Some of PolitiFact's state operations may still have this definition of "Half True" posted on their websites (confirmed for Texas).

PolitiFact's change of the definition of "Half True" (with zero fanfare outside of us) makes it no longer quite fit fundamentally misleading true statements:

HALF TRUE – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.

Gillespie's statement wasn't partially accurate.  It was accurate but misleading.

A more important point underlies Bernstein's criticism of PolitiFact:  PolitiFact uses an unwieldy rating system.  Many statements do not fit the ratings as PolitiFact defines them, particularly when PolitiFact rates two statements at a time and averages the ratings.

So Bernstein scores a glancing blow against PolitiFact.  It doesn't hurt PolitiFact much but it does expose a critical weakness.

The Weekly Standard: "Romney to PolitiFact: There You Go Again"

The Weekly Standard's Mark Hemingway was back in PolitiFact's grille back in April.

PolitiFact ruled "Mostly False" a claim from the Mitt Romney campaign that women as a group have suffered 92.3 percent of the net job losses under Obama's presidency.  That ruling brought a swift and stern response from the Romney campaign.

Hemingway filed the battle report:

Given that PolitiFact says Romney's numbers check out, how the heck did PolitiFact then conclude Romney's statement is "mostly false"? Well, they did what fact checkers habitually do whenever they find something factually correct but politically disagreeable—kick up a bunch of irrelevant contextual dirt and lean on some biased sources. Which is why PolitiFact's own language here is absurd: "We found that though the numbers are accurate, their reading of them isn’t" and "The numbers are accurate but quite misleading." I would also note that my friend Glenn Kessler, the fact checker at the Washington Post, evaluated the same claim and deemed it "TRUE BUT FALSE." I do hope that if media fact checkers expect to retain any credibility to evaluate basic empirical claims, they're aware that this kind of Orwellian doublespeak is going to make them a laughingstock.

Read the whole thing, because Hemingway's just warming up with the above. 

The above point, that PolitiFact appears absurd for ruling a true statement "Mostly False" probably can't receive enough emphasis.  PolitiFact's rating system provides no description fitting this type of rating.  If the results make it look like PolitiFact isn't categorizing claims according to whether they fit some type of established objective criteria, it's probably because that's the way it is.

Addendum:

PolitiFact's response to the complaint from the Romney campaign deserves a closer look:

We considered the complaint and interviewed four other economists, none of whom have formal or financial ties to any campaigns. Our additional reporting found no reason to change our ruling, which remains at Mostly False.

Two words:  Fig leaf.

The point is that the original reporting didn't justify the ruling.  If PolitiFact can't see that then it's no surprise that additional reporting fails to sway its made-up mind.

Hoystory: "Also known as 'Promise Kept'"

When does a promise qualify as being kept?  It depends.

Matthew Hoy of Hoystory highlights the stratospheric standards of the self-appointed Valuator of Vows. This time PolitiFact checks in on John Boehner's promise to fly commercial planes as opposed to military aircraft (a'la Nancy Pelosi).

What titillating travel tidbits did PolitiFact uncover?

[Boehner] spokesman, Michael Steel, told The Hill that Boehner had no intention of reconsidering a decision he previously made to forgo the use of a private jet for transportation to and from his Ohio district.

When we contacted Steel about this pledge, he said Boehner still flies commercial, and the only time he has flown on a military jet was for an overseas congressional delegation.

Promise Kept, right? Hoy fills us in on the promissory particulars:

His spokesman says he’s flying commercial. They’ve gone through his travel records and have uncovered no evidence that he’s using military jets.
...

So, they’ve got zero evidence that he’s not flying commercial. Zero evidence that he has failed to keep his pledge.

And the best they can muster is: “In the works?”

Poor Boehner. If only he had been rated back in the olden days of eight months ago when PolitiFact's standards for Promise Kept weren't so high.

