Narrative-shepherding instead of fact-checking for America as stolen land

One has to hand it to PolitiFact's Yacob Reyes. Earlier this year, Reyes turned a mostly unoccupied barrier island into the whole of Lee County. Now, Reyes turns bad-faith treaties affecting a limited number of American lands into support for the narrative of the United States (plus other modern American nations north and south) consisting of stolen land.

Behold:

PolitiFact's left-wing editorial masquerading as a fact check published on Nov. 3, 2022.

It takes DeSantis out of context, and instead of devoting an "In Context" article to DeSantis' statement, akin to the cover PolitiFact provided for President Obama when he informed business owners "You didn't build that," DeSantis received a "Pants on Fire" rating.

Strikingly, PolitiFact apparently draws a complete blank in trying to figure out why DeSantis would say the United States is not build on stolen land. That comes through in two ways. First, PolitiFact opines in print that it "wondered what DeSantis was referring to and whether he was right in his assessment of whether the U.S. was built on 'stolen land.'" Second, PolitiFact offered absolutely nothing to represent DeSantis position other than tweets from DeSantis associate Christina Pushaw.

Pushaw tweeted an image promoted by Democratic Party candidate for Lieutenant Governor Karla Hernández-Mats saying "No one is illegal on stolen land." After reporting that Hernández-Mats offered no response to its questions about the image, PolitiFact drops that subject for the remainder of the article.

That's how PolitiFact treated the context.

With the context safely ignored, PolitiFact documents some of the admittedly raw deals the Native Americans got and declares DeSantis as wrong as can be:

It's well-documented that the U.S. repeatedly made treaties with Native Americans and then violated them using force and other means to accommodate non-Native settlement. Courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have time and again affirmed that as fact.

Government-endorsed actions to remove Native Americans from their ancestral lands included the 1830 passage of a federal law that led to war and resulted in thousands of Native deaths and more than 3,000 Seminoles being removed from Florida.

DeSantis' claim is wildly historically inaccurate. We rate it Pants on Fire!

How does that push back against a DeSantis objection to the immigration statement Hernández-Mats promoted? It doesn't. Instead, it blandly moves in step with liberal-progressive orthodoxy. PolitiFact can't be bothered to dig up articles that explain the objection to singling out Western nations as occupying stolen land.

The Spectator/Historian Jeff Fynn-Paul:

The narrative of the ‘stolen country’ or ‘Native American genocide’ does not stand up to scrutiny by any honest and clear-sighted historian. It is a dangerously myopic and one-sided interpretation of history. It has only gained currency because most practising historians and history teachers are either susceptible to groupthink, or else have been cowed into silence by fear of losing their jobs. Reduced to its puerile form of ‘statement of guilt’, this myth puts 100 per cent of the burden on Europeans who are held responsible for all historical evil, while the First Nations people are mere victims; martyrs even, whose saintlike innocence presumes that their civilisation and society were practically perfect in every way.

All Land is Stolen/Anthony Galli:

The only reason you can claim to “own” land is because of the implicit threat of military/police force against anyone who might try to take it from you. In the good ol’ prehistoric days, man would have to defend his own cave, but now our self-defense is largely done by our respective governments so that we can worry about other things like what’s on Netflix. In other words, a country is one big cave where the current occupant claims to own the cave by threatening force if you try to “steal” it.

In fact, what makes the United States of America so special is how well we treated the former inhabitants of the land we purchased… relative to how every other nation on Earth had treated conquered people up-till that point, which granted still isn’t saying much because the Trail of Tears definitely wasn’t a walk in the park.

Authors such as these help point out that viewing one's own nation as a thief will tend to erode society. And given that every nation qualifies as a thief in trivial "stolen land" terms, there is no real solution to the problem that doesn't involve destroying society. Further, in terms of permitting free immigration on the southern border, why should the descendants of land-stealing conquistadors have title to land stolen in an arguably more civilized way north of the Mexican border?

It doesn't make sense. But PolitiFact will not present those views.

PolitiFact has a narrative to nurture. And excluding competing narratives serves as one means toward that end.

PolitiFact Tweezes Green New Deal Falsehoods

In our post "PolitiFact's Green New Deal Fiction Depiction" we noted how PolitiFact had decided that a Democrat posting a falsehood-laden FAQ about the Green New Deal on her official congressional website escaped receiving a negative rating on PolitiFact's "Truth-O-Meter."

At the time we noted that PolitiFact's forbearance held benefits for Democrats and Republicans alike:

Many will benefit from PolitiFact's apparent plan to give out "Truth-O-Meter" mulligans over claimed aspects of the Green New Deal resolution not actually in the resolution. Critics of those parts of the plan will not have their attacks rated on the Truth-O-Meter. And those responsible for generating the controversy in the first place by publishing FAQs based on something other than the actual resolution also find themselves off the hook.

 We were partly right.

Yes, PolitiFact let Democrats who published a false and misleading FAQ about the Green New Deal off the hook.

But apparently PolitiFact has reserved the right to fault Republicans and conservatives who base their criticisms of the Green New Deal on the false and misleading information published by the Democrats.

PolitiFact Florida tweezed out a such a tidbit from an editorial written by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.):

False? It doesn't matter at all that Ocasio-Cortez said otherwise on her official website? There is no truth to it whatsoever? And Ocasio-Cortez gets no "False" rating for making an essentially identical claim on her website?

This case will get our "tweezers or tongs" tag because PolitiFact is once again up to its traditional shenanigan of tweezing out one supposed falsehood from a background of apparent truths:

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., outlined his opposition to the Democrats’ Green New Deal in a Feb. 25th Orlando Sentinel op-ed:

"If you are not familiar with it, here’s the cliff notes version: It calls for rebuilding or retrofitting every building in America in the next 10 years, eliminating all fossil fuels in 10 years, eliminating nuclear power, and working towards ending air travel (to be replaced with high-speed rail)."

...

Let’s hit the brakes right there -- do the Democrats want to end air travel?

See what PolitiFact did, there?

Scott can get three out of four points right, but PolitiFact Florida will pick on one point to give Scott a "False" rating and build for him an unflattering graph of  "Truth-O-Meter" ratings shaped by PolitiFact's selection bias.

The Jestation Hypothesis

How does PolitiFact Florida go about discounting the fact that Ocasio-Cortez claimed on her website that the Green New Deal aimed to make air travel obsolete?

