PolitiFact creates smear of Dan Patrick by evaluating invented claim

PolitiFact took something Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) said and completely transformed it into something PolitiFact could give a "False" rating.

It's another clear illustration of the fact-checking methodology PFB co-founder Jeff borrowed for use on the PolitiFact Bias Facebook page years ago.

It's from HopeNChangeCartoons.com.

PolitiFact cheats by giving Patrick's statement a wild interpretation and then declares him a liar.

Let's break it down, starting with PolitiFact's headline/graphic/deck presentation.

If we were to interpret Patrick hyper-literally, he starts right off with a falsehood. Democrats do not blame Republicans on low vaccination rates. Rather, they blame Republicans for low vaccinations rates (leading to growth of the covid-19 pandemic).

Hopefully, it's plain that using such an interpretation counts as pedantic. It's plain from the context what Patrick was trying to say.

Patrick follows with "Well, the biggest group in most states are African Americans who have not been vaccinated." The context does less to clarify Patrick's meaning, but the meaning has to fit with his point: He aims to undercut the Democratic Party's narrative that unvaccinated Republicans drive the covid-19 resurgence. Patrick's last line in the quotation supports that interpretation ("90% of them vote for Democrats").

Either of two meanings would fit the context of Patrick's point as we have described it. Patrick could be talking about the raw numbers of unvaccinated African Americans--plainly a stretch given that Blacks make up less than 14% of the population--or he could mean that in most states Blacks are the demographic with the lowest vaccination rate.

Either interpretation might serve Patrick's purpose, and PolitiFact reported he later clarified that he was talking about low vaccination rates, not sheer numbers of unvaccinated Blacks.

But that's not how PolitiFact plays media fact checkers.

Here's the big cheat (bold emphasis added):

Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, asked last week to defend the Texas response to surging coronavirus cases, blamed Democrats for the present COVID-19 wave, specifically African Americans, who he said are reliable Democratic voters.

Where is PolitiFact's proof that Patrick blamed Democrats, particularly Black Democrats, for the recent COVID-19 wave?

Here's PolitiFact's second mention of Patrick's alleged point:

Regardless of whether or not he was referring to vaccination rates, he did not seek to change his main point, that Black populations are playing a major role in fueling the present COVID-19 surge. But there’s no evidence to support that. 

PolitiFact should have noted that "there's no evidence to support that" Patrick's main point was "that Black populations are playing a major role in fueling the present COVID-19 surge."

Alas.

Oddly, by the time PolitiFact reached its concluding section Patrick's point had changed to something else: Democrats are responsible for vaccine hesitancy!

Behold:

In an attempt to blame vaccine hesitancy on Democrats, Patrick said on Fox News that the biggest group of unvaccinated people in most states is African Americans.

There's likewise no evidence Patrick was blaming vaccine hesitancy on Democrats, though he did say Democrats were not doing enough to get Blacks vaccinated.

Second paragraph of PolitiFact's conclusion:

His on-air statement is wrong. Black people aren’t the largest group of unvaccinated people in any state. But his revised statement, that vaccination rates among the Black population lag behind that of other racial groups, is correct. 

With two plausible ways to interpret Patrick's statement, PolitiFact chose the one it could rate false and apparently gave no consideration to the one it said was true when levying its "False" rating.

We fully grant that the interpretation PolitiFact chose was the more literal of the two. But the same condition that holds when we interpret "on" as "for" when Patrick started speaking holds for Patrick's second sentence. The Fox News host asked Patrick for a quick response. Quick responses may understandably require charitable interpretation.

PolitiFact prefers not to do that for Patrick's second sentence. And that, plus the point PolitiFact chose for Patrick, resulted in the "False" rating.

PolitiFact cheated to make Patrick a liar.

PolitiFact Texas punches "spin cycle" for Julián Castro

Is it possible left-leaning fact checkers still do not realize how their ideologies affect their work?

Consider PolitiFact Texas.

See what PolitiFact Texas did, there?

It presents an accurate hybrid paraphrase quotation of Castro asserting that Section 1325 of U.S. immigration law was put into place in 1929 by a segregationist. And promptly spins the Castro claim into the innocuous-but-loaded "When did it become a crime to cross the U.S.-Mexico border?"