In a Promise Kept rating we reviewed, Obama was given credit for his promise to "...establish a 10 percent federal Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) to require that 10 percent of electricity consumed in the U.S. is derived from clean, sustainable energy sources, like solar, wind and geothermal by 2012." To this day, PolitiFact has yet to cite the actual legislation that Obama signed establishing the 10 percent RPS standard. Our best guess is they haven't done so because it doesn't exist. Rather, Obama was given a Promise Kept simply because market conditions caused energy sources to meet the 10 percent figure, not because of any requirement Obama was able to enact.

Boehner honors his commitment, and it's considered In the Works. Obama fails to act, and earns a Promise Kept for something that happened without his action that was only tangentially related to his pledge in the first place. But it don't worry, PolitiFact is still objectively on the case:

We will continue to seek more concrete records of Boehner"s travels and follow this pledge. If readers see him flying commercial -- or on a military jet -- please let us know.

PolitiFact's inability to maintain consistent standards for the statements and people they rate offer a great example of how the editors' and writers' personal bias creeps into their work. PolitiFact is a collection of partisans convincing each other of their own impartiality. They should not be trusted as a news source, let alone as a fact checkers.   

Check out Hoystory for the full article. His snark is always worth the visit. And for more from Hoy on PolitiFact go here. And see our reviews of Hoy's work here.


Bryan adds:

When I read the PolitiFact item on Boehner I had little problem with it as an interim rating--but when I recall that PolitiFact gave President Obama a "Promise Kept" for troop increases that he's now in the process of reversing it does create some puzzlement.  Obama was, after all, supposedly preparing us for "meeting the challenges of the 21st century."  Inconsistency remains a rampant problem at PolitiFact.

Grading PolitiFact: Obama, Bush and the auto bailout

Crossposted from Sublime Bloviations.

Context matters -- We examine the claim in the full context, the comments made before and after it, the question that prompted it, and the point the person was trying to make.
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

 Apparently context doesn't matter much, depending on the subject.

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Molly Moorhead:  writer, researcher
Martha M. Hamilton:  editor


Analysis:

This fact check serves as an outstanding example of narrowing the story focus to fish a grain of truth out of an overall falsehood.

The incompetence is overpowering.  Note that PolitiFact frames the issue by stipulating that the $13 billion "given" by the Bush administration was gone "By the time Obama took office."   That bit of timing isn't mentioned in the film, so far as I can tell, though I was able to note that it used a Dec. 2, 2008 television news clip to emphasize the immediacy of the crisis faced by President Obama.

The film and PolitiFact omit a number of important facts.  First, GM received another $4 billion loan in February under the agreement worked out with the Bush administration.   Part of the agreement required the two automakers to submit plans for achieving financial stability by February.  The report of the Congressional Oversight Panel details the response from the Obama administration:

On February 15, 2009, President Obama announced the formation of an interagency Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry (Task Force), that would assume responsibility for reviewing the Chrysler and GM viability plans.

The timing is far more complicated than either the film or PolitiFact lets on, and the loans from Bush were not necessarily "gone" when Obama took office, particularly in the case of the $4 billion received by GM in February, though that amount is not counted in the $13 billion through the magic of cherry picking the facts.

Let's pick up with PolitiFact's telling (bold emphasis added):

On the subject of Detroit, car company CEOs appear onscreen asking for money in Washington, followed by pictures of empty factories and dire news headlines. The movie talks about the financial pressures on the new president and the unpopularity with the public of more bailouts. But Obama, [narrator Tom] Hanks says, acted anyway to help American workers.

"He decided to intervene, but in exchange for help the president would demand action. The Bush administration had given the car companies $13 billion, and the money was now gone," Hanks says.

Then President Bill Clinton appears onscreen to lend his voice.

"He didn’t just give the car companies the money, and he didn’t give the UAW the money," Clinton says. "He said you guys gotta work together and come up, and everybody’s gotta have some skin in the game here. You gotta modernize the automobile industry."

This segment of the film is not about the history of $13 billion out of a total of $17 billion loaned to automakers by the Bush administration.  It is fully intended to build a contrast between the incoming president and his supposedly irresponsible predecessor.  That point is extremely misleading, as we shall continue to observe.