The objective and neutral fact checkers give us the Jestation Hypothesis. She must have been kidding.

No, really. Perhaps the idea came directly from one of the three decidedly non-neutral experts PolitiFact cited in its fact check (bold emphasis added):

"It seems to me those lines from the FAQ were lighthearted and ill-considered, and it’s not clear why they were posted," said Sean Hecht, Co-Executive Director, Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA law school.

Hecht's FEC contributions page is hilariously one-sided.

Does anyone need more evidence that the line about making air travel obsolete was just a joke?

"No serious climate experts advocate ending air travel -- that's simply a red-herring," said Bledsoe, who was a climate change advisor to the Clinton White House.

Former Clinton White House advisor Bledsoe is about as neutral as Hecht. The supposed "red-herring," we remind readers, was published on Ocasio-Cortez's official House of Representatives website.

The neutral and objective fact-checkers of PolitiFact Florida deliver their jestational verdict (bold emphasis added):

Scott wrote in an op-ed that the Democrats’ Green New Deal includes "working towards ending air travel."

The resolution makes no mention of ending air travel. Instead, it calls for "overhauling transportation systems," which includes "investment in high-speed rail." Scott seized on a messaging document from Democrats that mentioned, perhaps in jest, getting rid of "farting cows and airplanes." But we found no evidence that getting rid of airplanes is a serious policy idea from climate advocates.

Apparently it cannot count as evidence that Democrats have advocated getting rid of airplanes if a popular Democratic Party representative publishes this on her website:

The Green New Deal sets a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, at the end of this 10-year plan because we aren’t sure that we will be able to fully get rid of, for example, emissions from cows or air travel before then. However, we do believe we can ramp up renewable manufacturing and power production, retrofit every building in America, build the smart grid, overhaul transportation and agriculture, restore our ecosystem, and more to get to net-zero emissions.

Oh! Ha ha ha ha ha! Get it? We may not be able to fully get rid of emissions from cows or air travel in only 10 years! Ha ha ha!

So the claim was quite possibly a joke, even if no real evidence supports that idea.

But it's all PolitiFact needs to give a Republican a "False" rating and the Democrat no rating at all for saying essentially the same thing.

This style of fact-checking undermines fact checkers' credibility with centrists and conservatives, as well as with discerning liberals.



Afters

There was one more expert PolitiFact cited apart from the two we showed/noted were blatantly partisan.

That was "David Weiskopf, climate policy director for NextGen Climate America."

Here's a snippet from the home page for NextGen Climate America:

So basically neutral, right?

PolitiFact Florida "fact checker" (liberal blogger) Amy Sherman seems to have a special gift for citing groups of experts who skew hilariously left.

All About That Base(line)

When we do not publish for days at a time it does not mean that PolitiFact has cleaned up its act and learned to fly straight.

We simply lack the time to do a thorough job policing PolitiFact's mistakes.

What caught our attention this week? A fact check authored by one of PolitiFact's interns, Lucia Geng.

We were curious about this fact check thanks to PolitiFact's shifting standards on what counts as a budget cut. In this case the cut itself was straightforward: A lower budget one year compared to the preceding year. In that respect the fact check wasn't a problem.

But we found a different problem--also a common one for PolitiFact. At least when PolitiFact is fact-checking Democrats.

The fact check does not question the baseline.

The baseline is simply the level chosen for comparison. The Florida Democratic Party chose to compare the 2011 water management districts' collective budgets with the ones in 2012 and found that they were about $700 million lower. Our readers should note that the FDP started making this claim in 2018, not 2012.

It's just crazy for a fact checker to perform a fact check without looking at other potential baselines. Usually politicians and political groups choose a baseline for a reason. Comparing 2011 to 2012 appears to make sense superficially. The year 2011 represents Republican-turned-Independent Governor Charlie Crist. The year 2012 represents the current governor, also a Republican, Rick Scott.

But what if there's more to it? Any fact checker should look at data covering a longer time period to get an idea of what the claimed cut would actually mean.

We suspected that 2010 and before might show much lower budget numbers. To our surprise, the budget numbers were far higher, at least for the South Florida Water Management District whose budget dwarfs those of the other districts.

From 2010 to 2011, Gov. Crist cut the SFWMD budget by about $443 million. From 2009 to 2010 Gov. Crist cut the SFWMD budget by almost $1.5 billion. That's not a typo.

The message here is not that Gov. Crist was some kind of anti-environmental zealot. What we have here is a sign that the water management district budgets are volatile. They can change dramatically from one year to the next. The big question is why, and a secondary question is whether the reason should affect our understanding of the $700 million Gov. Scott cut from the combined water management district budgets between 2011 and 2012.

A fact checker who looked at the volatile changes in spending could then use that knowledge to ask officials at the water management districts questions that would help answer our two questions above. Geng listed email exchanges with officials from each of Florida's water management districts. But the fact check contains no quotations from those officials. It does not even refer to their responses via paraphrase or summary. We don't even know what questions Geng asked.

We did not contact the water management districts. But we looked for a clue regarding the budget volatility in the SFWMD's fiscal year 2011 projections for its future budgets. The agency expected capital expenditures to drop by more than half after 2011.

Rick Scott had not been elected governor at that time (October 2010).

This suggests that the water management districts had a budget cut baked into their long-term program planning, quite possibly strongly influenced by budgeting for the Everglades restoration project (including land purchases). If so, that counts as critical context omitted from the PolitiFact Florida fact check.

We flagged these problems for PolitiFact on Twitter and via email. As usual, the faux-transparent fact checkers responded with a stony silence and made no apparent effort to fix the deficiencies.

Aside from the hole in the story we felt the "Mostly True" rating was very forgiving of the Florida Democratic Party's blatant cherry-picking. And somehow PolitiFact even resisted using the term "cherry-picking" or any close synonym.



Afters:
The Florida Democratic Party, in the same tweet PolitiFact fact-checked, recycled the claim that Gov. Scott "banned the term 'Climate Change.'"

We suppose that's not the sort of thing that makes PolitiFact editors wonder "Is that true?"

PolitiFact goes partisan on the "deciding vote"

When does a politician cast the "deciding vote"?

PolitiFact apparently delivered the definitive statement on the issue on Oct. 6, 2010 with an article specifically titled "What makes a vote 'the deciding vote'?"