Hilariously, the fact check spends most of its time examining facts other than when it became a crime to cross the border. Instead, it focuses on whether Section 1325 was enacted in 1929 (finding it was not) and whether the legislator who wrote the legislation was a segregationist.

PolitiFact Texas used nine paragraphs to address the segregationist past of Sen. Coleman Livingston Blease, the man who composed the language of an immigration bill in 1929.

Castro was evidently trying to make the point that he was trying to repeal a racist piece of legislation, racist because it was written by a segregationist. Castro was using the genetic fallacy on his audience. PolitiFact took no note of it, instead playing along by fact-checking whether Blease was a segregationist and finding a politically active expert to opine that the Blease-authored legislation was aimed at immigration from Mexico.

Such background does not help establish when it became a crime (at least under certain conditions) to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. It's background information that just happens (?) to support the subtext of Castro's claim.

As for Castro's implication that it was Blease who implemented the policy--as though a U.S. senator has that kind of power--well, that's just not the sort of thing that interests PolitiFact Texas.

In the end, PolitiFact Texas found it false that Blease authored the section of the immigration law Castro mentioned.

But why should that stand in the way of a favorable "Mostly True" rating?

PolitiFact's summary conclusion (bold emphasis added):

Castro said Section 1325 immigration policy, which makes it a crime to enter the country illegally, was "put into place in 1929, by a segregationist."

Technically Blease — a white supremicist [sic] who advocated for segregationist policies and lynching —  was not the author of the statute on illegal entry into the United States as it exists in today’s immigration code. 

But it was the first policy criminalizing all unlawful entry at the nation's southern border, and is considered the foundation of the 1952 policy that  evolved into today's Section 1325.

We rate this claim Mostly True.

Technically false, therefore "Mostly True."

That's how PolitiFact rolls. That's how PolitiFact Texas rolls.

It's spin, not fact-checking. Castro did not assert that the criminalization policy started in 1929. Castro asserted that Section 1325 was put into place in 1929.

Fact checkers should prove capable of noticing the difference. And keeping the spin out of their fact checks.

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.

Does "lowest" mean something different in Georgia than it does in Texas?

Today PolitiFact National, posing as PolitiFact Georgia, called it "Mostly True" that Georgia has the lowest minimum wage in the United States.

Georgia law sets the minimum wage at $5.15 per hour, the same rate Wyoming uses, and the federal minimum wage of $7.25 applies to all but a very few Georgians. PolitiFact National Georgia hit Democrat Stacey Evans with a paltry "Mostly True" rating:

Evans said Georgia "has the lowest minimum wage in the country."

Georgia’s minimum wage of $5.15 per hour is the lowest in the nation, but Wyoming also has the same minimum wage.

Also, most of Georgia’s workers paid hourly rates earn the federal minimum of $7.25.

Evans’ statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. We rate it Mostly True.

Sounds good. No problem. Right?

Eh. Not so fast.

Why is it okay in Georgia for "lowest" to reasonably reflect a two-way tie with Wyoming, but in Texas using "lowest" where there's a three-way tie earns the speaker a "False" rating?

How did PolitiFact Texas justify the "False" rating it gave the Republican governor (bold emphasis added)?

Abbott tweeted: "The Texas unemployment rate is now the lowest it’s been in 40 years & Texas led the nation last month in new job creation."

The latest unemployment data posted when Abbott spoke showed Texas with a 4 percent unemployment rate in September 2017 though that didn't set a 40-year record. Rather, it tied the previous 40-year low set in two months of 2000.

Abbott didn’t provide nor did we find data showing jobs created in each state in October 2017.

Federal data otherwise indicate that Texas experienced a slight decrease in jobs from August to September 2017 though the state also was home to more jobs than a year earlier.

We rate this claim False.

 A tie goes to the Democrat, apparently.

We do not understand why it is not universally recognized that PolitiFact leans left.



Correction/clarification Feb. 5, 2018: Removed unneeded "to" from the second paragraph. And added a needed "to" to the next-to-last sentence.

