PolitiFact botches one in Marco Rubio's favor

Though PolitiFact Bias finds PolitiFact biased to the left, we also find that PolitiFact simply stinks at fact-checking. PolitiFact stinketh so much that its mistakes sometimes run against its biased tendencies to unfairly harm Democrats or unfairly help Republicans.

We ran across a clear case of the latter this week while putting together a spreadsheet collection of PolitiFact's "True" ratings. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) received a "True" for a significantly flawed claim about Social Security:

Image capture from PolitiFact.com

Rubio was right that Social Security had to draw down the Trust Fund balance to pay benefits. But PolitiFact simply didn't bother to look at whether it was happening "for the first time."

It wasn't happening for the first time. It happened often during the 1970s. And in the 1970s Social Security was on-budget. That means that when people claim that Social Security has never contributed to the federal deficit they are quite clearly wrong as a matter of fact.

PolitiFact only looked at one government source in fact-checking Rubio. That source had nothing about whether the Trust Fund drawdown was happening for the first time.

A chart from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget makes the shortfall from the 1970s clear:

It's unlikely PolitiFact was trying to do Rubio a favor. Rather, the staff at PolitiFact probably thought they knew Social Security's financial history was solid and simply did not question when Rubio affirmed that expectation.

We'll attach the "Left Jab" tag to this item even though it did not come from a left-leaning critic of PolitiFact.

PolitiFact claims it's "Half True" Georgia senator wants to get rid of health care during the COVID-19 pandemic

We found an item that fits beautifully in our traditional category "Words Matter, Except When They Don't" as well as our new category "Rubberstamps for Democrats."

Behold:

Warnock's exaggeration on this claim qualifies as Trumpian. There's no indication at all, as PolitiFact admits, that Sen. Loeffler wants to get rid of health care ("per se") during the middle of a pandemic. Warnock is talking about Loeffler's (alleged) support of a lawsuit brought by the states that seeks to overturn the ACA as unconstitutional.

Most of the deception in Warnock's claim comes from two twists. 

First, Warnock translates getting rid of Obamacare into getting rid of health care. That's a monstrous stretch. Obamacare counts as an insurance program, not a health care program. Getting rid of Obamacare gets rid of some insurance coverage. It does not get rid of health care.

Second, the structure of Warnock's claim would tell the audience that Loeffler would prefer getting rid of health care during "the middle of a pandemic" to getting rid of health care at some other time (such as not "in the middle of a pandemic." But that's not really at issue. The issue would be whether she believes the ACA is unconstitutional. We shouldn't expect her reading of the law to change during a pandemic.

Even if Warnock were to claim Loeffler favors "getting rid of the Afforable Care Act in the middle of a pandemic" the claim would only count as roughly half true*. Gratuitously allowing "the middle of a pandemic" to stretch from the beginning to the end of the pandemic, we have no real evidence that Loeffler particularly wants the ACA to end during that span. What we (might) have is Loeffler carrying the same opinion about the constitutionality of the ACA regardless of a pandemic.

If the Supreme Court rules on the ACA lawsuit in 2021, as expected, we may be looking at the tail end of the pandemic and not its "middle," and that's assuming the SCOTUS orders a precipitous end to the ACA. There's no particular reason to expect that.

Some experts consider it highly unlikely that the Affordable Care Act would be overturned. And it is important to note that even if the Affordable Care Act is ruled unconstitutional, these impacts would not necessarily take effect the instant that the Supreme Court hands down the verdict.

If the Affordable Care Act was ruled unconstitutional, it would set off a chain of events in the political and legal spheres that are hard to predict in advance. Very likely, Congress and the Administration would take steps shortly after the decision to try to stabilize the situation.

Warnock's ad is a logic-free misleading appeal to emotion. She wants to take health care away from people who are dying! As political ads go, it's about as low as they come.

PolitiFact's "Half True" rating of Warnock's misleading bull hockey serves as just another illustration of PolitiFact's marked leftward lean. It's such a wildly generous "Half True" that it counts as a rubberstamp.

Narrative matters to PolitiFact far more than words (pun not intended, but I'll keep it).

*Afters

There's a third deception in this fact check, in that Warnock and PolitiFact pull a big switcheroo. 

Loeffler voted against a bill that would keep the Department of Justice from agreeing with lawsuits seeking to overturn the ACA. Warnock and PolitiFact take that as support for the lawsuit, in the absence of other evidence. But maybe Loeffler simply did not want to see Congress try to tie the hands of the constitutionally co-equal executive branch in its dealings with the judicial branch. Loeffler's support for the DoJ's ability to choose its positions on issues would not directly equate to agreeing with the DoJ position on those issues.

PolitiFact glosses over the discrepancy.

That's the kind of thing a fact checker might do if politically biased.

PolitiFact builds straw man for PolitiSplainer on unmasking

If PolitiFact's one-sided PolitiSplainer on the Justice Department's reversal on Gen. Michael Flynn's prosecution was not enough, now we have a PolitiSpainer on the Obama administration's unmasking efforts on Flynn and others.

The new PolitiSplainer could win awards for the way it buries the fundamental problem of the unmasking efforts--evidence that knowledge of Russia/Trump collusion falsehood went to the top of the Obama administration and included Vice President Biden--to focus instead on making the unmasking sound like a normal everyday thing at the top of an administration.

But our favorite PolitiMisfire involves PolitiFact's straw-manning of the Republicans' side of the story.

You don't get a taste of Andy McCarthy's expert analysis. And you don't get Jonathan Turley's view. You don't get a host of stories written by well-known and experienced conservative pundits or experts.

No, you get a Facebook post from Diamond & Silk.

No, we're not making this up.

Does the unmasking list show that top officials "knew" that concerns about Flynn were a "lie"?

The pro-Trump social media personalities Diamond and Silk drew this conclusion in a Facebook post that featured images of the list of Obama administration officials:

"Obama knew. Clinton knew. Biden knew. Comey knew. Brennan knew. McCabe knew. Strzok knew. Clapper knew. Rosenstein knew. FBI knew. DOJ knew. CIA knew. State knew. They all knew it was a lie, a witch-hunt, a scandal, a plot, a conspiracy, a hoax. #ObamaGate #SubpoenaObama."

Partisans have an easy time jumping to conclusions. And that tendency represents our best guess as to why PolitiFact assumed Obama, Clinton, Strok, Clapper, Rosenstein, FBI, CIA and State all knowing "it" was a lie referred to the Flynn unmasking all by itself.

That's the beauty of picking on a short Facebook post. The "fact checker" (liberal blogger) can see a set of dots and then freely connect them to construct an understanding that fits a preconceived narrative.

There's nothing in Diamond & Silk's Facebook post explaining that the list follows solely from the Flynn unmasking disclosure. PolitiFact invented that and presented it to readers as fact.