Every example of a "deciding vote" in that article received a rating of "Barely True" or worse (PolitiFact now calls "Barely True" by the name "Mostly False"). And each of the claims came from Republicans.

What happens when a similar claim comes from a Democrat? Now we know:

Okay, okay, okay. We have to consider the traditional defense: This case was different!

But before we start, we remind our readers that cases may prove trivially different from one another. It's not okay, for example, if the difference is that this time the claim from from a woman, or this time the case is from Florida not Georgia. Using trivial differences to justify the ruling represent the fallacy of special pleading.

No. We need a principled difference to justify the ruling. Not a trivial difference.

We'll need to look at the way PolitiFact justified its rulings.

First, the "Half True" for Democrat Gwen Graham:

Graham said DeSantis casted the "deciding vote against" the state's right to protect Florida waters from drilling.

There’s no question that DeSantis’ vote on an amendment to the Offshore Energy and Jobs Act was crucial, but saying DeSantis was the deciding vote goes too far. Technically, any of the 209 other people who voted against the bill could be considered the "deciding vote."

Furthermore, the significance of Grayson’s amendment is a subject of debate. Democrats saw it as securing Florida’s right to protect Florida waters, whereas Republicans say the amendment wouldn’t have changed the powers of the state.

With everything considered, we rate this claim Half True.

Second, the "Mostly False" for the National Republican Senatorial Committee (bold emphasis added):

The NRSC ad would have been quite justified in describing Bennet's vote for either bill as "crucial" or "necessary" to passage of either bill, or even as "a deciding vote." But we can't find any rationale for singling Bennet out as "the deciding vote" in either case. He made his support for the stimulus bill known early on and was not a holdout on either bill. To ignore that and the fact that other senators played a key role in completing the needed vote total for the health care bill, leaves out critical facts that would give a different impression from message conveyed by the ad. As a result, we rate the statement Barely True.

Third, the "False" for Republican Scott Bruun:

(W)e’ll be ridiculously lenient here and say that because the difference between the two sides was just one vote, any of the members voting to adjourn could be said to have cast the deciding vote.

The Bruun case doesn't help us much. PolitiFact said Bruun's charge about the "deciding" vote was true but only because its judgment was "ridiculously lenient." And the ridiculous lenience failed to get Bruun's rating higher than "False."  So much for PolitiFact's principle of rating two parts of a claim separately and averaging the results.

Fourth, we look at the "Mostly False" rating for Republican Ron Johnson:

In a campaign mailer and other venues, Ron Johnson says Feingold supported a measure that cut more than $500 billion from Medicare. That makes it sound like money out of the Medicare budget today, when Medicare spending will actually increase over the next 10 years. What Johnson labels a cut is an attempt to slow the projected increase in spending by $500 billion. Under the plan, guaranteed benefits are not cut. In fact, some benefits are increased. Johnson can say Feingold was the deciding vote -- but so could 59 other people running against incumbents now or in the future.

We rate Johnson’s claim Barely True.

We know from earlier research that PolitiFact usually rated claims about the ACA cutting Medicare as "Mostly False." So this case doesn't tell us much, either. The final rating for the combined claims could end up "Mostly False" if PolitiFact considered the "deciding vote" portion "False" or "Half True." It would all depend on subjective rounding, we suppose.

Note that PolitiFact Florida cited "What makes a vote 'the deciding vote'?" for its rating of Gwen Graham. How does a non-partisan fact checker square Graham's "Half True" rating with the ratings given to Republicans? Why does the fact check not clearly describe the principle that made the difference for Graham's more favorable rating?

As far as well can tell, the key difference comes from party affiliation, once again suggesting that PolitiFact leans left.


After the page break we looked for other cases of the "deciding vote."

PolitiFact's facts outpace the truth

"Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it"

--Jonathan Swift 

With the speed of the Interwebs at its disposal, PolitiFact on July 22, 2017 declared that no evidence exists to show Senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) favors a single-payer health care system for the United States of America.

PolitiFact based its proclamation loosely on its July 19, 2017 fact check of the National Republican Senatorial Committee's ad painting Nelson as a potential supporter of a universal single-payer plan.

We detected signs of very poor reporting from PolitiFact Florida, which will likely receive a closer examination at Zebra Fact Check.

Though PolitiFact reported that Nelson's office declined to give a statement on his support for a single-payer plan, PolitiFact ignored the resulting implied portrait of Nelson: He does not want to go unequivocally on the record supporting single-payer because it would hurt his re-election chances.

PolitiFact relied on a paraphrase of Nelson from the Tampa Tribune (since swallowed by the Tampa Bay Times, which in turn runs PolitiFact) to claim Nelson has said he does not favor a single-payer plan (bold emphasis added):

The ad suggests that Nelson supports Warren on most things, including a single-payer health care system. Actually, Nelson has said he doesn’t support single payer and wants to focus on preserving current law. His voting record is similar to Warren’s, but members of the same party increasingly vote alike due to a lack of bipartisan votes in the Senate.

There's one redeeming feature in PolitiFact Florida's summary. Using the voting agreement between two candidates to predict how they'll vote on one particular issue makes little sense unless the past votes cover that issue. If Nelson and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) had voted together in support of a single-payer plan, then okay.

But PolitiFact downplayed the ad's valid point about the possibility Nelson would support a single-payer plan. And PolitiFact made the mistake of exaggerating its survey of the evidence. In declaring that evidence does not exist, PolitiFact produced the impression that it searched very thoroughly and appropriately for that evidence and could not find it because it does not exist.

In other words, PolitiFact produced a false impression.

"Another major step forward"

We tried two strategies for finding evidence Nelson likes the idea of a single-payer plan. The first strategy failed. But the second strategy quickly produced a hit that sinks PolitiFact's claim that no evidence exists of Nelson favoring a single-payer plan.

A Tampa Bay market television station, WTSP, aired an interview with Nelson earlier in July 2017. The interviewer asked Nelson if he would be willing to join with Democrats who support a single-payer plan.

Nelson replied (bold emphasis added):

Well, I've got enough trouble just trying to fix the Affordable Care Act. I mean, you're talking about another major step forward, and we're not ready for that now.

The quotation supports the view that Nelson is playing the long game on single-payer. He won't jeopardize his political career by unequivocally supporting it until he thinks it's a political winner.