PolitiFact Texas transparency update

In a post we titled "PolitiFact Texas unpublished" we described how PolitiFact Texas published an article declaring Gov. Greg Abbott broke his promise to provide leadership training for principals of Texas schools. PolitiFact Texas published that article on Jan. 4, 2018. On Jan. 9, 2018, PolitiFact Texas announced it had taken down (unpublished) the article.

We’ve taken down this @GregAbbott_TX promise update. An agency just provided fresh information we need to review. https://t.co/UkvwzuwmRp

— PolitiFact Texas (@PolitiFactTexas) January 9, 2018

We checked and the article was gone from the PolitiFact Texas website. It was still available, and remains available, at Austin American-Statesman website, one of PolitiFact's partners for PolitiFact Texas.

And on Jan. 11, 2018, PolitiFact republished the old version of the story along with an updated version on the same page. PolitiFact Texas' actions make the temporarily unpublished version of the story look like a normal update, albeit the careful reader may notice that the second update followed just one week after the first one.

We think that's goofy.

Why do we think it's goofy? If the unpublished version of the update was just a normal update later updated with new information, then why unpublish it in the first place? It makes no sense.

In its current form, the story offers readers no hint at all that PolitiFact Texas unpublished the story for two days. Instead, PolitiFact Texas offers its readers this explanation:

Back when he was campaigning to be governor of Texas, Greg Abbott called for training school principals to be better leaders.

Legislative proposals to get such trainings off the ground floundered, however, leading us to rate this Abbott vow a Promise Broken.

But that was before the Texas Education Agency alerted us to other efforts focused on bolstering school leaders.

We decided to look afresh at progress on this promise.

Does PolitiFact Texas downplay the timing of its two updates or what? PolitiFact Texas does mention the date in an editor's note (not labeled as an editor's note) as part of an introduction to the earlier update:

The Abbott-O-Meter update below was posted Jan. 4, 2018. It's eclipsed by the update above:

If it's in italics maybe it automatically counts as an editor's note?

The finished product shows PolitiFact Texas rating a fulfilled promise as broken about a week before reversing itself to declare the promise fulfilled. But with no admission of any error and an incomplete description of what occurred.

PolitiFact thought it had erred, but was mistaken to think so?

We don't quite buy that.

PolitiFact Texas unpublished (Updated x3)

It seems like only yesterday we were praising PolitiFact Texas and W. Gardner Selby for taking an important step toward full transparency by making its interviews of experts available to readers.

Now it has come to our attention that PolitiFact Texas has followed PolitiFact National's lead in unpublishing stories when it decides they are defective.

A publisher may have legitimate reasons for unpublishing a story. But in the interest of transparency organizations should not totally remove the defective work from public view. Organizations should archive the story and keep it available before and after the organization puts the needed changes into effect.

Lately PolitiFact disappears the entire story and only posts a link to the archived version after republishing a reworked version.

If there's a good excuse for that doughnut hole in transparency we are not aware of it.

We also disapprove of PolitiFact only communicating its decision to unpublish the item on Twitter. That's transparency only for the Twitterverse. Readers deserve better than that.

As a candidate, Greg Abbott called for school principal leadership trainings. On the Abbott-O-Meter in his 4th year as governor, it's a PROMISE BROKEN.https://t.co/gqMtBTpEh9

— PolitiFact Texas (@PolitiFactTexas) January 4, 2018

Update Jan. 10, 2018

We found what is apparently the original version of the Abbott-O-Meter ruling and archived it at the Internet Archive.

Update Nov. 28, 2024

A spike in traffic to this post led us to review it, and it turns out it's overdue for an update.

On Jan. 11, 2018, after we originally posted our Jan. 10, 2018 update, PolitiFact Texas published a new version of the story with the old version appended afterward.

PolitiFact Texas' approach addressed our concern about disappearing the defective version of the story. But PolitiFact left us ample room to continue our criticism based on its failure to use a correction notice. This is what passes for PolitiFact's mea culpa:

The Abbott-O-Meter update below was posted Jan. 4, 2018. It's eclipsed by the update above:

Ordinarily a PolitiFact promise meter features a number of updates, each superseding the earlier updates. Find an "Obameter" example with two entries here. But for whatever reason many of the PolitiFact Texas' "Abbott-O-Meter" promises have no assessments whatsoever. Without investigating, we'd assume that may have something to do with the dissolution of PolitiFact's relationship with the Austin American-Statesman.