PolitiFact can do that, you see, because it does not apply to itself the "Burden of Proof" principle it applies (on occasion) to others.

It's a shameful example of fact-checking. It qualifies as the straw man fallacy, in fact.

It's likely Diamond & Silk were talking about the Trump/Russia collusion narrative being a lie. not "concerns about Flynn."

Fact checkers, if you want the conservative argument about some aspect of executive office procedures try Andrew McCarthy sometime:

This week’s revelations about unmasking are important and intriguing. They should be thoroughly examined. In fact, they are only a snapshot of the unmasking issue — involving just one U.S. person (Flynn) over a period of less than three months. It is highly irregular for government officials on the political side of the national-security realm to seek the unmasking of Americans. It is eye-opening to learn that Vice President Biden and President Obama’s chief-of-staff (McDonough) unmasked the incoming Trump administration’s national security advisor. It is downright scandalous that Samantha Power, Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, who had little reason to seek unmasking, reportedly requested 260 unmaskings . . . and then told Congress that she did not make the vast majority of requests attributed to her — though it remains unclear, years later, who did make them.

But let’s not miss the forest for the trees. This is not just about unmasking. It is about how pervasively the Obama administration was monitoring the Trump campaign.

PolitiFact's left-leaning fan base was spared any in-depth analysis from the right in favor of PolitiFact's straw man version of Diamond & Silk's Facebook post on the topic. And it got standard talking points from the left (unmasking is so totally normal!).

That kind of fact-checking qualifies as a disservice to readers who are interested in the truth.

Update May 17, 2020: clarified language in the second paragraph

PolitiFact claims, without evidence, Trump touted chloroquine as a coronavirus cure

Should fact checkers hold themselves to the standards they expect others to meet?

We say yes.

Should fact checkers meet the standards they claim to uphold?

We say yes.

What does PolitiFact say?

(President Donald) Trump has touted chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus cure in more than a half-dozen public events since March 19.

PolitiFact published the above claim in an April 8, 2020 PolitiSplainer about hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug doctors have used in the treatment of coronavirus patients.

We were familiar with instances where Mr. Trump mentioned hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for coronavirus sufferers. But we had not heard him call it a cure. Accordingly, we tried to follow up on the evidence PolitiFact offered in support of its claim.

The article did not contain any mention of a source identifying the "half-dozen public events since March 19," so we skipped to the end to look at PolitiFact's source list. That proved disappointing.

We tweeted at the article's authors expressing our dismay at the lack of supporting documentation. Our tweet garnered no reply, no attempt to supply the missing information and no change to the original article.

Of note, when co-author Funke tweeted out a link to the article on April 8 his accompanying description counted as far more responsible than the language in the article itself:

"Here's what you need to know about hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug that President Trump has repeatedly touted as a potential COVID-19 treatment."

Does "cure" mean the same thing as "potential treatment" in PolitiFactLand?

We've surveyed Mr. Trump's use of the terms "cure" and "game changer" at the White House website and found nothing that would justify the language PolitiFact used of the president.

What else does PolitiFact say?

The burden of proof is on the speaker, and we rate statements based on the information known at the time the statement is made.

 What if the speaker says "Trump has touted chloroquine or hydroxycloroquine as a coronavirus cure"? Does the speaker still have the burden of proof? If the speaker is PolitiFact, that is?

It looks like the fact-checkers have yet again allowed a(n apparently false) public narrative to guide their fact-checking.

PolitiFact absurdly charges Pete Buttigieg with "bad math"

PolitiFact gave some goofy treatment to a claim from Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg.

Buttigieg compared the 10-year unpaid cost of fellow candidate Bernie Sanders' new spending proposals to the current U.S. GDP.

PolitiFact cried foul. Or, more precisely, PolitiFact cried "bad math."

Note that PolitiFact says Buttigieg did "bad math."

PolitiFact's fact check never backs that claim.

If Buttigieg is guilty of bad anything, it was a poor job of providing thorough context for the measure he used to illustrate the size of Sanders "budget hole." Buttigieg was comparing a cumulative 10-year budget hole with one year of U.S. GDP.

PolitiFact notwithstanding, there's nothing particularly wrong with doing that. Maybe Buttigieg should have provided more context, but there's a counterargument to that point: Buttigieg was on a debate stage with a sharply limited amount of time to make his point. In addition, the debate audience and contestants may be expected to have some familiarity with cost estimates and GDP. In other words, it's likely many or most in the audience knew what Buttigieg was saying.

Let's watch PolitiFact try to justify its reasoning:

But there’s an issue with Buttigieg’s basic comparison of Sanders’ proposals to the U.S. economy. He might have been using a rhetorical flourish to give a sense of scale, but his words muddled the math.

The flaw is that he used 10-year cost and revenue estimates for the Sanders plans and stacked them against one year of the nation’s GDP.

PolitiFact tried to justify the "muddled math" charge by noting Buttigieg compared a 10-year cost estimate to a one-year figure for GDP.

But it's not muddled math. The 10-year estimates are the 10-year estimates, mathematically speaking. And the GDP figure is the GDP figure. Noting that the larger figure is larger than the smaller figure is solid math.

PolitiFact goes on to say that the Buttigieg comparison does not compare apples to apples, but so what? Saying an airplane is the size of a football field is also an apples-to-oranges comparison. Airplanes, after all, are not football fields. But the math remains solid: 100 yards equals 100 yards.

Ambiguity differs from error

In fact-checking the correct response to ambiguity is charitable interpretation. After applying charitable interpretation, the fact checker may then consider ways the message could mislead the audience.

If Buttigieg had run a campaign ad using the same words, it would make more sense to grade his claim harshly. Such a message in an ad is likely to reach people without the knowledge base to understand the comparison. But many or most in a debate audience would understand Buttigieg's comparison without additional explanation.

It's an issue of ambiguous context, not "bad math."



Correction Feb. 26, 2018: Omitted the first "i" in "Buttigieg" in the final occurrence in the next-to-last paragraph. Problem corrected.

PolitiFact weirdly unable to answer criticism

Our title plays off a PolitiFact critique Dave Weigel wrote back in 2011 (Slate). PolitiFact has a chronic difficulty responding effectively to criticism.

Most often PolitiFact doesn't bother responding to criticism. But if it makes its liberal base angry enough sometimes it will trot out some excuses.

This time PolitiFact outraged supporters of Democratic (Socialist) presidential candidate Bernie Sanders with a "Mostly False" rating of Sanders' claim that fellow Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg "opposed modest proposals during Barack Obama’s presidency to raise taxes on the wealthy, while advocating for cuts to Medicare and Social Security."

Reactions from left-leaning journalists Ryan Grim and Ryan Cooper were typical of the genre.

The problem isn't that Sanders wasn't misleading people. He was. The problem stems from PolitiFact's inability to reasonably explain what Sanders did wrong. PolitiFact offered a poor explanation in its fact check, appearing to reason that what Sanders said was true but misleading and therefore "Mostly False."

