More PedantiFact: PolitiFact vs. Kevin McCarthy

 Fact checkers supposedly don't fact check opinions.

PolitiFact fact checks opinions. Real Clear Politics has kept a study going looking at how often a set of top fact checkers rate opinions or predictions (among other things). PolitiFact has paced the group.

We expect Real Clear Politics will get around to adding this Nov. 30, 2022 PolitiFact fact check to the list:

 

Why do we think McCarthy was expressing an opinion?

In other words, why do we have the opinion that McCarthy was expressing an opinion?

We're intentionally giving away the answer, of course. "I think" counts as one of the classic ways of marking one's statement as an opinion.

Why does PolitiFact ignore such an obvious clue?

We think it's likely PolitiFact was looking to build a narrative. By overlooking that McCarthy was expressing opinion and focusing on one part of his statement to the exclusion of another, PolitiFact was able to support that narrative under the guise of fact-checking.

PolitiFact supports the narrative that Donald Trump counts as a racist. Facts don't matter in pursuit of that narrative.

PolitiFact quotes McCarthy correctly, and we'll highlight the part that PolitiFact decided to omit from its fact-checking focus even though it's the only part that McCarthy stated as fact:

"I think President Trump came out four times and condemned him and didn't know who he was," McCarthy said.

That drew real-time pushback from a reporter, who said, "He didn't condemn him or his ideology." McCarthy responded, "The president didn't know who he was."

For PolitiFact, it isn't important whether Trump knew who Nick Fuentes was. It's important that Fuentes is a white nationalist, and important to link Fuentes to Trump in a way that reinforces the narrative that Trump is a racist. Toward that end, PolitiFact ignores the claim Trump did not know who Fuentes was and focuses on the supposed lack of condemnation.

We would argue that Trump saying he did not know Fuentes counts as a condemnation, when we consider the context.

PolitiFact argues the opposite, albeit without any real argument in support:

A look at Trump’s statements during the week between the Nov. 22 dinner and McCarthy’s press availability Nov. 29 show that McCarthy was wrong. Specifically, Trump did not condemn Fuentes on four occasions; instead, Trump said in four statements that he did not know who Fuentes was.

PolitiFact implicitly says that it does not count as a condemnation to profess ignorance of Fuentes' identity.

Here's why that's wrong.

Trump was implying that if he had known who Fuentes was, he would not be welcome at dinner. Hardly anything could be more obvious, particularly given the context that Trump went on record condemning neo-Nazis and white nationalism.

We can even source Trump's quotation through PolitiFact, albeit the fact checkers do an excellent job of not drawing attention to it:

"And you had people -- and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists -- because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay?"

So the fact checkers, though they have reason to know Trump condemned white nationalism, leave that out of a fact check focusing on whether Trump condemned white nationalism. That's context fit for suppression.

The facts don't matter when liberal bloggers posing as unbiased fact checkers want to promote a narrative.

PolitiFact vs Your Lyin' Eyes on the immigration invasion

On Sept. 6, 2022 PolitiFact published an item titled "A surprising number of Americans believe these false claims about immigrants. Here are the facts."

We have a favorite among the supposedly false claims believed by a surprising number of Americans.

"There is no invasion at the southern border"

No invasion at the southern border? Tell us more, PolitiFact.

More than half of Americans surveyed by NPR/Ipsos believe it is completely or somewhat true that the "U.S. is experiencing an invasion at the southern border."

But many immigrants crossing the border illegally turn themselves into Border Patrol agents on purpose, to ask for asylum, Brown said. 

"That is not behavior that you would really attribute to an invader," Brown said. She said that usually, the term invasion is used to describe a concerted effort by a country to forcibly enter another country to take it over.

Such reasoning does not belong in fact-checking. On the contrary, the logic PolitiFact accepts belongs as far from fact-checking as possible.

Here's PolitiFact's supposed logic: If the expert says "invasion" usually means one country making a concerted effort to forcibly enter another to take it over, then "invasion" means one country making a concerted effort to forcibly enter another country to take it over. For PolitiFact, it then follows that Americans viewing a tide of illegal immigration at the southern border incorrectly see it as an invasion.

At least PolitiFact declined to follow the lead of its source, NPR/Ipsos, in calling the term "invasion" racist.