PolitiFact:

Bush authorized initial loans to Chrysler and GM (and their respective financing arms) before leaving office, using money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Chrysler initially received $4 billion, and GM got $13.4 billion in bridge loans meant to keep the companies afloat for a little longer.

Apparently the math amounts to $4 billion plus $13.4 billion equals $13 billion.  And that $13 billion was gone by Jan. 20 even though $884 million was loaned to GMAC on Jan. 16.  It lasted only four days by PolitiFact's account.

Of course the excess $4 billion was loaned in February as described above.  You just don't get to learn that from the PolitiFact version of events.

PolitiFact:

Early in 2009 [mid February], Obama convened a task force to study the companies’ viability. Both were required [through the agreement with the Bush administration] to submit plans for getting back to solvency, but both failed, the task force determined. In the meantime, they were running short of money again.

Pardon my editorial counterspin--which shouldn't be necessary for a fact check.  Unfortunately it is necessary.  GM, by the way, received its last Bush loan on Feb. 17, two days after Obama announced his task force.

PolitiFact:

A report from the Congressional Oversight Panel details the chronology of the spending, including an additional $6.36 billion that GM received between March and May 2009.

The $6.36 billion does not include the $4 billion loaned in February under the agreement with the Bush administration.  Nor does it include $8.5 billion sunk into Chrysler by the Obama administration as part of its restructuring.  Neither does it include the $30.1 billion subsequently sunk into GM as part of its eventual restructuring.  Both the latter figures come from the Congressional Oversight Panel's report PolitiFact cited.

PolitiFact interviewed former Obama team member Steve Rattner about the bailout numbers.  PolitiFact presents Rattner as agreeing that the funds from the Bush administration were exhausted "before we really were in the saddle."  Rattner states that the loans from the Bush administration weren't intended to rescue GM and Chrysler but rather to tide them over until the Obama administration could deal with the situation.

PolitiFact does not totally ignore the film's point about Bush:

We also think it’s worth mentioning the implication in the video that the Bush administration did not put enough restrictions on the money. "He decided to intervene, but in exchange for help the president would demand action," narrator Hanks says just before mentioning the Bush loans.

In case PolitiFact isn't the only party who missed it, note that the filmmaker uses the quotation of Bill Clinton to hammer the point all the more.  It was the main point of the segment, and it was untrue.

What's the verdict?

PolitiFact:

The Obama campaign movie says, "the Bush administration had given the car companies $13 billion and the money was now gone."

It's important to note that the $13 billion was provided as loans, not as grants, as the wording might suggest.

Referring to the time Obama took office, January 2009, GM and Chrysler by then had received almost $14 billion in bailout money. News reports also reflect that the money was basically used up. So, that much is correct. But the movie ignores the fact that this was not unexpected. The Bush administration’s loans were always just a temporary lifeline, meant to keep the companies operating so the new president would have time to decide what to do long term.

This is important information left out of the movie’s extensive discussion of the auto bailouts. That the $13 billion was gone when Obama arrived was no surprise. We rate the statement Mostly True.

The film glosses over quite a few facts that PolitiFact fails to note.  The point of the film is the contrast between the president who demands accountability and Bush who simply gives money away to big corporations.  The movie's account of the auto bailout is thorough spin.  Fact checking isolated statements in the fabric of this filmmaker's fiction will never fully reveal the misleading nature of the narrative.

If Obama went against popular sentiment on the bailout then so did Bush.  If Obama demanded accountability then so did Bush, albeit the latter's attempt was hamstrung by the end of his tenure as president.

PolitiFact disgraces itself again by connecting the film's distortion with a "Mostly True" label.


The grades:

Molly Moorhead:  F
Martha M. Hamilton:  F

PolitiFact let the main misleading message of the auto bailout segment slide.  PolitiFact's reporting corrected a fraction of the film's omissions and shades on the truth.  PolitiFact's version is scarcely an improvement on the original.