PolitiFact, then, used something akin to its normal approach for updating a promise meter story but without acknowledging that its story was mistaken. There's no admission of error and no apology, even though it's apparent that the facts justifying the "Promise Kept" rating were in effect when PolitiFact Texas published its "Promise Broken" update.

Typically the story updates progress along the lines of "In the Works" toward either "Promise Kept," "Promise Broken" or "Compromise." Going from "Promise Broken" to "Promise Kept" in the space of a week or two doesn't really make sense.

PolitiFact made a mistake and failed to follow its corrections policy.

And while all this was happening, the International Fact-Checking Network was publishing as "verified" the claim that PolitiFact "scrupulously" follows its policy on corrections. That was a lie then and it's a lie now.

IFCN assessors don't look closely enough to find mistakes, and the IFCN intentionally keeps its assessors from readily accessing the complaints it receives from the public with virtually zero transparency.

The IFCN supposedly publishes an "annual" transparency report. The first and last such report was from 2020.

We follow Poynter’s corrections policy for our articles and any corrections can be found at this link.

For 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 State of the Fact-Checkers Reports please visit the links attached to the respective years.

Starting from 2020, IFCN publishes annual transparency reports on its Code of Principles. You can download the 2020 report here.

We judge it false that the IFCN publishes an annual transparency report. 

Oh, and of course the link for the 2020 report returns a 404 error.

What an embarrassment.

IFCN transparency means you might be able to find the 2020 report at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

There's a little tidbit about this author in that 2020 transparency report:

Durin [sic] 2020, a very significant amount of complaints have been submitted one [sic] single source against one specific verified signatory, therefore, encouraging us to explore how to navigate such overwhelming attempts without allowing the system to be abused while making sure legitimate complaints are recorded.

Apparently the IFCN settled on the strategy of ignoring my complaints regardless of their legitimacy. Another embarrassment for the IFCN.

Update Nov. 28, 2024: In truth, I should have simply provided a link to the followup story we published on Jan. 11, 2020.

But it was worth tying it in with the International Fact-Checking Network's facade of accountability.

'(PolitiFact's) rulings are based on when a statement was made and on the information available at that time'

PolitiFact Texas issued a "False" rating to Gov. Greg Abbott on Nov. 16, 2017, finding it "False" that Texas had experience its lowest unemployment rate in 40 years.

PolitiFact Texas was also rating Abbott's claim that Texas led the nation last month (September?) in job creation. But we will focus on the first part of the claim, for that rating centers on PolitiFact's principle that it bases its rulings on the timing of a statement:

Timing – Our rulings are based on when a statement was made and on the information available at that time.

Our interest in this item was piqued when we found it linked at PolitiFact's "Corrections and updates" page. We went looking for the correction and found this:

UPDATE, Nov. 17, 2017: Two days after Abbott tweeted his claim about the Texas jobless rate, the federal government reported that the state had a 41-year record low 3.9 percent jobless rate in October 2017.

The release of government statistics confirmed the accuracy of Abbott's claim if he was talking about October.

PolitiFact Texas' update reminded us of a PolitiFact rating from March 18, 2011. Actor Anne Hathaway said the majority of Americans support gay marriage. PolitiFact rated her claim "Mostly True" based on polling released after Hathaway made her claim. Note how PolitiFact foreshadowed its unprincipled decision (bold emphasis added):

(P)ublic opinion on gay marriage is shifting quickly. How quickly? Let's just say we're glad we waited a day to publish our item.

I covered PolitiFact's failure to follow its principles back when the incident happened. But in this case PolitiFact was consistent with its principles.

Or was it?

What information was available at the time?

When Hathaway made her claim, no poll unequivocally supported her claim, and we had no reason to think the actor was in any position to have insider pre-publication information about new polling. But upon reading PolitiFact Texas' fact check of Abbott, we were left wondering whether Abbott might know the government numbers before they were released to the public.

PolitiFact Texas did not address that issue, noting simply that the unemployment rates for October were not yet released. We infer that PolitiFact Texas presumed the BLS statistics were not available to government leaders in Texas. As for us, we had no idea whether the BLS made statistics available to state governments but thought it was worth exploring.