Hopefully the definition from Webster's New World College Dictionary, supposedly a standard for U.S. journalists (we're using the fourth edition) can help clear things up:

 

in-va-sion ... n. ... an invading or being invaded; specif., a) an entering or being entered by an attacking military force b) an intrusion or infringement

Is there any valid reason to suppose that illegal entry to the United States does not count as intrusion? Of course not. And any fact-checker unable to figure that out cannot be worthy of the name.

Regarding the invasion at the southern border, you can believe PolitiFact or your lyin' eyes.

PolitiFact: "There are no sharks swimming in the streets of Houston or anywhere else"

We were amused when we noticed PolitiFact inquiring about the faked image of a shark swimming on a Houston freeway thanks to Hurricane Harvey.

"Is it true PolitiFact wonders if that's true?" we wondered.

Our amusement multiplied when we saw the headline over PolitiFact's story, albeit not a scoop, exposing the fakery:

There are no sharks swimming in the streets of Houston or anywhere else

No, seriously. That is how PolitiFact titled its story.

No sharks swimming in the Mediterranean?

No sharks swimming in the Indian Ocean?

No sharks swimming in the Atlantic Ocean?

No sharks swimming in the Pacific Ocean?

Are these questions silly? Of course, until we consider that PolitiFact is the fact checker that fact checks something if it can be construed to mean something, basing the fact check on the ability of some to construe creatively.

If we have "the streets of Houston" and "anywhere else," we don't see why we can't construe that to mean the Pacific Ocean, or even the shark exhibit at Sea World.

Still, we believe in charitable interpretation. What if PolitiFact was just trying to say that there were no sharks swimming "in the streets" in Houston or anywhere else?

Well, immediately we put that together with PolitiFact's "Half True" ruling on President Obama's claim that fish swim in the streets of Miami at high tide.

If fish can swim in the streets of Miami at high tide, then what about a little 'ol bonnethead shark? Couldn't a Miami-area bonnethead put the lie to PolitiFact's claim that no sharks swim in any streets anywhere? And what about submerged cities such as Port Royal? What keeps the sharks away from those streets?

PolitiFact lives in a glass house, throwing stones.

Larry Elder: 'PunditFact Lies Again'

Conservative radio show host Larry Elder has an Oct. 30 criticism of PunditFact posted at Townhall.com. It's definitely worth a read, and here's one of our favorite bits:

Since PunditFact kicks me for not using purchasing power parity, surely PunditFact's parent, Tampa Times, follows its own advice when writing about the size of a country's economy? Wrong.

A Tampa Times' 2012 story headlined "With Slow Growth, China Can't Prop Up the World Economy" called China "the world's second-largest economy," with not one word about per capita GDP or purchasing power parity. It also reprinted articles from other papers that discuss a country's gross GDP with no reference to purchasing power parity or per capita income.

Elder does a nice job of highlighting PolitiFact's consistency problem. PolitiFact often abandons normal standards of interpretation in its fact check work. Such fact checks amount to pedantry rather than journalistic research.

A liberal may trot out a misleading statistic and it will get a "Half True" or higher. A figure like Sarah Palin uses CIA Factbook ratings of military spending and receives a "Mostly False" rating.

Of course Elder makes the point in a fresh way by looking at the way PolitiFact's parent paper, the Tampa Bay Times, handles its own reporting. And the same principle applies to fact checks coming from PolitiFact. The fact checkers don't follow the standard for accuracy they apply to others.

Hot Air: 'It’s time to ask PolitiFact: What is the meaning of “is”?'

Dustin Siggins, writing for the Hot Air blog, gives us a PolitiFact twofer, swatting down two fact-check monstrosities from the left-leaning fact checker.

Siggins:

In 1998, then-President Bill Clinton told the American people that he hadn’t lied to a grand jury about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky because, on the day he said “there’s nothing going on between us,” nothing was going on.

While that line has been a joke among the American people ever since, it looks like PolitiFact took the lesson to heart in two recent fact-checks that include some Olympic-level rhetorical gymnastics.

Siggins goes on from there, dealing with recent fact checks of senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.).

Click the link and read.

Also consider reviewing our highlights of a few other stories by Siggins.