PolitiFact's hypocrisy

PolitiFact manifests many examples of hypocrisy. This post will focus on just one.

On August 21, 2017 Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said American has dozens of counties with zero insurers. Ryan was talking about insurers committed to serving the exchanges that serve individual market customers.

On August 24, 2017, PolitiFact published a fact check rating Ryan's claim "Pants on Fire." PolitiFact noted that Ryan had relied on outdated information to back his claim. PolitiFact said only one county was expected to risk having no insurer, and Ryan should have been aware of it:

Now technically, that report wasn’t published until two days after Ryan spoke. But the government had the information, and a day before Ryan spoke, Politico reported that just one county remained without a potential insurance carrier in 2018. The Kaiser Family Foundation published the same information the day of Ryan’s CNN town hall.

And a week earlier, the government said there were only two counties at risk of having no participating insurer. Ryan was way off no matter what.

Fast forward to Sept. 7, 2017. PolitiFact elects to republicize its fact check of Ryan, reinforcing its message that only one county remains at risk no not having any insurance provider available through the exchange. PolitiFact publicized it on Twitter:

Paul Ryan uses old stat to claim counties will have no Obamacare insurer in 2018. https://t.co/yQbTQnWupg pic.twitter.com/Fhk6kAxiub

— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) September 7, 2017

And PolitiFact publicized it on Facebook as well.

The problem? On Sept. 6, 2017, the Kaiser Family Foundation updated its information to show 63 counties at risk of having no insurer on the exchange. The information in the story PolitiFact shared was outdated.

Paul Ryan got a "Pants on Fire" for peddling outdated information.

What does PolitiFact get for doing the same thing?

Another Pulitzer Prize?

When PolitiFacts contradict

In PolitiFact's zeal to defend the Affordable Care Act from criticism, it contradicts itself.

In declaring it "False" that the ACA has entered a death spiral, PolitiFact Wisconsin affirms three aspects of a death spiral, one being rising premiums. PolitiFact affirms that premiums are rising. Then, PolitiFact states that none of the three conditions that make up a death spiral have occurred. We must conclude, via PolitiFact, that premiums are increasing and that premiums are not increasing.

In PolitiFact Wisconsin's own words (bold emphasis added):

Our rating

A death spiral is a health industry term for a cycle with three components — shrinking enrollment, healthy people leaving the system and rising premiums.

The latest data shows enrollment is increasing slightly and younger (typically healthier) people are signing up at the same rate as last year. And while premiums are increasing, that isn’t affecting the cost to most consumers due to built-in subsidies.

So none of the three criteria are met, much less all three.

It's not hard to fix. PolitiFact Wisconsin could alter its fact check to note that only one of the conditions of a death spiral is occurring across the board, but that subsidies insulate many customers from the effects of rising premiums.

Subsidizing the cost of buying insurance does not make the cost of the premiums shrink, exactly. Instead, it places part of the responsibility for paying on somebody else. When somebody else foots the bill, higher prices do not drive off consumers nearly as effectively.

We're still waiting for PolitiFact to recognize that the insurance market is not monolithic. When the rules of the ACA leave individual markets without any insurers because adverse selection has driven them out, the conditions of a death spiral have obtained in that market.

We also note, in the context of the ACA, that when the only people who elect to pay for insurance are those who are receiving subsidies, it is fair to say the share of the market that pays full price encountered a death spiral.

PolitiLies at PolitiFact Wisconsin II (Updated: PolitiFact amends)

In part one of "PolitiLies at PolitiFact Wisconsin," we shared our experience questioning PolitiFact's reporting from a fact check of U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.).

In part two, we will look at PolitiFact Wisconsin's response to having a clear error pointed out in one of its stories.

On May 11, 2017, PolitiFact Wisconsin published a "Pants on Fire" rating of U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan's claim that "Air Force pilots were going to museums to find spare parts over the last eight years."

PolitiFact issued the "Pants on Fire" ruling despite a Fox News report which featured an Air Force captain, identified by name, who said the Air Force had on seven occasions obtained parts for B-1 bombers from museums.

PolitiFact Wisconsin objected to the thin evidence, apparently including the failure of the report to identify any of the museums that allegedly served as parts repositories (bold emphasis added):

The only example Ryan’s office cited was a May 2016 Fox News article in which an Air Force captain said spare parts needed for a B-1 bomber at a base in South Dakota were taken from seven "museum aircraft" from around the country. The museums weren’t identified and no other details were provided.

Yet when we attempted to verify PolitiFact Wisconsin's reporting, we found the text version of the story said Capt. Travis Lytton (no other details were provided?) showed the Fox reporters a museum aircraft from which a part was stripped. Lytton also described the function of the part in the story (no other details were provided?).

The accompanying video showed a B-1 bomber situated next to the name of the museum: South Dakota Air and Space Museum.

If one of the seven museums was not the South Dakota Air and Space Museum, then the Fox News video was highly misleading. The viewer would conclude the South Dakota Air and Space Museum was one of the seven museums.

How did PolitiFact Wisconsin miss this information? And why, when Lytton was plainly identified in the Fox News report, did PolitiFact Wisconsin not try to contact Lytton to find out the names of the other museums?

"Readers who see an error should contact the writer or editor"

We like to contact the writer and the editor when we see an error.

In this case, we contacted writer Tom Kertscher and editor Greg Borowski (May 31, 2017):

Dear Tom Kertscher, Greg Borowski,
Your rating of Speaker Ryan's claim about the Air Force pulling parts from museum planes falsely claims that none of the seven museums were identified.

