Fact Check not at PolitiFact Illinois

One of the characteristics of PolitiFact that drags it below its competitors is its penchant for not bothering to fact check what it claims to fact check.

Our example this time comes from PolitiFact Illinois:

From the above, we judge that "Most climate scientists agree" that we have less than a decade to avert a worst case climate change scenario counts as the central claim in need of fact-checking. PolitiFact hints at the confusion it sows in its article by paraphrasing the issue as "Does science say time is running out to stop climate disaster?"

The fact is that time could be running out to stop climate disaster while at the same time (Democrat) Sean Casten's claim could count as entirely false. Casten made a claim about what a majority of scientist believe about a short window of opportunity to avoid a worst-case scenario. And speaking of avoidance, PolitiFact Illinois avoided the meat of Casten's claim in favor of fact-checking its watered-down summary of Casten's claim.

The Proof that Proves Nothing

The key evidence offered in support of Casten was a 2018 report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The problem? The report offers no clear evidence showing a majority of climate scientists agree on anything at all, up to and including what Casten claims they believe. In fact, the report only mentions "scientist" or "scientists" once (in the Acknowledgments section):

A special thanks goes to the Chapter Scientists of this Report ...

A fact checker cannot accept that report as evidence of what a majority of scientists believe without strong justification. That justification does not occur in the so-called fact check. PolitiFact Illinois apparently checks the facts using the assumption that the IPCC report would not claim something if a majority of climate scientists did not believe it.

That's not fact-checking.

And More Proof of Nothing

Making this fact-checking farce even more sublime, PolitiFact Illinois correctly found the report does not establish any kind of hard deadline for bending the curve on carbon emissions (bold emphasis added):

Th(e) report said nations must take "unprecedented" actions to reduce emissions, which will need to be on a significantly different trajectory by 2030 in order to avoid more severe impacts from increased warming. However, it did not identify the hard deadline Casten and others have suggested. In part, that’s because serious effects from climate change have already begun.

So PolitiFact did not bother to find out whether a majority of scientists affirm the claim about "less than a decade" (burden of proof, anyone?) and moreover found the "less than a decade" claim was essentially false. We can toss PolitiFact's line about serious effects from climate change already occurring because Casten was talking about a "worst-case scenario."

PolitiFact Illinois rated Casten's claim "Mostly True."

Does that make sense?

Is it any wonder that Independents (nearly half) and Republicans (more than half) think fact checkers favor one side?


Afters

Also worth noting: Where does that "'worst-case scenario'" phrase come from? Does Casten put it inside quotation marks because he is quoting a source? Or is it a scare quote?

We confirmed, at least, that the phrase does not occur in the IPCC report that supposed served as Casten's source.

We will not try to explain PolitiFact Illinois' lack of curiosity on this point.

Let PolitiFact Illinois do that.


Update Sept. 4, 2019: We originally neglected to link to the flawed PolitiFact Illinois "fact check." This update remedies that problem.

PolitiFact Illinois: 'Duckwork's background check claim checks out" (Updated x2)

Huh.

On August 26, 2018 PolitiFact Illinois published a fact check of Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) with the title "Duckwork's background check claim checks out."

We find it hard to believe a fact-checking organization could prove so careless it would badly misspell the last name of one of its senators in a headline.

And we find it even harder to believe the error could last until the next day (today) without receiving a correction.

We will update this item to track whether PolitiFact Illinois runs a correction notice when it fixes the problem.

Assuming it fixes the problem.

Update Aug. 27, 2018:

Apparently "Duckwork" is a fairly common misspelling of Sen. Duckworth's name. NPR (Illinois) made a similar mistake in January 2018 and fixed it on the sly. Don't journalists know better? Misspelling a name warrants a transparent correction.


Update Aug. 28, 2018:

Very early on Aug. 28, 2018, I tweeted a message pointing out this error and tagging the author, editor and PolitiFact Illinois.

@kiannahsepeda Headline reads "Duckwork." Isn't there somebody at @PolitiFactIL that can change the spelling to "Duckworth"?

And append the needed correction notice?@chasejohn https://t.co/VEnWoeZhAF

— Bryan W. White (@ZebraFactCheck) August 28, 2018

When I checked hours later PolitiFact had corrected the spelling of Duckworth's name but added no correction notice to the item.

It's important to note, we suppose, that PolitiFact's corrections policy does not obligate it to append a correction notice on the basis of a misspelled name. That policy, in fact, appears to promise that PolitiFact will fix all of its spelling errors without acknowledging error (italics added for emphasis):

Typos, grammatical errors, misspellings – We correct typos, grammatical errors, misspellings, transpositions and other small errors without a mark of correction or tag and as soon as they are brought to our attention.