That type of description typically fits a "Half True" or a "Mostly True" rating--particularly if the subject isn't a Republican.

PolitiFact went to Twitter to try to explain its decision.

First, PolitiFact made a statement making it appear that Sanders was pretty much right:

On many occasions, Bloomberg said Medicare and Social Security had to be on the table. And he rejected stand-alone tax hikes on the wealthy.

— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) February 19, 2020

Then PolitiFact (rhetorically) asked how the true statements could end up with a "Mostly False" rating. In reply to its own question, we got this:

Because Sanders failed to note the key role of deficit reduction for Bloomberg.

Seriously? Missing context tends to lead to the aforementioned "Mostly True" or "Half True" ratings, not "Mostly False" (unless it's a Republican). Sanders is no Republican, so of course there's outrage on the left.

Anyway, who cuts government programs without having deficit reduction in mind? That's pretty standard, isn't it?

How can PolitiFact be this bad at explaining itself?

In its next explanatory tweet PolitiFact did much better by pointing out Bloomberg agreed the Obama deficit reduction plan should raise taxes, including taxes on wealthy Americans.

That's important not because it's on the topic of deficit reduction but because Sanders's made it sound like Bloomberg opposed tax hikes on the wealthy at the federal level. Recall Sanders' words (bold emphasis added): "modest proposals during Barack Obama’s presidency to raise taxes on the wealthy."

Mentioning the proposals occurred during the Obama presidency led the audience to think Bloomberg was talking about tax hikes at the federal level. But Sanders was talking about Bloomberg's opposition to tax hikes in New York City, not nationally.

PolitiFact mentioned that Bloomberg had opposed the tax hikes in New York, but completely failed to identify Sanders' misdirection.

PolitiFact's next tweet only created more confusion, saying "Sanders’ said Bloomberg wanted entitlement cuts and no tax hikes. That is not what Bloomberg said."

But that's not what Sanders said. 

It's what Sanders implied by juxtaposing mention of the city tax policy with Obama-era proposals for slowing the growth of Medicare and Social Security spending.

And speaking of those two programs, that's where PolitiFact really failed with this fact check. In the past PolitiFact has distinguished, albeit inconsistently, between cutting a government program and slowing its growth. It's common in Washington D.C. to call the slowing of growth a "cut," but such a cut from a higher growth projection differs from cutting a program by making its funding literally lower from one year to the next. Fact checkers should identify the baseline for the cut. PolitiFact neglected that step.

If PolitiFact had noted that Bloomberg's supposed cuts to Social Security and Medicare were cuts to future growth projections, it could have called out Sanders for the misleading imprecision.

PolitiFact could have said the Social Security/Medicare half of Sanders' claim was "Half True" and that taking the city tax policy out of context was likewise "Half True." And if PolitiFact did not want to credit Sanders with a "Half True" claim by averaging those ratings then it could have justified a "Mostly False" rating by invoking the misleading impression Sanders achieved by juxtaposing the two half truths.

 Instead, we got yet another case of PolitiFact weirdly unable to to answer criticism.

PolitiFact's charity for the Democrats

PolitiFact is partial to Democrats.

Back in 2018 we published a post that lists the main points in our argument that PolitiFact leans left. But today's example doesn't quite fit any of the items on that list, so we're adding to it:

PolitiFact's treatment of ambiguity leans left

When politicians make statements that may mean more than one thing, PolitiFact tends to see the ambiguity in favor of Democrats and against Republicans.

That's the nature of this example, updating an observation from my old blog Sublime Bloviations back in 2011.

When politician say "taxes" and does not describe in context what taxes are they talking about, what do they mean?

PolitiFact decided the Republican, Michele Bachmann, was talking about all taxes.

PolitiFact decided the Democrat, Marcia Fudge, was talking about income taxes.

Based on the differing interpretations, Bachmann got a "False" rating from PolitiFact while Fudge received a "True" rating.

That brings us to the 2020 election campaign and PolitiFact's not-really-a-fact-check article "Fact-checking the Democratic claim that Amazon doesn't pay taxes."

The article isn't a fact check as such because PolitiFact skipped out on giving "Truth-O-Meter" ratings to Andrew Yang and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Both could easily have scored Bachmannesque "False" ratings.

Yang and Warren both said about the same thing, that Amazon paid no taxes.

Various news agencies have reported that Amazon paid no federal corporate income taxes in 2017 and 2018. But news reports have also made clear that Amazon paid taxes other than federal corporate income taxes.

Of course neither Yang nor Warren will receive the "False" rating PolitiFact bestowed on Bachmann for a comparable error. PolitiFact treated both their statements as though they restricted their claims to federal corporate income tax.

Is it true that despite making billions of dollars, Amazon pays zero dollars in federal income tax?

Short answer: Amazon’s tax returns are private, so we don’t know for sure what Amazon pays in federal taxes. But Amazon’s estimates on its annual 10-K filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission are the closest information we have on this matter. They show mixed results for the past three years: no federal income tax payments for 2017 and 2018, but yes on payments for 2019.

That's the type of impartiality a Democrat can usually expect from PolitiFact. They do not need to specify what kind of taxes they are talking about. PolitiFact will interpret their statements charitably. 

Afters

It's worth noting that PolitiFact admitted not knowing whether Amazon paid federal income taxes in 2017 and 2018 ("we don’t know for sure what Amazon pays in federal taxes"). And PolitiFact suspends its "burden of proof" criterion yet again for Democrats.


Feb. 10, 2020: Edited to remove a few characters of feline keyboard interference.

Busted: PolitiFact catches Nikki Haley using hyperbole without a license

Some things never change.

Among those things, apparently, is PolitiFact's tradition of taking Republican hyperbole literally.

Case in point:

The hyperbole should have been easy to spot based on the context.

Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley appeared on Fox News' "Hannity" show with host Sean Hannity.




Transcript ours (starting at about 2:12):

Do you agree with, uh, listen I've always liked General Petraeus. He's a great, great general, hero, patriot in this country. He said it's impossible to overstate the importance of this particular action. It's more significant than the killing of bin Laden, even the death of al Baghdadi. And he said Soleimani was the architect, operational commander of the Iranian effort to solidify control of the so-called Shia Crescent stretching from Iran to Iraq through Syria and southern Lebanon. I think that's the reason why Jordanians, Egyptians and Saudis are now working with the Israelis, which I don't think anybody saw coming.

NH
Well, and I'll tell you this: You don't see anyone standing up for Iran. You're not hearing any of the Gulf members, you're not hearing China, you're not hearing Russia. The only ones mourning the loss of Soleimani are our Democrat leadership. And our Democrat presidential candidates. No one else in the world, because they knew that this man had evil veins. They knew what he was capable of and they saw the destruction and, and the lives lost (based?) from his hand. And so--

SH
What a dumb (?). We've been hearing "Oh, he's evil, he's a murderer he killed Americans and he, this is the No. 1 state sponsor of terror and they're fighting all these proxy wars but we don't want to make 'em mad." That's what it sounds like to me.