PolitiFact's fact check uncovered part of that evidence by asking Nelson's office to say whether he supports single payer. The office declined to provide a statement, and that pretty much says it all. If Nelson does not support single-payer and does not believe that going on the record would hurt his chances in the election, then nothing should stop him from making his position clear.

PolitiFact will not jeopardize Nelson's political career by finding the evidence that the NRSC has a point. Instead, it will report that the evidence it failed to find does not exist.

It will present this twisted approach to reporting as non-partisan fact-checking.


Afters:

We let PolitiFact know about the evidence it missed (using email and Twitter). Now we wait for the evidence of PolitiFact's integrity and transparency.

A "Half True" update

Years ago, I pointed out to PolitiFact that it had offered readers two different definitions of "Half True." In November 2011, I posted to note PolitiFact's apparent acknowledgment of the problem, evidenced by its effort to resolve the discrepant definitions.

It's over five years later. But PolitiFact Florida (archived version, just in case PolitiFact Florida notices something amiss) either did not get the memo or failed to fully implement the change.

We then decide which of our six rulings should apply:

TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing.
MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.
HALF TRUE – The statement is accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.
MOSTLY FALSE – The statement contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.
FALSE – The statement is not accurate.
PANTS ON FIRE – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.

PolitiFact Florida still publishes what was apparently the original standard PolitiFact definition of "Half True." PolitiFact National revised its definition in 2011, adding "partially" to the definition so it read "The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context."

PolitiFact Florida uses the updated definition on its main page, and directs readers to PolitiFact's main "principles" page for more information.

It's not even clear if PolitiFact Florida's main page links to PolitiFact Florida's "About" page. It may be a vestigial limb of sorts, helping us trace PolitiFact's evolution.

In one sense, the inconsistency means relatively little. After all, PolitiFact's founder, Bill Adair, has himself said that the "Truth-O-Meter" ratings are "entirely subjective." That being the case, it matters little whether "partially" occurs in the definition of "Half True."

The main problem from the changing definition comes from PolitiFact's irresponsible publication of candidate "report cards" that supposedly help voters decide which candidate they ought to support.

Why should subjective report cards make any difference in preferring one candidate over another?

The changing definition creates one other concern--one that I've written about before: Academic researchers (who really ought to know better) keep trying to use PolitiFact's ratings as though they represent reliable truth measurements. That by itself is a preposterous idea, given the level of subjectivity inherent in PolitiFact's system. But the inconsistency of the definition of "Half True" makes it even sillier.

PolitiFact's repeated failure to fix the problems we point out helps keep us convinced that PolitiFact checks facts poorly. We think a left-leaning ideological bubble combined with the Dunning-Kruger effect best explains PolitiFact's behavior in these cases.

Reminder: PolitiFact made a big to-do about changing the label "Barely True" to "Mostly False," but shifted the definition of "Half True" without letting the public in on the long-running discrepancy.

Too much transparency?



Clarification July 18, 2017: Changed "PolitiFact" to "PolitiFact Florida" in the second paragraph after the block quotation.

This post also appears at the blog "Sublime Bloviations"

How to fact check like a partisan, featuring PolitiFact

First, find a politician who has made a conditional statement, like this one from Marco Rubio (R-Fla.):

"As long as Florida keeps the same amount of funding or gets an increase, which is what we are working on, per patient being rewarded for having done the right thing -- there is no reason for anybody to be losing any of their current benefits under Medicaid. None," he said in a Facebook Live on June 28."

Rubio starts his statement with the conditional: "As long as Florida keeps the same amount of funding or gets an increase ..." Logic demands that the latter part of Rubio's statement receive its interpretation under the assumption the condition is true.

A partisan fact checker can make a politician look bad by ignoring the condition and taking the remainder of the statement out of context. Like this:

As the partisan fact checker will want its work to pass as a fact check, at least to like-minded partisans and unsuspecting moderates, it should then proceed to check the out-of-context portion of the subject's statement.

For example, if the condition of the statement is the same or increased funding, look for ways the funding might decrease and use those findings as evidence the politician spoke falsely. For a statement like Rubio's one might cite a left-leaning think tank like the Urban Institute, with a finding that predicts lower funding for Medicaid:

The Urban Institute estimated the decline in federal dollars and enrollment for the states.

It found for Florida, that federal funding for Medicaid under ACA would be $16.8 billion in 2022. Under the Senate legislation, it would fall to about $14.6 billion, or a cut of about 13 percent (see table 6). The Urban Institute projects 353,000 fewer people on Medicaid or CHIP in Florida.

Easy-peasy, right?

Then use the rest of the fact check to show that Florida will not be likely to make up the gap predicted by the Urban Institute. That will prove, in a certain misleading and dishonest way, that Rubio's conditional statement was wrong.

The summary of such a partisan fact check might look like this:

Rubio said, "There is no reason for anybody to be losing any of their current benefits under Medicaid."

Rubio is wrong to state that benefit cuts are off the table.

There are reasons that Medicaid recipients could lose benefits if the Senate bill becomes law. The bill curbs the rate of spending by the federal government over the next decade and caps dollar amounts and ultimately reduces the inflation factor. Those changes will put pressure on states to make difficult choices including the possibility of cutting services.

We rate this claim Mostly False.

Ignoring the conditional part of the claim results in the fallacy of denying the antecedent. The partisan fact checker can usually rely on its highly partisan audience not noticing such fallacies.

Any questions?


Correction: July 2, 2017: In the next-to-last paragraph changed "to notice" to "noticing" for the sake of clarity.

PolitiFact: Gays (and lesbians!) most frequent victims of hate crimes

Isn't it clear that PolitiFact's behavior is most likely the result of liberal bias?

PolitiFact Bias co-editor Jeff D. caught PolitiFact pimping a flubbed fact check on Twitter, attaching it to the anniversary of the Orlando gay nightclub shooting.

True: Gays and lesbians are most frequent targets of hate crimes #Pulse #Orlando https://t.co/pT4loAd0kA pic.twitter.com/hEo7VvZgyz

— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) June 12, 2017

The problem? It's not true.

As we pointed out when PolitiFact first ran its fact check, there's a big difference between claiming a group is the most frequent target of hate crimes and claiming a group is at the greatest risk (on a per-person basis) of hate crimes.

Blacks as a group experience the most targeted hate crimes (about 30 percent of the total), according to the imperfect FBI data. That makes blacks the most frequent targets of hate crimes, not gays and lesbians.