But President Obama and his campaign might like it.  That's got to count for something.


3/22/12-Added link to original PF article in first paragraph/fixed link to PoP-Jeff

The Weekly Standard: PolitiFact Can’t Get Its Story Straight on Romneycare and Abortion

Does the truth have a shelf-life?

Jeffrey H. Anderson, writing at the Weekly Standard, takes the fact-finding DeLorean all the way back to 2007 to highlight PolitiFact's conflicting ratings on RomneyCare's coverage of abortions. Before you read Anderson's article, check out the graphics for the remarkably dissimilar PolitiFact articles:

In 2007, PolitiFact says RomneyCare covers abortions:

Image clipped from PolitiFact.com

In 2012, the issue isn't so clear:

Image clipped from PolitiFact.com

Anderson notes:

[The Gingrich rating] sounds reasonable enough — except that the 2007 PolitiFact verdict directly refutes it. 

At first glance the statements have just enough wiggle room between them to possibly have different ratings. But Anderson's article explains there's not enough to justify different ratings..

Also observe how PolitiFact presented Newt's statement. Newt claimed "Romney signed government-mandated health care with taxpayer-funded abortions." Notice PolitiFact's first question: "Did Mitt Romney make taxpayer funded abortion the law of the land?" The difference is that abortion's status as a covered procedure prior to Romney enacting the legislation is independent of Gingrich's claim. The context of Gingrich's ad was that Romney was sympathetic to abortion rights issues. Whether or not abortion was covered by taxpayers under existing Massachusetts law is irrelevant to Gingrich's point. The fact that Romney helped perpetuate the taxpayer funding is enough to make Gingrich's underlying argument accurate.

We'd also like to point out that for a Republican plan, RomneyCare has been the subject of several favorable articles, and even a ridiculous push poll, at PolitiFact. The cynical reader might surmise the kid glove treatment has something to do with RomneyCare's similarity to ObamaCare. Nah, that couldn't be it.




(1/31/2012) Corrected quote of Gingrich's PF statement. No change in context-Jeff

Sublime Bloviations: "PolitiFlub: Udderly confused by EPA milk regs"

 Crossposted from Sublime Bloviations.


This.
just.
doesn't.
look.
very.
easy.
to.
reconcile:

(link to story at PolitiFact.com)

That's President Obama from yesterday's State of the Union Address.

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The latter rating came from PolitiFact Virginia almost a full year ago.

On the face of it, one can imagine a reconciliation of the two rulings.  But it's doubtful if you've looked at the one for Obama after evaluating the one for Griffith.

The best part of it is that PolitiFact may have flubbed both rulings.  The EPA was leaning toward an exemption for homogenized milk.  But the exemption would not have covered raw milk, which should have left Griffith's claim at least partly true.  And if raw milk received no exemption from the EPA then Obama's claim is approximately half true as well.  A raw milk spill would still be treated just like an oil spill even after President Obama supposedly eliminated the rule that required a milk spill to be treated like an oil spill.

Welcome to the wonderful world of PolitiFact fact checking.


Update:  Looks like the EPA did get around to exempting all milk products from the rule. Griffith was still partially correct at worst, and President Obama did not eliminate an EPA rule.  Rather, Obama's EPA exempted milk from a rule that remains in effect.  And Obama's statement obscures the administration's vacillating actions on the issue:

"The Obama Administration pulled back the rule in January of 2009, then reissued it in November, and to large degree it was the same rule," Schlegel said.

Jeff adds (1/26/2012): This is more accurately a "Bryan adds" because I simply wanted to highlight something Bryan wrote on PolitiFact's Facebook page regarding this ruling. I think it exemplifies the "gimme" True's that PolitiFact grants to Obama:

"[T]he Bush administration had created an exemption for milk as it was leaving office. That exemption was one of those that Obama pulled back for re-examination when he took office. So the only reason he had the chance to save us from the EPA's application of oil spill rules to milk was by preventing Bush from fixing it first."