NH
You know, and you go tell that to the 608 American families who lost a loved one. Go tell that to the military members who lost a limb. This was something that needed to be done and should be celebrated. And I'll tell you right now, partisan politics should stop when it comes to foreign policy. This is about America united. We need to be completely behind the president, what he did, because every one of those countries are watching our news media right now seeing what everyone's saying. And this is a moment of strength for the United States. It's a moment of strength from President Trump.

Haley's "mourning" comment comes after her emphasis Iran received no support ("You don't see anyone standing up for Iran") regarding the killing of Soleimani. So it makes very good sense to take "mourning" as a hyperbolic amplification of that point.

Hannity's response to Haley's comment came in the same vein, in fact mocking Democrats who acknowledged Soleimani got what he deserved while questioning the wisdom of the move.

PolitiFact could legitimately check to see if world leaders offered statements much in the same vein leading Democrats offered. Instead of doing that, PolitiFact used a wooden-literal interpretation of Haley's remarks as a basis for its fact check.

How do mistakes like this (and these) make it past PolitiFact's exalted "Star Chamber" of experienced fact check editors?

Could be bias.

PolitiFact and Bernie Sanders explain the gender pay gap

Everybody knows about the gender pay gap, right?

It's the statistic Democrats habitually misuse to amplify their focus on "equal pay for equal work." Fact checkers like PolitiFact punish that traditional deception by rating it "Mostly True" most of the time, or sometimes just "True."

Let's take a look at PolitiFact latest PolitiSplainer on the gender wage gap, this time featuring Democratic Party presidential candidate and "democratic socialist" Bernie Sanders.

Such articles might more appropriately wear the label "unexplainer."

PolitiFact starts out with exactly the kind of ambiguity Democratic Party leaders love, obscuring the difference between the raw gender wage gap and the part of the gap (if any) caused by gender discrimination:

The disparity in how much women make compared with men comes up often in the political discourse, tagged with a call to action to help women’s paychecks catch up.

Running just above that sentence the featured image directs readers toward the gender discrimination explanation for the gender pay gap. Plausibly deniable? Of course. PolitiFact didn't mean it that way or something, right?

PolitiFact goes on to tell its readers that a number of Democrats have raised the gender pay gap issue while on the campaign trail. The paragraph contains four hotlinks:

Several leading Democratic presidential candidates recently highlighted one of the biggest imbalances — saying that a Latina woman must work 23 months to make the amount a white man makes in one year, or that they make 54 cents on the dollar.

Each of the statements from Democrats highlighted the gender pay gap in an ambiguous and misleading way. None of the statements bothered to distinguish between the raw pay gap, caused by a variety of things including women working fewer hours, and the hard-to-measure pay gap caused by employers' sexual discrimination.

The claim from Mayor Pete Buttigieg was pretty much incoherent and would have made great fodder for a fact check (54 cents on the dollar isn't enough to live on? Doesn't that depend on the size of the dollar in the comparison?).

PolitiFact highlighted the version of the claim coming from Sen. Sanders:

Latina women in America must work for 23 months, on average, to make what white men earn in a year.

Equal pay is not radical. It is not extreme. It's an issue of basic justice.

We are ready to fight for decent, fair wages for women everywhere. #LatinaEqualPayDay

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) November 20, 2019

Sanders' use of the gender pay gap fits the standard pattern of deception. He leads with a figure from the raw wage gap, then assures the audience that "Equal pay is not radical ... It's an issue of basic justice."

But Sanders is misleading his audience. "Equal pay for equal work" isn't radical and may count as an issue of basic justice. But equal pay regardless of the work done is very radical in the United States. And that's what Democratic Candidates imply when they base their calls for equal pay on the disparities in the raw gender wage gap.

If only there were fact checkers who could explain that deception to the public!

But, no, PolitiFact does not explain Sanders' deception.

In fact, it appears PolitiFact has never rated Sanders on a claim related to the gender wage gap.

PolitiFact did not rate the misleading tweet featured in its PolitiSplainer. Nor did it rate any of these:

• "Women workers today earn 78 percent of what their male counterparts make.We need pay equity in our country--equal pay for equal work."
• "We must have equal pay for equal work: women want that whole damn dollar, not 79 cents on the dollar."
• "At a time when women make an average of 77 cents for every dollar earned by men, I am disappointed that every Republican in the Senate voted to filibuster the paycheck fairness act to insure equal pay for equal work."

PolitiFact ratings of the gender wage gap tend to graciously overlook the fact that Democrats almost invariably invoke the raw gender wage gap when stumping for equal pay for equal work, as Sanders did above. Does the raw gender wage gap have much of anything to do with the wage gap just from discrimination? No. There's hardly any relationship.

Should Democrats admit they want equal pay for unequal work, it's likely the American people will let them know that the idea is not mainstream and not an issue of basic fairness.

PolitiFact ought to know that by now. But you won't find it in their fact checks or PolitiSplainers dealing with the gender wage gap.

How Big is the Pay Gap from Discrimination?

Remarkably, PolitiFact's PolitiSplainer on the pay gap almost takes a pass on pinning down the role discrimination might play. One past PolitiSplainer from 2015 actually included the line from the CONSAD report's Foreword (by the Department of Labor) suggesting there may be no significant gender discrimination at all found in the raw wage gap.

In the 2019 PolitiSplainer we got this:

We often hear that discriminatory practices are a reason why on average women are paid less than men. Expert say it’s hard to measure how much of a role that discrimination plays in the disparity.

"Research shows that more than half of the gap is due to job and industry segregation — essentially, women tend to work in jobs done primarily by other women, and men tend to work in jobs done primarily by other men and the ‘men’s jobs’ are paid more," said Jennifer Clark, a spokeswoman for the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

Clark cited education and race as other factors, too.

Such a weak attempt to explain the role of discrimination in the gender pay gap perhaps indicates that PolitiFact's aim was to explain the raw gender wage gap. Unfortunately for the truth, that explanation largely stayed within the lines of the traditional Democratic Party deceit: Mention the raw gender wage gap and then advocate legislation supposedly helping women receive equal work for equal pay.

That juxtaposition sends the clear message the raw gender wage gap relates to discrimination.

Supposedly neutral and objective fact checkers approve the deception, so it must be okay.

We have no reason to suppose mainstream fact checkers like PolitiFact will stop playing along with the misdirection.

William Barr, PolitiFact and the biased experts game

Is it okay for fact checkers to rely on biased experts for their findings?

