Legal Insurrection: 'PolitiFact debunks obviously 'shopped photo (that no one believed was real)'

The title pretty much says it all.

We had plans to write this example, but we're pleased as punch to find our effort pre-empted by the good folks at Legal Insurrection:

Two different photographs, one very clearly photoshopped to provide some social commentary on a quickly spiraling situation. Predictably, the photograph enraged some, delighted others, but no one with two brain cells to rub together believed that the “rob a store” version of the photograph was real.

Politifact, however, dove in headfirst to provide us with an analysis no one asked for[.]

Visit Legal Insurrection for the entire article and to experience the visuals.

Fact-checking while blind, with PolitiMath

One of the things we would predict from biased journalists is a forgiving eye for claims for which the journalist sympathizes.

Case in point?

A Nov. 11, 2014 fact check from PolitiFact's Louis Jacobson and intern Nai Issa gives a "True" rating to a Facebook meme claiming Congress has 11 percent approval while in 2014 96.4 percent of incumbents successfully defended their seats.

PolitiFact found the claim about congressional approval was off by about 20 percent and the one about the percentage of incumbents was off by a maximum of 1.5 percent (percentage error calculations ours). So, in terms of PolitiMath the average error for the two claims was 10.75 percent yet PolitiFact ruled the claim "True." The ruling means the 11 percent average error is insignificant in PolitiFact's sight.

Aside from the PolitiMath angle, we were intrigued by the precision of the Facebook meme. Why 96.4 percent and not an approximate number by 96 or 97? And why, given that PolitiFact often excoriates its subjects for faulty methods, wasn't PolitiFact curious about the fake precision of the meme?

Even if PolitiFact wasn't curious, we were. We looked at the picture conveying the meme and saw the explanation in the lower right-hand corner.

Red highlights scrawled by the PolitiFact Bias team. Image from PolitiFact.com

It reads: "Based on 420 incumbents who ran, 405 of which kept their seats in Congress."

PolitiFact counted 415 House and Senate incumbents, counting three who lost primary elections. Not counting undecided races involving Democrats Mark Begich and Mary Landrieu, incumbents held 396 seats.

So the numbers are wrong, using PolitiFact's count as the standard of accuracy, but PolitiFact says the meme is true.

It was fact-checked, after all.

PolitiFact supports dishonest Democratic Party "war on women" meme

There's plenty wrong with PolitiFact's Oct. 28 fact check of a Facebook meme, but we'll focus this time only on PolitiFact's implicit support of Democrats' baseless "war on women" political attack strategy regarding equal pay for equal work.

The meme graphic looks like this:

The question at the end, "Share if you miss the good old days!" implies a contrast between today's Republican Party platform and the platform in 1956. For us, the relevant point is No. 7, "Assure equal pay for equal work regardless of sex." Democrats have made the supposed Republican "war on women" a main point of their campaigns, partly by criticizing Republican opposition of the Democrats' proposed "Paycheck Fairness Act," which places new burdens on businesses defending against pay discrimination lawsuits. Equal pay for equal work, of course, already stands as the law of the land.

PolitiFact, on its main page of fact checks, elevates the fake contrast on the equal pay issue to first place:

Image from PolitiFact.com, appropriated under Fair Use.

"What a difference 58 years makes."

Back in '56, Republicans supported equal pay for equal work. But today, PolitiFact implies, Republicans no longer support equal work for equal pay.

It's horrible and biased reporting that has no place in a fact check.

Are things better in the text of the story? Not so much (emphasis in the original):

The 2012 platform doesn’t mention two of the meme’s seven items from 1956 -- unemployment benefits and equal pay for women.

The bottom line, then, is that on most of these issues, the GOP moved to the right between 1956 and 2012, though the degree of that shift has varied somewhat issue by issue.

PolitiFact finds no evidence of a shift on equal pay other than the issue's absence in the 2014 GOP platform. But that only makes sense given that federal equal pay laws went on the books in the 1960s. So there's no real evidence of any shift other than a fallacious appeal to silence, yet we have "equal pay" as PolitiFact's lead example of the GOP's supposed move to the right.

The issue also gets top billing in PolitiFact's concluding paragraphs (bold emphasis added):

The meme says the 1956 Republican Party platform supported equal pay, the minimum wage, asylum for refugees, protections for unions and more.

That’s generally correct. However, it’s worth noting that other elements of the 1956 platform were considered conservative for that era. Also, some of the issues have changed considerably between 1956 and 2012, such as the shift from focusing on post-war refugees to focusing on illegal immigration.

There's really no need to mention anything in the fact check about federal equal pay legislation passing in the 1960s, right?

This type of journalism is exactly what one would predict if liberal bias affected the work of left-leaning journalists. This fact check serves as an embarrassment to the practice of journalism.