Our search quickly led us to a Nov. 17, 2017 article at the Austin American-Statesman. That's the same Austin American-Statesman that has long partnered with PolitiFact to publish content for PolitiFact Texas.

The article, by Dan Zehr, answered our question:

It’s common and appropriate for state workforce commissions to share “pre-release” data with governors’ offices and other officials, said Cheryl Abbot, regional economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics Southwest regional office. However, she said, the bureau considers the data confidential until their official release.

Zehr's article focused on a dilemma: Was Abbott talking about the October numbers (making him guilty of breaching confidentiality), or was he just wrong based on the number from September 2017? Zehr reported the governor's office denied that Abbott was privy to the October numbers before their official release.

We think Zehr did work that PolitiFact Texas should have either duplicated or referenced. PolitiFact Texas apparently failed to rule out the possibility that Abbott referred to the official October numbers based on the routine early sharing of such information with state government officials.

For the sake of argument, let's assume Abbott's office told Zehr the truth

PolitiFact Texas' fact check based its rating on the assumption Abbott referred to unemployment numbers for September 2017. That agrees with Zehr's reporting on what the governor's office said it was talking about.

If Abbott was talking about the September 2017 numbers, was his statement false, as PolitiFact Texas declared?

Let's review what Abbott said.

PolitiFact (bold emphasis added):

It’s commonplace for a governor to tout a state’s economy. Still, Greg Abbott of Texas made us wonder when he tweeted in mid-November 2017: "The Texas unemployment rate is now the lowest it’s been in 40 years & Texas led the nation last month in new job creation."

And let's review what PolitiFact found from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

(W)e fetched Bureau of Labor Statistics figures showing that the state’s impressive 4 percent jobless rate for September 2017 tied the previous record low since 1976. According to the bureau, the state similarly had a 4 percent unemployment rate in November and December 2000, 17 years ago. The state jobless rate in fall 1977, 40 years ago, hovered at 5.2 percent.

According to PolitiFact's research, what is the lowest unemployment rate in Texas over the past 40 years? The answer is 4 percent. That percentage occurred three times over the 40 year span, including September 2017. But by PolitiFact Texas' reasoning (and Zehr's reasoning, too), it is false for Abbott to claim September 2017 as the lowest in the past 40 years.

We say PolitiFact Texas (and Zehr) were wrong to suggest Abbott was simply wrong about the unemployment rate in Texas.

Ambiguous isn't the same as wrong

Certainly Gov. Abbott might have expressed himself more clearly. Abbott had the option of saying "The Texas unemployment rate is lower now than it has been in 40 years" if he believed that was the case. Such phrasing would tell his audience that no matter what the unemployment rate over the past 40 years, the current rate is lower.

Alternatively, Abbott might have said "The Texas unemployment rate is as low now as it has been in 40 years." That phrasing would clue his audience that the present low unemployment rate was achieved during the past 40 years at least twice.

Abbott's phrasing was somewhere in between the two alternatives we created. What he said hinted that the September 2017 rate was lower than it has been in 40 years but did not say so outright. His words were compatible with the September 2017 rate equaling the lowest in the past 40 years, but fell short of telling the entire story.

Kind of like PolitiFact Texas fell short of telling the entire story.

Though we took note of it on Twitter, we will again take the opportunity to recognize PolitiFact Texas and W. Gardner Selby as PolitiFact's best exemplars of transparency with respect to expert interviews. PolitiFact Texas posted the relevant portions (so far as we can tell!) of its interview of Cheryl Abbot. PolitiFact Texas has done similarly in the past, and we have encouraged PolitiFact (and other fact checkers) to make it standard practice.

Selby's interview shows him asking Cheryl Abbot to confirm his reading of the unemployment statistics. Selby's question was mildly leading, keeping Abbott to the topic of whether the low September 2017 unemployment rate had been equaled twice in the past 40 years. A different approach might have clued Selby to the same valuable information Dan Zehr reported: Gov. Abbott may have had access to the confidential October figures and his statement may prove correct for that month once the BLS releases the numbers.