Earlier this year, Facebook restricted distribution of a video by pro-life activist Lila Rose. Rose's group complained the fact check was biased. Facebook relied on the International Fact-Checking Network to investigate. The investigator ruled (very dubiously) that the fact check was accurate but that the fact checker should have disclosed the bias of experts it cited:

The failure to declare to their readers that two individuals who assisted Science Feedback, not in writing the fact-check but in reviewing the evidence, had positions within advocacy organizations, and the failure to clarify their role to readers, fell short of the standards required of IFCN signatories. This has been communicated to Science Feedback.

Perhaps it's fine for fact checkers to rely on biased experts so long as those experts do not hold positions in advocacy organizations.

Enter PolitiFact and its December 11, 2019 fact check of Attorney General William Barr.

The fact check itself hardly deals with the substance of Barr's claim that the "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia was started on the thinnest of evidence. Instead, PolitiFact sticks with calling the decision to investigate "justified" by the Inspector General's report while omitting the report's observation that the law sets a low threshold for starting an investigation (bold emphasis added).

Additionally, given the low threshold for predication in the AG Guidelines and the DIOG, we concluded that the FFG informat ion, provided by a government the United Stat es Intelligence Community (USIC) deems trustworthy, and describing a first-hand account from an FFG employee of a conversation with Papadopoulos, was sufficient to predicate the investigation. This information provided the FBI with an articulable factual basis that, if true, reasonably indicated activity constituting either a federal cri me or a threat to national security, or both, may have occur red or may be occurring. For similar reasons, as we detail in Chapter Three, we concluded that the quantum of information articulated by the FBI to open the individual investigations on Papadopoulos, Page, Flynn, and Manafort in August 2016 was sufficient to satisfy the low threshold established by the Department and the FBI.

The "low threshold" is consistent with Barr's description of "thinnest of suspicions" in the context of prosecutorial discretion and the nature of the event that supposedly justified the investigation (the Papadoupolous caper)*.

But in this post we will focus on the experts PolitiFact cited.

Rosa Brooks

Rosa Brooks, professor of law and policy at Georgetown University, told us that Barr’s assessment that the suspicions were thin "appears willfully inaccurate."

"The report concluded precisely the opposite," she said. "The IG report makes it clear that the decision to launch the investigation was justified."

If PolitiFact were brazen enough, it could pick out Brooks as a go-to (biased) expert based on her Twitter retweets from Dec. 10, 2019.

Brooks' tweets also portray her as a Democrat voter. So does her pattern of political giving.

Jennifer Daskal

Jennifer Daskal, professor of law at American University, agreed. "Barr’s statement is at best a misleading statement, if not a deliberate distortion, of what the report actually found," she said.

Daskal's Internet history shows little to suggest she pre-judged her view on Barr's statement. On the other hand, it seems pretty plain she prefers the presidential candidacy of Pete Buttgieg (one example among several). Plus Daskal has tended to donate politically to Democrats.

Robert Litt

PolitiFact contacted Litt for his expert opinion but did not mention him in the text of the fact check.

We deem it unlikely PolitiFact tabbed Litt to counterbalance the leftward lean of Brooks and Daskal. Litt was part of the Obama administration and his appointment carried an unusual political dimension to it. Litt failed his background check but was installed in the Clinton Justice Department in a roundabout way.

Litt, like Brooks and Daskal, gives politically to Democrats.

So what's the problem?

We think it's okay for PolitiFact to cite experts who lean left and donate politically to the Democratic Party. That's not the problem.

The problem is the echo-chamber effect PolitiFact achieves by choosing a small pool of experts all of whom lean markedly left. As we've noted before, that's no way to establish anything akin to an expert consensus. But it serves as an excellent method for excluding or marginalizing contrary arguments.

It's not like those are hard to find. It seems PolitiFact simply has no interest in them.



*It's worth noting that the information Papadoupoulos shared with the Australian, Downer, came in turn from the mysterious Joseph Mifsud.

PolitiFact as Rumpelstiltskin.

“Round about, round about,
Lo and behold!
Reel away, reel away,
Straw into gold!”

PolitiFact's Nov. 19, 2019 fact check of something President Donald Trump said on the Dan Bongino Show gives us yet another example of a classic fact checker error, the mistake of interpreting ambiguous statements as clear statements.

Here's PolitiFact's presentation of a statement it found worthy of a fact check:

In an interview with conservative show host Dan Bongino, Trump said a false rendition of that call by House Intelligence chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., forced him to release the readout of that call.

"They never thought, Dan, that I was going to release that call, and I really had no choice because Adam Schiff made up a call," Trump said Nov. 15. "He said the president said this, and then he made up a call."

The problem with Trump’s statement is that Schiff spoke after the White House released the memo of the phone call, not before.

 Note that PolitiFact finds a timeline problem with Trump's claim.

But also note that Trump makes no clear statement regarding a timeline. If Trump said "I released the transcript after Schiff did his 'parody' version of the telephone call," then he would have established an order of events. Trump's words imply an order of events, but it is not a hard logical implication (A, therefore B).

PolitiFact treats the case exactly like a hard implication.

Here's why that's the wrong approach.

First, significant ambiguity should always slow a fact-checker's progress toward an interpretation.

Second, Trump gave a speech on Sept 24, 2019 that announced the impending release of the transcript (memorandum of telephone conversation). The "transcript" was released on Sept. 25. Schiff gave his "parody" account of the call the next day, on Sept. 26.  And Trump responded to Schiff's "parody" version of his call on Sept. 30 during an event honoring the late Justice Antonin Scalia:

Adam Schiff — representative, congressman — made up what I said.  He actually took words and made it up.  The reason is, when he saw my call to the President of Ukraine, it was so good that he couldn’t quote from it because it — there was nothing done wrong.  It was perfect.

PolitiFact's interpretation asks us to believe that Trump either forgot what he said on Sept. 30 or else deliberately decided to reverse the chronology.

What motive would support that decision? Is one version more politically useful than the other?

It's not uncommon for people to speak of "having no choice" based on an event subsequent to that choice. The speaker means that the choice would have had to take place eventually.

When a source makes two claims touching the same subject and differ in content, the following rule applies: Use the more clear statement to make sense of the less clear statement.

Fact checkers who manufacture certitudes out of equivocal language give fact-checking a bad name.

They are Rumpelstiltskins, trying to spin straw into gold.


Afters

We would draw attention to a parallel highlighted at (Bryan's) Zebra Fact Check last month.

During a podcast interview Hillary Clinton used equivocal language in saying "they" were grooming Democratic Party presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard as a third-party candidate to enhance Trump's chances of winning the 2020 election.

No fact checker picked out Clinton's claim for a fact check. And that's appropriate, because the identity of "they" was never perfectly clear. Clinton probably meant the Russians, but "probably" doesn't make it a fact.

In that case, the fact checkers picked on those who interpreted Clinton to mean the Russians were grooming Gabbard (implicitly finding that Clinton's ambiguity clearly meant "Republicans").

Fact checkers have no business doing such things.