Perhaps LGBT as a group experience a greater individual risk of falling victim to a hate crime, but we do not trust the research on which PolitiFact based its ruling. We doubt the researchers properly considered the bias against various small groups, such as the Sikhs. Don't take our word for it. Use the hyperlinks.

There is reason to suspect the research was politicized. We recommend not drawing any conclusion until the question is adequately researched.

What would we do without fact checkers?


Clarification June 13, 2017: Added "(on a per person basis)" to accentuate the intended distinction. Also changed "greater risk" to "greater individual risk" for the same reason).

Rorschach context

It seems as though the liberal bloggers (aka "mainstream fact checkers") at PolitiFact treat context like a sort of Rorschach inkblot, to interpret as they see fit.

What evidence prompts these unkind words? The evidence runs throughout PolitiFact's history, but two recent fact-checks inspired the imagery.

The PolitiFact Florida Lens

In our previous post, we pointed out the preposterous "Mostly True" rating PolitiFact Florida gifted on a Florida Democrat who equated the raw gender wage gap with the gender wage gap caused by sex discrimination. The fact checkers did not interpret words uttered in context, "simply because she isn't a man," as an argument that the raw wage gap was entirely the result of gender discrimination. Perhaps it wasn't specific enough, like saying the difference in pay occurred despite doing the same work ("Mostly False")?

Whatever the case, PolitiFact opted not to accept a crystal clear clue that it was checking a claim that mirrored one it had previously rated "Mostly False" and rated the similar claim "Mostly True."

The PolitiFact California Lens

A recent fact check from PolitiFact California makes for a jarring contrast with the PolitiFact Florida item.

California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom tweeted that Republican Jason Chaffetz had treated (07-12-2018) compared the cost of an iPhone to the cost of health care "as if the 2 are the same." Newsom was making the point that health care costs more than an iPhone, so saying the two are the same misses the mark by a California mile.

But did Chaffetz say the costs are the same?

First let's look at how the PolitiFact California lens processed the evidence, then we'll put that evidence together with some surrounding context.

PolitiFact California:

We also examined Newsom’s final claim that Chaffetz had compared the iPhone and health care costs "as if they are the same."

Chaffetz’ comments, particularly his phrase "Americans have choices. And they’ve got to make a choice," leave the impression that obtaining health care is as simple as sacrificing the purchase of a smartphone.

It's worth noting at the outset that PolitiFact California's key evidence doesn't mention the iPhone and does not even imply any type of cost comparison. The only way to adduce Chaffetz's quotation as evidence of a price comparison would have to come from the context of Chaffetz's remarks. And a fact-checker ought to explain to readers how that works, unless the fact checker can count on his audience sharing his ideological bias.

Chaffetz (as quoted at length in the PolitiFact California fact check; bold emphasis added):

"Well we're getting rid of the individual mandate. We're getting rid of those things that people said they don't want. And you know what? Americans have choices. And they've got to make a choice. And so, maybe rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to go spend hundreds of dollars on that, maybe they should invest it in their own health care. They've got to make those decisions for themselves."

Chaffetz in no way offers anything approaching a clear suggestion that the cost of an iPhone equals the cost of health care or health insurance. His words about people having choices come right after he says the health care bill would eliminate the individual mandate. After that comes the mention of an iPhone costing "hundreds of dollars" that one might instead invest in health care. In context, the statement is just one example of a great number of choices one might make about paying for health care.

The PolitiFact California lens (like magic!) turns Chaffetz's words conveniently into what is needed to say the Democrat said something "Mostly True."

It's the bias, stupid.

We have PolitiFact Florida ignoring clear context to give a Democrat a more favorable rating than she deserves. We have PolitiFact California finding clear evidence from the context where none exists to give a Democrat a more favorable rating than he deserves.

Point out the absurdity to PolitiFact (as we did for the PolitiFact Florida flub) and somebody from the Tampa Bay Times will read the critique and no changes to the article will result.
How are they able to repeatedly overlook problems like these?

The simplest explanation? Because they're biased. Biased to the left. Biased to trust their own work (despite the incongruity with other PolitiFact fact checks!). And Dunning-Kruger out the wazoo.


Clarification: March 27, 2017: Added link to the PolitiFact California fact check of Gavin Newsom.

There You Go Again: PolitiFact Florida makes a hash of another gender wage gap ruling

Though PolitiFact is an unreliable fact-checker, at least one can bank on the mainstream fact-checker's ability to flub gender wage gap claims.

We hit PolitiFact on this issue often, but this latest one from PolitiFact Florida is a doozy, rivaling PolitiFact Oregon's remarkable turd from 2014.

Drum roll: PolitiFact Florida, March 14, 2017:

We're presenting a big hunk of the fact check as it appears at PolitiFact Florida to show how PolitiFact Florida effectively contradicts its own reasoning.

In the next-to-last paragraph of its summary, PolitiFact Florida explains that "differences in pay can be affected by the careers women and men choose and taking time off to care for children." Those aren't the only factors affecting the raw wage gap, by the way.

Yet in the ironically named "Share The Facts" version, the "Mostly True" rating blares its message aside Democrat Patricia Farley's claim the disparities occur purely based on gender ("simply because she isn't a man"). In other words, the cause is gender discrimination, not different job choices and the like--directly contradicting PolitiFact Florida's caveat. Farley didn't just leave out context. She explicitly denied the key bit of context.

Anyone who knows the difference between the raw gender wage gap and the wage gap based solely on gender discrimination but uses the large former gap in the context of arguing for legislation to reduce gender discrimination is deceiving people. The raw gender wage gap is not a realistic representation of gender discrimination in wages because of other factors, such as men and women tending to choose careers that pay differently.

So, yes, we're saying that unless Patricia Farley is ignorant about the difference between the gender wage gap and the wage gap caused by pay discrimination, she is lying, as in deliberately deceiving her audience. And PolitiFact Florida is calling her falsehood and potentially intentional deception "Mostly True."

The PolitiFact Florida wage gap fact check is below average for PolitiFact--and that's like failing to leap over a match box.

Correction March 15, 2017: Posted the intended URL for the PolitiFact Florida fact check. We had mistakenly used the URL to a related fact check concerning Donald Trump.

PolitiFact continues its campaign of misinformation on waterboarding

Amazing. Simply amazing.