It's notable that in the interview Abbot said that the numbers from September 2017 were the "lowest" in 40 years (bold emphasis added):

(T)he seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for Texas in September 2017 matched those of November and December 2000, all being the lowest rates recorded in the State since 1976.

Selby did not use the above quotation from Abbot. Perhaps he did not want his audience confused by the fact Abbot used the same term Abbott used.

In our view, Gov. Abbott was at least partially correct if he was talking about September 2017 and correct if he was talking about October 2017.

PolitiFact Texas should have covered both options more thoroughly.

PolitiFact and the principle of inconsistency

In October, six days apart, PolitiFact did fact checks on two parallel claims, each asserting the existence of a particular law. One, by U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore, was found "False." The other, by a Saturday Night Live cast member, was found "Mostly True."

Moore asserted that an act of Congress made it "against the law" to fail to stand for the playing of the national anthem. PolitiFact confirmed the existence of the law Moore referenced, but noted that it merely offered guidance on proper etiquette. It did not provide any punishment for improper etiquette.

SNL's Colin Jost said a Texas law made it illegal to own more than six dildos. PolitiFact confirmed a Texas law made owning more than six "obscene devices" illegal. PolitiFact found that a federal court had ruled that law unconstitutional in 2008.

Both laws exist. The one Moore cited carries no teeth because it describes proper etiquette, not a legal requirement backed by government police power. The one Jost cited lacks teeth because the Court voided it.

How did PolitiFact and PolitiFact Texas justify their respective rulings?

PolitiFact (bold emphasis added):

Moore said NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem is "against the law."

Moore's basis is that a law on the books describes patriotic etiquette during the national anthem. But his statement gives the false impression the law is binding, when in fact it’s merely guidance that carries no penalty. Additionally, legal experts told us the First Amendment protects the right to kneel during the national anthem.

We rate this False.

PolitiFact Texas (bold emphasis added):

Jost said: "There is a real law in Texas that says it’s illegal to own more than six dildos."

Such a cap on "obscene devices" has been state law since the 1970s though it’s worth clarifying that the law mostly hasn’t been enforced since federal appeals judges found it unconstitutional in 2008.

We rate the claim Mostly True.

From where we're sitting, the thing PolitiFact Texas found "worth clarifying" in its "Mostly True" rating of Jost closely resembles in principle one of the reasons PolitiFact gave for rating Moore's statement "False" (neither law is binding, but for different reasons). As for the other rationale backing the "False" rating, from where we're sitting Jost equaled Moore in giving the impression that the Texas law is binding today. But PolitiFact Texas did not penalize Jost for offering a misleading impression.

We call these rulings inconsistent.

Inconsistency is a bad look for fact checkers.


Update Oct. 23, 2017: We appreciate Tim Graham highlighting this post at Newsbusters.

PolitiFact Texas uses tongs (2016)

Our "tweezers or tongs" tag applies to cases where PolitiFact had a choice of a narrow focus on one part of a claim or a wider focus on a claim with more than one part.

The tweezers or tongs option allows a fact-check to exercise bias by using the true part of a statement to boost the rating. Or ignoring the true part of the statement to drop the rating.

In this case, from 2016, a Democrat got the benefit of PolitiFact Texas' tongs treatment:

So, it was true that Texas law requires every high school to have a voter registrar.

But it was false that the law requires the registrar to get the children to vote once they're eligible.

PolitiFact averages it out:

Saldaña said a Texas law requires every high school to have a voter registrar "and part of their responsibility is to make sure that when children become 18 and become eligible to vote, that they vote."

A 1983 law requires every high school to have a deputy voter registrar tasked with giving eligible students voter registration applications. Each registrar also must make sure submitted applications are appropriately handled.

However, the law doesn’t require registrars to make every eligible student register; it's up to each student to act or not. Also, as Saldaña acknowledged, registrars aren’t required to ensure that students vote.

We rate this statement Half True.

There are dozens of examples where PolitiFact ignored what was true in favor of emphasizing the false. It's just one more way the PolitiFact system allows bias to creep in.

Here's one for which PolitiFact Pennsylvania breaks out the tweezers:

Sen. Toomey (R-Penn.) correctly says the ACA created a new category of eligibility. That part of his claim does not figure in the "Half True" rating.