Until fact checkers can settle on a consistent approach to their craft, we justifiably view it as a largely subjective enterprise.

Remember back when it was False to say Nixon was impeached?

I remember reading a story years back about a tire company that enterprisingly tried to drum up business by sending out a team to spread roofing nails on the local roads.

Turns out there's a version of that technique in PolitiFact's fact-checking tool box.

Nixon was Never Impeached

Back on June 13th, 2019 PolitiFact's PunditFact declared it "False" that Nixon was impeached. PunditFact said "Nixon was never officially impeached." We're not sure what would count as "unofficially impeached." We're pretty sure it's the same as saying Nixon was not impeached.

But that was way back in June. Over three months have passed. And it's now sufficiently true that Nixon was impeached so that PolitiFact can spread the idea on Twitter and write an impeachment PolitiSplainer that refers multiple times to the Nixon impeachment.

Nixon was Impeached

Twitter

Johnson, Nixon, Clinton, Trump: We answer nine questions about impeachment. https://t.co/fzgdYA0iqE pic.twitter.com/MLh6cODpuN

— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) October 12, 2019

Edit: (if embed isn't working use hotlink above)

Is Nixon a good example to include with Johnson and Clinton (let alone Trump) if Nixon wasn't impeached?

More than anything, the procedural details are derived from historical precedent, from the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson in the 1860s to that of President Richard Nixon in the 1970s and President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

Got it? The impeachment of President Nixon. Because Nixon was impeached, right?

Experts pointed to a variety of differences between the Trump impeachment process and those that went before.

The differences begin with the substance of the charges. All prior presidential impeachments have concerned domestic issues — the aftermath of the Civil War in Johnson’s case, the Watergate burglary and coverup under Nixon, and the Monica Lewinsky affair for Clinton.

Got it? Nixon was impeached over the Watergate burglary. Because Nixon was impeached, right?

The impeachments of both Nixon and Clinton did tend to curb legislative action by soaking up all the attention in Washington, historians say.

Obviously a fact-checker will not refer to "the impeachments of both Nixon and Clinton" if Nixon was not impeached. Therefore, Nixon was impeached. Right?

Some congressional Republicans have openly supported Trump’s assertion that the allegations against Trump are dubious. This contrasts with the Nixon impeachment, when "on both sides there was a pretty universal acknowledgement that the charges being investigated were very important and that it was necessary to get to the bottom of what happened," said Frank O. Bowman III, a University of Missouri law professor and author of the book, "High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump."

Obviously a fact-checker will only draw a parallel to the Nixon impeachment if Nixon was impeached. Therefore Nixon was impeached. Right?

Trump is facing possible impeachment about a year before running for reelection. By contrast, both Nixon and Clinton had already won second terms when they were impeached. (Johnson was such an outcast within his own party that he would have been an extreme longshot to win renomination, historians say.)

Got it? Nixon and Clinton had already won second terms when they were impeached. Because Nixon was impeached, right?

On the eve of impeachment for both Nixon and Clinton, popular support for impeachment was weak — 38% for Nixon and 29% for Clinton, according to a recent Axios analysis. (There was no public opinion polling when Johnson was president.)

Got it? "On the eve of impeachment for both Nixon and Clinton," because a fact checker doesn't refer to the eve of the Nixon impeachment if there was no Nixon impeachment.

Is there a Christmas Eve if there's no Christmas?

That's six times PolitiFact referred to the Nixon impeachment in just one PolitiSplainer article. And about three months after PolitiFact's PunditFact said Nixon was not impeached.

Want a seventh? We've got a seventh:

During Nixon’s impeachment, "people counted on the media to serve as arbiters of truth," he said. "Obviously, we don’t have that now."

 "During Nixon's impeachment" directly implies Nixon was impeached. Seven.

We've been going in order, too.

(Nixon Wasn't Impeached)

But behold! Context at last!

The uncertainty about Senate process stems from the rarity of the process. Nixon resigned before the House could vote to send articles to the Senate, leaving just one precedent -- Clinton’s trial — in the past century and a half.

Admittedly, that's not PolitiFact saying "Nixon was not impeached." On the other hand, it's PolitiFact directly implying Nixon was not impeached. Blink and you might miss it amidst all the talk about the Nixon impeachment.

Can we get to eight after that bothersome bit of context?

Nixon was Impeached, Continued 

We can:

The impeachments of both Nixon and Clinton did tend to curb legislative action by soaking up all the attention in Washington, historians say.

We're curious which historians PolitiFact talked to who explicitly referred to the impeachment of Nixon. There are no quotations in the text of the PolitiSplainer that would support this claim about what historians say.

PolitiFact flirted with nine in the next paragraph. We're capping the count at eight.

In summary, we'll just say this: If there's a sense of "impeachment" that doesn't mean literally getting impeached by Congress and standing trial in the Senate, then Jimmy Kimmel is entitled to that understanding when he says Nixon was the last president to be impeached.

Contrary to PolitiFact's framing, Kimmel was wrong not because Nixon was not impeached. Kimmel was wrong because President William J. Clinton was the last president to be impeached. There was never any need for PunditFact to focus on the fact Nixon wasn't impeached, unless it was to avoid emphasis on Clinton.

This all works out very well for PolitiFact. PolitiFact does what it can to spread the misperception Nixon was impeached. And then it can draw clicks to its PunditFact fact check showing that claim false.

Just like dropping roofing nails on the road.

A PolitiFact gloss on the Michael Brown "murder"

We've been tracking evidence of PolitiFact's look-the-other-way stance on Dem0crats' campaign rhetoric on race. PolitiFact sees no need to issue a "Truth-O-Meter" rating when Democrats call President Trump a racist, for example.

Now, with Democratic presidential candidates like Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren asserting that Michael Brown was murdered, again we see PolitiFact reluctant to apply fact-checking to Democratic Party falsehoods.

Instead of issuing a "Truth-O-Meter" rating for either Democratic Party candidate over their Michael Brown statements, PolitiFact published an absurd PolitiSplainer article.

A Fox News article hits most of the points that we would have emphasized:

The fact-checking website PolitiFact again came under fire for alleged political bias Wednesday after it posted a bizarre article that refused to rule on whether Michael Brown was in fact "murdered" by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo. in 2014, as Democratic presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren falsely claimed last week.

Indeed, Fox News emphasizes the key expert opinion from the PolitiFact PolitiSplainer:

Jacobson quoted Jean Brown, a communications professor who focuses on "media representations of African Americans," as saying that the entire question of whether Warren and Harris spread a falsehood was nothing more than an "attempt to shift the debate from a discussion about the killing of black and brown people by police."

The Fox article quotes the Washington Examiner's Alex Griswold asking why the expert opinion from Brown was included in the fact check.

We suggest that the quotation represents the reasoning PolitiFact used in deciding not to issue "Truth-O-Meter" ratings for Harris or Warren.