PolitiFact Bias co-editor Jeff D. caught PolitiFact continuing its tendency to misinform its readers about waterboarding in a Jan 29, 2017 tweet:

Scientific research shows that waterboarding, which @POTUS has supported, doesn't work: https://t.co/4pm2EdgbzX

— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) January 28, 2017

PolitiFact's claim was untrue, as I demonstrated in a May 30, 2016 article at Zebra Fact Check, "Torture narrative trumps facts at PolitiFact."

Though PolitiFact claims scientific research shows waterboarding doesn't work, the only "scientific evidence in the linked article concerns the related conditions of hypoxia (low oxygen) and hypercapnia (excess carbon dioxide). PolitiFact reasoned that because science shows that hypoxia and hypercapnia inhibit memory, therefore waterboarding would not work as a means of gaining meaningful intelligence.

The obvious problem with that line of evidence?

Waterboarding as practiced by the CIA takes mere seconds. Journalist Christopher Hitchens had himself waterboarded and broke, saying he would tell whatever he knew, after about 18 seconds.  Memos released by the Obama administration revealed that a continuous waterboarding treatment could last a maximum 40 seconds.

Prisoners could be subjected to waterboarding during one 30 day period
Maximum five treatment days per 30 days
Maximum two waterboarding sessions per treatment day	Max 2 hours per session (the length of time the prisoner is strapped down)
Maximum 40 seconds of continuous water application
Maximum six water applications over 10 seconds long per session	Maximum 240 seconds (four minutes) of waterboarding per session from applications over 10 seconds long
Maximum total of 12 minutes of treatment with water over any 24 hour period	Applications under 10 seconds long could make up a maximum 8 minutes on top of the four mentioned above

While it is worth noting that reports indicate the CIA exceeded these guidelines in the case of al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, these limits are not conducive to creating significant conditions of hypoxia or hypercapnia.

The typical person can hold their breath for 40 seconds without too much difficulty or distress. The CIA's waterboarding was designed to bring about the sensation of drowning, not the literal effects of drowning (hypoxia, hypercapnia, aspiration and swallowing of water). That is why the techniques often break prisoners in about 10 seconds.

And the other problem?

The CIA did not interrogate prisoners while waterboarding them. Nor did the CIA use the technique to obtain confessions under duress. Waterboarding was used to make prisoners more amenable to conventional forms of interrogation.

None of this information is difficult to find.

Why do the fact checkers at PolitiFact (not to mention elsewhere) have such a tough time figuring this stuff out?

There likely isn't any significant scientific evidence either for or against the effectiveness of waterboarding. PolitiFact pretending there is does not make it so.

Fact, motivation, and PolitiFact's inconsistency

One of the oldest legislative tricks involves introducing a bill that will not pass so that one party can slam the member of the opposing party for not supporting one part of the bill.

We've seen the Democrats use that technique to terrific effect with the "Violence Against Women Act." And Republicans do the same type of thing to Democrats.

A Democrat or a Republican might have motivations behind their opposition that undercut the message their opponents try to use against them.

But does PolitiFact treat these same types of campaign ads the same way for both parties?

It sure doesn't look like it.

PolitiFact Missouri today graded a Republican claim in this category "Half True."

Note how PolitiFact Missouri justifies its conclusion (bold emphasis added):

Greitens says Koster voted against a 2007 bill requiring the state to pay for rape victims’ medical exams.In reality, the bill did more than that.

Koster says he objected to wording that made it possible for convicted murderers to be granted parole by claiming they were victims of domestic abuse. Koster said the language made it possible for murderers to manufacture evidence to be released before the completion of their sentence.

Greitens is cherry-picking one part of the legislation to paint his opponent as soft on domestic abuse. We rate his claim Half True.

As we noted back in August, PolitiFact Florida gave a "True" rating to Democrat Patrick Murphy when he made a parallel claim about his Republican opponent:

And note how PolitiFact Florida justifies its conclusion:

Murphy said Rubio "voted against the bipartisan Violence Against Women Act."

Rubio voiced support for the original law, but he and some Republicans in both the Senate and House opposed certain provisions added to the bill pertaining to spending and federal oversight. Rubio voted against the bill in 2012 and 2013, but it passed with bipartisan support the second time.

Even though he had clearly stated his reasons why, Rubio still voted nay. We rate Murphy’s statement True.

Both cases feature the same type of deception, and PolitiFact's fact checkers take note of the deception in both cases. But the Republican gets a "Half True" rating while the Democrat gets a "True" rating.

This type of example isn't atypical. It's just another day at the office for PolitiFact's left-leaning fact checkers.


Afters

It's worth pointing out that our previous post shows PolitiFact Wisconsin using essentially this same illicit ad technique against Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.).

The next year, Johnson voted against a Senate amendment to affirm that human activity significantly contributes to climate change.

While all but one senator supported an earlier amendment affirming the existence of climate change, only five Republicans this time voted to acknowledge there is a human impact. The amendment, seen as a symbolic effort by the Democrats to force GOP senators to take a position, failed 50 to 49 (it required a 3/5 majority).

PolitiFact Wisconsin saw nothing wrong with using Johnson's opposition to the amendment as a solid evidence that Johnson thinks humans have no role in climate change even though the amendment did not narrowly address that issue.

Q: What's the difference between PolitiFact and the Democratic Party?
A: The Democratic Party doesn't claim to be nonpartisan.

PolitiFact Florida flip-flops on subjectivity of congressional ineffectiveness

PolitiFact's patina of reliability--perceived mostly by liberals--relies on people not paying close attention.

PolitiFact Florida gives us our latest example of unprincipled fact checking.

The conservative American Future Fund ran an ad attacking Florida Democrat Patrick Murphy, who is running for the senate against incumbent Republican Marco Rubio. The ad said Murphy had been rated one of the nation's least effective congressmen:

In the ad, American Future Fund says, "Patrick Murphy was named one of America's least effective congressmen."

It's completely true that Murphy was named one of America's least effective congressmen. InsideGov produced a set of rankings, and Murphy was rated one of the least effective.

Flip-flop

PolitiFact Florida rated the ad's claim "Mostly False" because InsideGov's system for rating effectiveness fails to take enough factors into account:

The main problem with this ranking is it’s based on a single measure: the percentage of bills sponsored by each member over their time in office that went on to pass committee. That’s not a sufficient way to rate the effectiveness of a member of Congress.