That seems to us like an unusually low bar for running a correction. Compare the above with the aggressive use of corrections involving misspelled names by PolitiFact's parent organization, the Poynter Institute.

Here's  one example from that page:

‘Newspapers killed newspapers,’ says reporter who quit the business (March 20, 2013)
Correction: This post misspelled Bird’s last name in one instance.

Journalists traditionally seem to give special attention to misspellings involving names. Misspelling a person's name counts as a different degree of error than a minor typographical error:

In journalism schools across Canada this week, many a freshman student will learn one of the foremost lessons of the J-school classroom: Get someone’s name wrong and you get a failing grade.

In the decade I taught at Ryerson University’s journalism school my students understood that no matter how brilliant their reporting and writing, if they messed up a name, they got an automatic F on that assignment. That’s a common policy of most journalism schools.

Apparently the fact checkers at PolitiFact find such obsessive attention to detail quaint.Which we count as a strange attitude for people calling themselves "fact checkers."

Attack of the PolitiFact Twitterbots?

Eagle-eyed PolitiFact Bias co-editor Jeff D. spotted an interesting pattern of Twitter support for PolitiFact's new PolitiFact Illinois franchise.

Sorry Illinois politicians, PolitiFact is back: Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, flanked by Republican members of both chambers speaks during a…

— fiona maduro (@MaduroFiona) August 1, 2017

The pattern consists of tweets identical to the one above made from what appear to be Twitterbots. The Fiona Madura twitter account doesn't look like the account of a real person. For example, Fiona has Tweeted out non-original content nearly every hour out of the past 24 as of this writing. And she appears to truly enjoy sharing a credit counseling advertisement.

What's a Twitterbot?

The New York Times offers an explanation:

Bots are small programs that typically perform repetitive, scripted tasks. On Twitter, they are used for a variety of purposes, including for help and harassment.

PolitiFact Illinois appears very popular with such apparent Twitterbot accounts.

@qodupoClar lists a location in Columbia, but has no followers, follows no one, and typically posts about Illinois.

Jeff screen captured approximately a dozen of these 'bot accounts tweeting out the same tweet about PolitiFact Illinois.

We're supposing that PolitiFact's partner for its PolitiFact Illinois project, The Better Government Association, has an established relationship with a Twitterbot opinion leader. Indeed, the IL Advocacy Network (@iladvnetwork), which looks like the corporate version of an empty suit, has tweeted about the BGA and PolitiFact Illinois in the same canned style as the 'bots mentioned above.

We're intrigued by the possibility that journalists--PolitiFact journalists!--are using 'bots to get their message out. Most regard the technique as deceptive at least on some level.

PolitiFact Illinois: a different animal?

Today PolitiFact announced a new state affiliate, PolitiFact Illinois. This expansion move breaks new ground, for PolitiFact Illinois represents a partnership with a not-for-profit organization, "Reboot Illinois."

PolitiFact has in the past affiliated with newspapers, radio stations, and university journalism programs. It also lists a partnership with NBC.

Here at PolitiFact Bias, we could hardly be more aware that the "nonpartisan" label means virtually nothing by itself. PolitiFact itself serves as ample proof of that. Naturally, we were curious about Reboot Illinois as a result.

Reboot Illinois lists two main sources of funding, both consisting of individuals:

Reboot Illinois is funded by Chicago hedge fund manager Anne Dias Griffin and industrialists Lester and Jim Crown.

Griffin's Federal Elections Commission history shows plenty of political giving to both Democrats and Republicans.

Lester Crown's FEC history shows him giving to Democrats and Republicans, with most of the support going to Democrats.

Jim Crown's extensive political giving overwhelmingly went to Democrats.

The funding, then, is superficially bipartisan. But even if the funding were all from George Soros or Charles Koch, it would not necessarily mean Reboot Illinois leans one way or the other. Reboot Illinois determines that by the way it acts. We'll be interested to see if PolitiFact Illinois is a different sort of animal from the existing PolitiFact franchises.


Afters

With some difficulty, I separated my criticism of PolitiFact Illinois' self-announcement from the rest of the post.

The announcement is filled with dubious claims well befitting the announcement of a new PolitiFact franchise. I'll limit myself to one powerful example from the opening paragraph (bold emphasis added):

Illinois never has been more polarized. Our nation never more divided.

As badly as the United States was divided by the Civil War, today it is more divided still.

Thanks, PolitiFact Illinois. We look forward to more.