PolitiFact, per the Joe Biden gaffe, seems interested in truth, not facts.

That Time PolitiFact Used Facebook to Amplify a Misleading Message on Fiscal Responsibility

We wrote about PolitiFact's awful fact check of a tweet that used deficit numbers at the start and end of presidential terms in office to show it's wrong to think that Democrats cause deficits.

PolitiFact's FaceBook page took the misleading nature of that fact check and amplified it to the max with a false headline:

Contrary to the headline, the fact check does not tell how the past five presidents affected the deficit. Instead, the fact check pretends to address the accuracy of a tweet that suggests deficit numbers at the start and end of presidential administrations tell us which party causes deficits. That use of deficit numbers serves as an exceptionally poor metric, a fact PolitiFact barely hints at in giving the tweet a "Mostly True" rating.

The tweet falsely suggests those deficit numbers give us a reliable picture of party fiscal responsibility (and the way presidents affect the deficit), and PolitiFact amplifies those misleading messages.

It's almost like they think that's their job.

PolitiFact's Inconsistency on True-But-Misleading Factoids

People commonly mislead other people using the truth. Fact checkers have recognized this with various kinds of "True but False" designations. But the fact checkers tend to stink at applying consistent rules to the "True but False" game by creating examples in the "True but False but True" genre.

PolitiFact created a classic in the "True but False" genre for Sarah Palin (John McCain's pick for vice presidential nominee) years ago. Palin made a true statement about how U.S. military spending ranks worldwide as a measure of GDP. PolitiFact researched the ways in which that truth misled people and gave Palin a "Mostly False" rating.

On July 29, 2019, PolitiFact gave a great example of the "True but False but True" genre with a fact check of a tweet by Alex Cole (side note: This one goes on the report card for "Tweets" instead of a report card for "Alex Cole"):

PolitiFact rated Cole's tweet "Mostly True." But the tweet has the same kind of misleading features that led PolitiFact to give Palin a "Mostly False" rating in the example above. PolitiFact docked Palin for daring to compare U.S. defense spending as a percentage of GDP to very small countries as well as those experiencing strife.

But who thinks the deficit at the start and end of an administration serves as a good measure of party fiscal discipline?

Yet that's the argument in Cole's tweet, and it gets a near-total pass from PolitiFact.

Reagan took the deficit from 70 billion to 175 billion.
Bush 41 took it to 300 billion.
Clinton got it to zero.
Bush 43 took it from 0 to 1.2 trillion.
Obama halved it to 600 billion.
Trump’s got it back to a trillion.

Morons: “Democrats cause deficits.”

— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) July 23, 2019

And this isn't even one of those situations where PolitiFact focused on the numbers to the exclusion of the underlying argument. PolitiFact amplified Cole's argument by repeating it.

Note PolitiFact's lead:

A viral post portrays Democrats, not Republicans, as the party of fiscal responsibility, with numbers about the deficit under recent presidents to make the case.

PolitiFact sends out the false message that the above argument is "Mostly True."

That's ridiculous. For starters, the deficit is best measured as a percentage of GDP. Also, presidents do not have great control over the rise and fall of deficits. PolitiFact pointed out that second factor but without giving it the weight it should have had in undercutting Cole's argument. After all, the tweet suggests the presidents drove deficit changes without any hint of any other explanation.

Yes, this is the same fact-checking operation that laughably assured us back in November 2018 that "PolitiFact is not biased."

PolitiFact could easily have justified giving Cole the same treatment it gave Palin. But it did not. And this type of scenario plays out repeatedly at PolitiFact, with conservatives getting the cold shoulder from PolitiFact's star chamber.

Whether or not the liberal bloggers at PolitiFact are self-aware to the point of seeing their own bias, it comes out in their work.


Afters

Hilariously, in this article PolitiFact dinged the deficit tweet for using a figure of $1.2 trillion for the end of the George W. Bush presidency:

"(George W.) Bush 43 took it from 0 to 1.2 trillion." This is in the ballpark. Ignoring the fact that he actually started his presidency with a surplus, Bush left office in 2009 with a federal deficit of roughly $1.41 trillion.

Why is it funny?

It's funny because one of the PolitiFact articles cited in this one prefers the $1.2 trillion figure over the $1.4 trillion figure:

The Great Recession hit hard in 2008 and grew worse in 2009. In that period, the unemployment rate doubled from about 5 percent to 10 percent. With Democrats in charge of both houses of Congress and the White House, Washington passed a stimulus package that cost nearly $190 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That included over $100 billion in new spending and a somewhat smaller amount in tax cuts, about $79 billion in fiscal year 2009.

George W. Bush was not in office when those measures passed. So a more accurate number for the deficit he passed on might be closer to $1.2 trillion.

But it's just fact-checking, so inaccuracy is okay so long as it's in the service of a desirable narrative.

?

Reporting on the Mueller Report from the Liberal Bubble

PolitiFact's treatment of things Mueller has fit well with its left-leaning reputation.

A PolitiFact fact check from July 24, 2019 serves as our example.

We would first draw the reader's attention to the way PolitiFact altered Rep. Ratcliffe's claim. Ratcliffe  said Mueller did not follow the special counsel rules. Not following rules may take place though omission or by elaborating on what the rules stipulate. But PolitiFact says Ratcliffe claimed Mueller broke the rules.

We think it's fairly clear that elaborating on the rules counts as failing to follow the rules. It's less clear that elaborating on the rules counts as breaking the rules.

So right off the bat, PolitiFact is spinning Ratcliffe's claim into a straw man that is more easily attacked.

Missing the Point?

Rep. Ratcliffe was repeating a point pretty familiar to conservatives, that the Mueller report failed to follow the special prosecutor statute because Mueller punted on deciding whether to recommend prosecution for obstruction of justice. Conservative pundit and legal expert Andrew McCarthy, for example, has written on the topic.

It's hard to see how PolitiFact's fact check addresses a position like McCarthy's.

PolitiFact contacted three legal experts for comment. But only Mark Osler (University of St. Thomas) was quoted on Ratcliffe's key issue:

Federal regulations say, "At the conclusion of the Special Counsel's work, he or she shall provide the Attorney General with a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions reached by the Special Counsel."

"It clearly includes declinations, which is taking no action," Osler said.

We humbly submit to the expert Osler that a declination is not merely a lack of action. Declination, in context, is a decision not to prosecute. An explanation of Special Counsel's decision not to prosecute meets the requirements of the statue. But an unexplained decision not to decide whether to prosecute should not meet the requirements even though it is lack of action.

And, hypothetically, taking no action at all as by not filing the report is taking no action but does not satisfy the statute.

A July 24, 2019 article in Washington Post helps make clear that Mueller pretty much declined to spell out why he declined to recommend prosecution for obstruction of justice:

John Yoo, a former top official in the George W. Bush Justice Department, said he found Mueller’s explanation “rather vague and somewhat mysterious,” and that he may have felt he should defer to the attorney general.