We doubt that PolitiFact has ever created an ethical, principled and objective means for deciding when to ignore parts of compound claims.

Certainly we see no evidence of such means in PolitiFact's work.

PolitiFact says Democrat's statement is misleading and so rates it "True"

It's really a very small wonder that PolitiFact remains so popular with the many Democrats who comment on PolitiFact's Facebook page. PolitiFact is good to Democrats. Often it's hard to see why without seeing the benevolence as a sign of PolitiFact's liberal bias.

Take the case of PolitiFact Texas and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro.

Castro, appearing at the Texas Democratic Party's state convention, implied California's economy was outperforming that of Texas. PolitiFact sourced its quotation of Castro to the Dallas Morning News:

“Today, California is kicking our butt, creating more jobs and more economic growth than Texas,” he said. “Maybe what we need to do is trade in [California] Gov. Jerry Brown for Gov. Greg Abbott and get better results.”

PolitiFact ruled Castro's claim "True," defined as "The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing."

With PolitiFact's help, Democrats like Castro seem to have a knack for saying true things that have nothing significant missing even when something significant is missing.

We don't have to do any digging of our own to find the misleading part of Castro's claim. Tara Sinclair, one of the experts PolitiFact Texas interviewed, points it out:

Tara Sinclair, chief economist for Indeed, a job-posting service, pointed out by email that Texas has long enjoyed a lower unemployment rate--a facet Castro didn’t mention.

(...)

 All in all, Sinclair said by email, "focusing on the total number of people employed is misleading due to the different population sizes of the two states. By both the unemployment rate (a standard measure of labor market health) as well as the employment to population ratio, Texas's labor market actually looks healthier than California's."

This bit of information Castro left out was so unimportant PolitiFact metnioned it again in its conclusion (bold emphasis added):

Castro said that "today," California is "creating more jobs and more economic growth than Texas."

These fightin’ words hold up based on recent jobs growth and relative changes in GDP and personal income. Still (just a tad whiney here) would it hurt to acknowledge that Texas continues to enjoy a lower unemployment rate?

We rate this claim True.

So Castro's statement was misleading, according to the cited expert, falsely suggesting that California's labor market is healthier than Texas' labor market.

Nothing significant was left out?

We've charged that PolitiFact's "Truth-O-Meter" grading system is hopelessly subjective, and this case helps illustrate the point. What is the objective cutoff point between leaving out something significant and leaving out something insignificant? And if PolitiFact finds something insignificant was left out, does it makes sense to point out something insignificant to its readers?

PolitiFact has never publicized any criteria that would show it bases its ratings on objective benchmarks. PolitiFact's "star chamber" of at least three editors decides what is significant and what isn't. By and large, PolitiFact's readers will know nothing about what was discussed by the "star chamber." Nor will PolitiFact's readers know how the editors voted. And here's a fact: Not one single member of PolitiFact's Supreme Court was picked by a Republican president.

That's one way to institutionalize bias ...

The 2015 "Pants on Fire" bias for PunditFact and the PolitiFact states

Earlier this week we published our 2015 update to our study of PolitiFact's bias in applying its "Pants on Fire" rating.

The premise of the research, briefly, is that no objective criterion distinguishes between a "False" rating and a "Pants on Fire" rating. If the ratings are subjective then a "Pants on Fire" rating provides a measure of opinion and nothing more.

In 2015 the states provided comparatively little data. State franchises, with a few exceptions, seem to have a tough time giving false ratings. The state PolitiFact operations also tend to vary widely in the measurement of the "Pants on Fire" bias. PolitiFact Wisconsin's "Pants on Fire" ratings proportionally treat Democrats more harshly than Republicans, for example.

PolitiFact Florida: PolitiFact Florida's data roughly matched those from PolitiFact National and PunditFact. Those three franchises are the most closely associated with one another since all are based in Florida and tend to share writing and editorial staff. In 2015 the PoF bias number was within a range of five hundredths for each. That's so close that it's suspicious on its face. All three gave Republicans more false ratings than Democrats (4.83, 3.50, 2.43).

PolitiFact Georgia: Though PolitiFact Georgia has operated for a good number of years and has in the past provided us with useful data, that wasn't the case in 2015. PolitiFact Georgia's false ratings went to apparently non-partisan claims.