Congressional experts have repeatedly told us that there are many other ways to evaluate the effectiveness of a member beyond getting a sponsored bill passed in committee.

 Got it? A reliable measure of congressional effectiveness needs to take more factors into account.

But when PolitiFact Florida decided not to rate Democrat Alan Grayson over a similar claim about Murphy based on the same YouGov ranking during the Democratic primary, the fact checkers had another approach to the issue:

We’re not going to rate Murphy’s effectiveness as a legislator, because that’s a subjective measure.

To be fair to PolitiFact Florida, without doing it any favors, it started its flip-flop during the fact check of Grayson by pointing out that it's not enough to rate effectiveness using one criterion for measurement.

It apparently does not occur to the folks at PolitiFact Florida that if effectiveness is subjective then it doesn't matter how many criteria one uses. One is as good as a billion.

Congressional effectiveness vs. Trump-caused bullying in schools

We can't help but compare PolitiFact Florida's rating of American Future Fund to the "Mostly True" rating PolitiFact gave Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for her claim about a "Trump Effect" on our schoolkids.

Both AFF and Clinton credited the claim to a third source (YouGov and "parents and teachers," respectively).

The AFF claim was literally accurate; Clinton's less so (Zebra Fact Check found no anecdote from the source Clinton named to match her claim).

Both claims were credited to dubious sources (AFF's to the simplistic YouGov ratings, Clinton's to a handful of anecdotes--23, estimated--from an unscientific poll of nearly 2,000 teachers).

AFF received a "Mostly False" rating. Clinton received a "Mostly True" rating.

We suggest there is no one set of nonpartisan principles that would allow PolitiFact to justify both ratings. The disparity in these ratings shows unevenly applied principles, or else a lack of principles. The conservative AFF correctly said an untrustworthy source made a certain claim and received a "Mostly False" rating. The liberal candidate semi-correctly said an untrustworthy source made a certain claim and received a "Mostly True" rating.

It doesn't pass the sniff test.

Literally false, but "Mostly True"

If you're a Republican who makes a literally false claim with a true underlying point, you deserve what you get from PolitiFact ("False," "Pants on Fire," whatever).

However, sometimes the underlying point takes clear precedence. Most likely if you're a Democrat:

With its April 28, 2016 update, PolitiFact rendered Democrat Rep. Alan Grayson's claim literally false. But Grayson received no downgrade from his original "Mostly True" rating.

Should it matter with respect to the "Truth-O-Meter" rating whether a statement is literally true?

PolitiFact's statement of principles hints that literal truth definitely counts. Examples like this one help show that PolitiFact principles are made of Play-Doh.


Update/Correction Aug. 27, 2016: Belatedly added the link to the PolitiFact Florida fact check of Grayson.


Afters

Sometimes we spot-check to see if PolitiFact is listing a corrected item on its page of corrected or updated items. Somehow this one did not make the list (archived here). The moral of the story: If you're looking for a measure of how often PolitiFact makes a correction or update, you can't rely on PolitiFact's list.

A partisan coin flip for PolitiFact Florida?

A former staffer at the Cleveland Plain Dealer (the one-time PolitiFact Ohio affiliate) said the difference between one rating and another often amounted to a coin flip.

Such coin flips provide a golden opportunity for bias to swing the vote in one of PolitiFact's "star chamber" judgment sessions.

PolitiFact Florida gives us a wonderfully illustrative pair of examples:

Alan Grayson (D) vs  Patrick Murphy (D), May 16, 2016

Democrat Alan Grayson charged fellow Democrat and senate primary opponent Patrick Murphy with voting in favor of the House Benghazi committee. PolitiFact found Grayson's claim "Mostly  True." It would have been simply "True" except Grayson neglected to mention that Murphy defended his vote by saying he wanted the committee to clear Hillary Clinton's name.

Patrick Murphy (D) vs Marco Rubio (R), August 24, 2016

Democrat Patrick Murphy (same Patrick Murphy from the example above) charged Republican incumbent senatorial candidate Marco Rubio with voting against the Violence Against Women Act. PolitiFact Florida rated Murphy's claim "True," while pointing out that Rubio objected to changes made to the Act when it was submitted for reauthorization. Rubio said he favored the original wording.

But ... but ... but ...

We often encounter one knee-jerk defense when we compare two different and inconsistent ratings from PolitiFact: The circumstances were different!

Yes, the circumstances are always at least somewhat different when comparing two different fact checks. It's the difference between the two that makes them two different fact checks in the first place. The difference in circumstance only serves as a defense against the charge of inconsistency if the difference serves as a good explanation for the difference in ratings.

Grayson made a compound charge against Murphy, while Murphy made a simple charge against Rubio. That's a difference, but it only makes explaining the different ratings more difficult. PolitiFact Florida made no complaint against Grayson's charge that Murphy was in a small group of Democrats voting for the Benghazi committee. Averaging that "true" part of the rating with the less-true "voted for" part of the rating makes the latter even lower when considered by itself.

The difference in this case relies entirely on whatever criteria PolitiFact Florida used to figure out when it is okay to leave out context.

Coin flip?

 

PolitiFact has published definitions of its ratings. Two definitions are relevant to our comparison:

TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing.
MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.

From the two definitions above, it follows that Grayson's statement about Murphy needed clarification or additional information. Murphy's statement about Rubio, in contrast, had nothing significant missing.

It was significant that Murphy claimed his vote was intended to defend Clinton.

It was insignificant that Rubio claimed he supported the Violence Against Women Act minus the objectionable amendments.

Was this a pair of coin flips both won by Murphy?

The call for transparency

 

The Poynter Institute, which owns PolitiFact, supports the idea that fact checkers ought to exhibit transparency. In that spirit of transparency, we contacted the writer and editor of both fact checks to ask how they objectively determined when it was okay to leave out context.

The two of you collaborated on a parallel pair of fact checks dealing with charges that a candidate voted for a certain bill.

In one case Alan Grayson charged that Patrick Murphy voted to establish the House Benghazi committee. Your fact check found Murphy had made the vote but said he did it to clear Clinton. The fact check said Grayson should have included that context and dropped Grayson's rating down to "Mostly True."