“Like everyone else, I have been trying to infer why he did what he did,” Yoo said.

But Mueller offered little elaboration on his reasoning as he was pressed Wednesday by lawmakers in both parties.

Again, the declination description required in the statute concerns the decision not to prosecute, not the decision not to explain the decision not to prosecute. Lack of action is not an explanation.

PolitiFact's Big Whiff

PolitiFact showed the true quality of its fact-checking by apparently knowing nothing about widely-published reasoning like McCarthy's. It's the Bubble!

Check out this faux pas in PolitiFact's summary:

We found no legal scholar who agreed with Ratcliffe.

PolitiFact could not find articles by Andrew McCarthy?

Couldn't find the comments by David Dorsen in this Newsweek article?

Couldn't find this piece by Alan Dershowitz for The Hill?

Trust fact checkers? Why?

PolitiFact Unplugs 'Truth-O-Meter' for Elizabeth Warren

We seem to be seeing an increase of fact check stories from PolitiFact that do not feature any "Truth-O-Meter" rating. One of the latest pleads that it simply did not have enough information to offer a rating of Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren's claim that the U.S. Women's National Team (soccer) pulls in more revenue while receiving less pay than the men.

But look at the low-hanging fruit!

The @USWNT is #1 in the world & contributes higher revenues for @USSoccer than the men’s team, but they’re still paid a fraction of what the men earn. Women deserve equal pay for equal (or better!) work in offices, factories, AND on the soccer field. https://t.co/ftOSrjRyOE

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) June 11, 2019

The women on the USWNT are not doing equal or better work than the men if the women cannot beat the men on the pitch. The level of competition is lower for women's soccer. And Warren's introduction to her argument is not an equal pay for equal work argument. It is an argument based on market valuation aside from the quality of the work.

It's reasonable to argue that if the women's game consistently creates more revenue than the men's game then the women deserve more money than the men.

That's not an equal pay for equal work argument. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

It was ridiculous for Warren to make that stretch in her tweet and typical of left-leaning PolitiFact to ignore it in favor of something it would prefer to report.

Did that principle of burden of proof disappear again?

PolitiFact's statement of principles includes a "burden of proof" principle that PolitiFact uses to hypocritically ding politicians who make claims they don't back up while allowing PolitiFact to give those politicians ratings such as "False" even if PolitiFact has not shown the claim false.

The principle pops out of existence at times. Note what PolitiFact says about its evidence touching Warren's claim:

Ultimately, the compensation formulas are too variable — and too little is known about the governing documents — for us to put Warren’s claim on the Truth-O-Meter.

 So instead of the lack of evidence leading to a harsh rating for Warren, in this case it leads to no "Truth-O-Meter" rating at all.

Color us skeptical that PolitiFact could clear up the discrepancy if it bothered to try.


Afters

Given Warren's clear reference to "equal pay for equal work," we should expect a fact checker to note that women who compete professionally in soccer cannot currently field a team that would beat a professional men's team.

Not a peep from PolitiFact.

Women's national teams do compete against men on occasion. That is, they do practice scrimmages against young men on under-17 and under-15 teams. And the boys tend to win.

But PolitiFact is content if you don't know that. Nor does its audience need to know that the U.S. Women's National Team's success makes no kind of coherent argument for equal pay for equal work.

Selection Bias, Magnified

How PolitiFact uses inconsistent application of principles to help Democrats, starring Beto O'Rourke

PolitiFact Bias has repeatedly pointed out how PolitiFact's selection bias problem serves as a trap for its left-leaning journalists (that likely means somewhere between most and all of them). Left-leaning journalists are likely to fact check suspicious claims that look suspicious to left-leaning journalists.

But beyond that left-leaning journalists may suffer the temptation of looking at statements through a left-leaning lens. Fact-checking a Democrat may lead to confirmation bias favoring the Democrat's statement. The journalist may, perhaps unconsciously, emphasize evidence confirming claims coming from liberal sources. Or cutting the fact-finding process short after finding enough to supposedly confirm what the Democrat said.

When Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O'Rourke claimed to have received more votes than any Democrat in the history of Texas, PolitiFact Texas fact-checked the claim and found it "True."

Note that the fact check was written by long-time PolitiFact staffer Louis Jacobson. PolitiFact National employs Jacobson.

It is literally true that O'Rourke received the most votes for a Democrat ever received in the state of Texas. But literal truth is rarely the benchmark for fact checkers. In this case, we immediately noticed a problem with O'Rourke's claim that typically causes fact-checkers to find fault: As the number of voters in Texas grows, the number of raw votes received shrinks in significance. Measuring the percentage of the total vote (48.3 percent for O'Rourke) or the percentage of registered voters (about 25.6 percent) offers a more complete picture of a candidate's electoral strength in a given state.

For comparison, President Jimmy Carter won Texas in 1976 with 2,082,319 votes. Carter's percentage of the vote was 51.1 percent. His percentage of registered voters was 31.2 percent. It follows that Carter's performance in Texas was stronger than O'Rourke's even though Carter received about half as many votes as O'Rourke received.

We pointed out the problem to a PolitiFact Texas employee on Twitter. PolitiFact elected not to update the story to address O'Rourke's potentially misleading point about his electoral strength.

But it's justified resisting the efforts of conservatives to "work the refs," right? Who would think of trying to put the number of votes in context like we did other than right wing zealots?

Try the BBC, for starters. BBC noted that Hillary Clinton received the most presidential votes in history, then promptly tempered that statement of fact with a caveat:

So the proportion of Clinton votes might be more illuminating than simply how many votes she earned.

Indeed. And even PolitiFact Texas devoted more than one paragraph to the context O'Rourke had left out. Yet PolitiFact had the left-leaning sense not to let that missing information interfere with the "True" rating it bestowed on O'Rourke.

Our ruling

O’Rourke said that in 2018 when he ran for senator, "young voter turnout in early voting was up 500%. We won more votes than any Democrat has in the history of the state of Texas."

His assertion about young voter turnout is backed up by an analysis of state election data by the firm TargetSmart. And he’s correct that no Democrat has ever won more raw votes in a Texas statewide election than he has, an accomplishment achieved through a combination of his own electoral success, a pro-Democratic environment in 2018, and Texas’ rapid population growth in recent years.

We rate his statement True.

PolitiFact does not count the missing information significant, even though it was apparently significant enough to mention in the story.

Partial review of PolitiFact's rating system:

MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.

HALF TRUE – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.

If O'Rourke's statement did not need clarification or additional information, such as the growing number of voters in Texas, then why did PolitiFact provide that clarifying information?

These gray area "coin flips" between ratings offer yet another avenue for left-leaning fact-checkers to express their bias.

PolitiFact has never revealed any mechanism in its methodology that would address this weakness.