Yet the Fox News report said the Air Force officer showed reporters the museum plane from which a part was taken. And if you bothered to watch the video associated with the story, the name of the museum appears very plainly in front of the B-1 bomber the officer identified.

http://www.sdairandspacemuseum.com/

And if the names of the museums was a point worth mentioning, then why not contact the officer (identified by name in the Fox News report) and ask him? If he identified one of the museums, would he not identify the others?

After nearly a week, we have received no reply to our message and the PolitiFact Wisconsin fact check still features the same false information about the Fox News report.

Why?

Integrity?


Update June 10, 2017: On June 2017 we received a message from PolitiFact Wisconsin editor Greg Borowski. Borowski said he had not received our email message (we do not know if writer Tom Kertscher, to whom it was also sent, had the same experience). Borowski said after finding out about the criticism PolitiFact Wisconsin "added a note to the item."

PolitiFact Wisconsin removed two false statements from its fact check, one stating that the Fox News report identified none of the museums from which airplane parts were taken, and one stating that the report featured no other details beyond those mentioned in the fact check.

This editor's note was added at the end of the fact check:

Editor's note: This item was updated on June 9, 2017 to say that the Fox News report did identify one museum. That information does not change the rating.

As with the other correction we helped prompt this week, we are impressed by PolitiFact Wisconsin's ability to commit an error and then fix the error without admitting any mistake. The editor's note says the fact check was changed "to say the Fox News report did identify one museum." Why was that change made? The editor's note doesn't say. The truth is the change was made because PolitiFact Wisconsin made a mistake.

It's appropriate for journalists to admit to making mistakes when they make them.  We do not care for the spin we see in PolitiFact Wisconsin's update notices.

Are we being too tough on PolitiFact Wisconsin? We think noted journalist Craig Silverman would agree with us.

Rather than destroying trust, corrections are a powerful tool to reinforce how accountable and transparent we are.

“If you’re willing to admit you’re wrong, people will trust you more,” said Mathew Ingram of Gigaom. “If I said to someone ‘You know, I’m never wrong’ they would think I was a psychopath or a liar, so they would trust me less. That’s versus if I said ‘I screw up all the time.’ They trust you more because you’re more human.”

That’s the paradox of trust: admitting our mistakes and failings make us more deserving of trust.

Correction June 14, 2017: Commenter Vinni BoD noticed our update was dated Sept. 2017. The month was actually June, which was the correct month in two spots where we (inexplicably) had "Sept." instead.

PolitiFact, Paul Ryan and cherry-picking

Does this add up?

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said during a television appearance that Obamacare was making families pay double-digit premium increases.

PolitiFact gave Ryan's statement its "fact check" treatment, which we're inclined to call liberal blogging.

Step 1:

Ryan is suggesting ... increases in the "double digits." We decided to rate that claim on the Truth-O-Meter.

Step 2:

According to HHS data, 19 out of the 37 states in the federal exchange saw an average rate increase in the double digits. At the low end, rates in Missouri increased by 10.4 percent while Oklahoma saw the biggest hike at 35.7 percent.

Step 3:

Ryan has a point that some plans have seen increases of 10 percent or more with insurance purchased on healthcare.gov. However, Ryan is cherry-picking the high end of rate changes.

Got it? PolitiFact says Oklahoma is experiencing an average Obamacare exchange rate hike of 35.7 percent. And saying "double-digit" rate increases is cherry-picking from the high end of rate changes.

Given that a 10 percent rate hike is "double digits" and the top (average) exchange rate hike is over 35 percent, what kind of sense does it make to say Ryan is cherry-picking the high end of rate changes?

Silly liberal bloggers.

Ryan used a normal ambiguity when he spoke. "Families" does not mean "All families" as PolitiFact claimed Ryan was suggesting. If a substantial number of families are getting hit with double-digit rate increases then what Ryan said was accurate. And by "accurate" I don't mean "True" in the sense of a "Truth-O-Meter" rating. I mean "accurate" in the sense that PolitiFact uses the term when it defines "True" and "Mostly True" for purposes of its cheesy "Truth-O-Meter":

 PolitiFact's definitions are themselves "Half True." You can tell that's the case when Ryan's accurate statement receives its "Half True" rating while Bernie Sanders' inaccurate statement receives a "Mostly True" rating.

PolitiFact fact-checking is a game liberal bloggers play.


Afters

Other than Ryan's office providing supporting URLs dealing with the individual market, what would lead PolitiFact to simply ignore the much larger group plan market in its fact check? Do group plans not count? Does the lack of an employer mandate mean Obamacare does not affect group insurance despite the new regulations it imposes on the group market?

Rate increases? What rate increases?

And according to an Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. survey of smaller employers, most of which have less than 1,000 employees, released Friday, 44% reported premium rate hikes of 6% or more in 2014. Twenty-three percent saw rates in the double digits, the survey showed.

We'll say it again: Silly liberal bloggers.

After Afters

Before I forget the caboose on this PolitiFact trainwreck ...

Ryan missteps by saying the law alone is "making" the premiums increase. Rather, experts say, hikes are more likely the result of insurers underestimating how sick enrollees would be.

Silly cherry-picking liberal bloggers. Obamacare is the reason insurers don't know how sick their enrollees will be. Guaranteed issue. Remember? No, I guess you don't remember.


Correction Dec. 20, 2015: Changed from "Ind." to "Wis." the state which Ryan represents. Hat tip to commenter Pagan Raccoon for pointing out the error.
Correction Dec. 21, 2015: When repeating PolitiFact's 35.7 figure we typo-inflated it to 37.7. That's now fixed. Hat tip to "John Smith" for using the comments section to point out the error.