In the second case the same Murphy said Marco Rubio voted against the Violence Against Women Act. Your fact check found Rubio had opposed the Act with his vote but he said he supported the original version of the bill (without amendments added for its re-authorization). The fact check rated Murphy's statement "True," implying that Murphy was at no fault for omitting Rubio's support for the original version of the VAWA.

In the interest of journalistic transparency (which I know PolitiFact publicly champions):

How does an objective and nonpartisan fact checker make the critical distinction between context that is properly omitted and context that should have been included?

We will transparently update this item if we receive any reply from PolitiFact Florida or its parent organizations.

Meanwhile, heads Murphy wins, tails Rubio loses. Coin flip.

PolitiFact again goofy on guns (Updated)

There PolitiFact goes again.

PolitiFact Florida did a fact check on a gun-related topic. "Orlando area" Rep. Alan Grayson claimed Orlando shooter Omar Matteen's rifle is able to fire 700 rounds per minute helping to directly lead to the high death toll from the tragedy.

The good news is that PolitiFact Florida did a decent-enough job on reporting the gun facts. Sure, "Glock" is a name brand and should have been capitalized. But PolitiFact found expert sources and appeared to mostly relay their statements accurately.

The fact is the rifle Mateen used cannot fire 700 rounds per minute.

So why is it "Mostly False" instead of "False"?

Let's go to PolitiFact's summary section (bold emphasis added):

Grayson said that the rifle Mateen used "shoots off 700 rounds in a minute."

On CNN, he includes this claim without any clarification. In other forums, he noted that his claim is only true for the hypothetical semiautomatic rifle converted to an automatic weapon.

Even then, however, experts say the 700-round-per-minute figure is not an accurate portrayal of rounds fired. This is true for many reasons, they said, including reloading time and the potential of overheating the gun.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen. If Mateen had an automatic version of the rifle he used, which he did not, he still would not have been able to fire off 700 rounds in a minute. But he would have been able to fire off quite a few rounds.

It looks to us as though PolitiFact is saying it is "Mostly False" that an automatic AR-type rifle can fire 700 rounds per minute. And PolitiFact gives that "Mostly False" rating to Grayson for claiming an automatic version of the rifle can fire 700 rounds per minute. And placing that "Mostly False" rating next to Grayson's separate (false) claim that Mateen's semiautomatic version of the rifle can fire 700 rounds per minute.

But we don't know. Maybe PolitiFact Florida thinks it's "Half True" that the automatic AR-type rifle can fire 700 rounds per minute, even though it cannot. And PolitiFact averages that out with a "False" rating for Grayson's claim about the semi-automatic version to get "Mostly False." And after that PolitiFact places the "Mostly False" rating next to Grayson's "False" claim that Mateen's rifle could have fired 700 rounds in a minute.

Any way you slice it, it comes out goofy.

Would anyone like to wager that it would have received a "False" rating if Donald Trump had said it?

Update June 20, 2016

Subsequent reading (and arguments) on the subject of firing rate inspires an update.

Is PolitiFact's "Mostly False" justified simply based on the fact that Mateen's gun is rated by the manufacturer to have 700 rounds per minute capability in short bursts, even if Mateen could never pull the trigger quickly enough to achieve that rate of fire?

We reject that argument as absurd.

We find it absurd because the same is true of non-automatic weapons. If you pull the trigger quickly enough on a revolver, there is no limitation on its rate of fire that a semiautomatic weapon does not share. The absurdity trebles upon considering part of Rep. Grayson's argument that PolitiFact Florida allowed to pass. Grayson said the high rate of fire for the AR-15 style weapon resulted in a much higher death toll than if Mateen had used his Glock pistol.

The quotation comes from PolitiFact Florida's fact check:

"If somebody like him had nothing worse to deal with than a glock [sic] pistol which was his other weapon today, he might have killed three or four people and not 50," Grayson said.

But the Glock 17/18 pistol has a similar--actually higher--rating for its potential rate of fire.

Grayson did not know what he was talking about. If the cyclic rate is the relevant factor (it isn't) then the Glock pistol is the more dangerous weapon. Did anybody learn that from PolitiFact's fact check?

The fact goes whoosh past PolitiFact Florida. No worries, Rep. Grayson. PolitiFact Florida's got your back.

Correction 6/15/2016: In the first paragraph, originally had "700 rounds per second" where "minute" was intended instead of "second." The wording now matches the intent.
Clarification 6/20/2016: Belatedly included a link to PolitiFact Florida's fact check of Grayson.

Zebra Fact Check: "Torture narrative trumps facts at PolitiFact"

Our previous post highlights a Flopping Aces critique of a PolitiFact Florida ruling on whether waterboarding works. Back on May 10, 2016, we posted "What is 'empirical evidence' to PolitiFact?" to highlight PolitiFact's mishandling of the evidence in an earlier waterboarding fact check of Hillary Clinton. At my fact check site, Zebra Fact Check, I sifted both PolitiFact fact checks for the evidence they used to find that waterboarding does not work.

That examination led to an article titled "Torture narrative trumps facts at PolitiFact" and its conclusion:

We don’t have the evidence to know whether waterboarding works. PolitiFact had no business issuing “True” and “False” ratings of statements it cannot verify as true or false. At least not while pretending to serve as a neutral fact checker.

Bias serves as the best explanation for PolitiFact’s treating the two claims according to different standards and justifying its ratings fallaciously.

See the article at Zebra Fact Check for a detailed examination of PolitiFact's evidences.

Find some of my older writing on waterboarding here.

Flopping Aces: "PolitiFact is PolitiWrong on Waterboarding"

I've been slow to post about my Zebra Fact Check critique of PolitiFact's reporting on waterboarding. I'll post that to PolitiFact bias soon, but it comes to my attention that the conservative blog Flopping Aces has a post, "PolitiFact is PolitiWrong on Waterboarding," that overlaps mine in quite a few ways.

"Wordsmith":

Epic fail and lazy research on the part of PolitiFact for not going beyond mainstream media’s superficial reporting which basically accepted and parroted the bullet points given out from the Feinstein Report.

They did consult Reed College political science professor Darius Rejali. But while an expert in what he knows, what he knows also reveals what he doesn’t know: Basically, that he’s ignorant of the arguments made from experts on the other side of the coin. He simply knocks down the strawman claims, hawked around ad nauseam by the critics for years now.

Wordsmith has the details to back up his assertions.

Visit Flopping Aces and read the whole thing.