PolitiFact New Hampshire: PolitiFact New Hampshire historically provides virtually nothing helpful in terms of the PoF bias number. But false ratings for Democrats outnumbered false ratings for Republicans (blue numerals indicate that bias).

PolitiFact Rhode Island: PF Rhode Island rated two statements from Democrats "False."

PolitiFact Texas: PF Texas gave Republicans false ratings an astonishing 8 times more than Democrats. But at the same time, PF Texas produced a PoF bias number harming Democrats. The key to both figures? PF Texas only doled out two false ratings to partisan Democrats. Both were "Pants on Fire" ratings. An entire year with no "False" ratings for Democrats? Texas' previous low for "False" ratings was four (twice).

PolitiFact Virginia: PF Virginia achieved perfect neutrality in terms of our PoF bias number. That's the meaning of a 1.00 score. The "Pants on Fire" claims as a percentage of all false claims was equal for Republicans and Democrats.

PolitiFact Wisconsin: PF Wisconsin continued its trend of giving Democrats the short end of the PoF bias measure. That's despite giving Republicans a bigger share than usual of the total false ratings. The 5.00 selection bias number was easily the all-time high for PF Wisconsin, besting the old mark of 1.57 back in 2011.

PunditFact: PunditFact, we should note, produces data we class in our "Group B." PunditFact tends not to rate partisan candidates, officeholders, partisan appointees or party organizations. It focuses more on pundits, as the name implies. We consider group B data less reliable as a measure of partisan bias than the group A data. But we do find it interesting that PunditFact's data profile lines up pretty closely with the most closely associated PolitiFact entities, as noted above. That finding proves consistent with the idea that PolitiFact ratings say something about the viewpoint of the ones giving the ratings.

PolitiFact defines "bailout" (Updated)

On Dec. 1, 2015, PolitiFact handed down a "Mostly False" rating on Marco Rubio's claim he prevented a $2.5 billion bailout of health insurance companies under ObamaCare.

PolitiFact's ruling hinged partly on its definition of "bailout." PolitiFact said giving the insurance companies money to help keep them in business wasn't really a bailout:

But is it really a bailout?  Several experts told us no, stressing that a bailout usually refers to a program used to save a company after the fact, not a mechanism in place to deal with a problem that everyone assumes could occur.

Are these experts engaging in a "No True Scotsman" fallacy? Or did PolitiFact do it for them by torquing the paraphrase? Perhaps PolitiFact used leading interview questions?

We were curious about PolitiFact's history of defining the term "bailout."

April 21, 2010: PolitiFact

Early on, "bailout" might have meant anything to PolitiFact:

A big challenge in analyzing Reid's statement, or any like it, is figuring out what exactly the word "bailout" means.

"It is almost impossible to pin politicians down on this one because 'bailout' has no clear meaning," said Douglas Elliott, a fellow with the Brookings Institution, a public policy think tank. "It could cover a very wide range of things, some of which involve taxpayer money and some don't, and some of which are traditional central banking or deposit insurer roles and others of which are novel."

PolitiFact decided Dodd-Frank didn't prevent bailouts in this fact check, but the definition of "bailout" was not critical to the ruling.

Oct. 27, 2010: PolitiFact Florida

Any "rescue from financial distress" qualifies as a bailout to us. And last year, the National Association of Home Builders did indeed lobby Congress for — and win — a change in tax law that it argued was a "critical stimulus measure for the U.S. economy" that would provide "an infusion of monetary resources for firms struggling to retain workers and undertake economic activity."

The issue in this fact check from PolitiFact Florida was a chain email attack on parties opposing Florida's Amendment 4. Amendment 4 would have made real estate development far more difficult. It was a measure more likely supported by progressives, so PolitiFact Florida's broad definition tended to help progressives.

Oct. 29, 2010: PolitiFact Virginia

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said a Republican was a hypocrite because his car dealership received bailout money from the "Cash for Clunkers" program. For PolitiFact Virginia, the definition of "bailout" wasn't even at issue. Apparently it's clear that "Cash for Clunkers" was a bailout program. The DCCC gets a "Half True" since PolitiFact Virginia couldn't pin down the amount received in the bailout:

But we can’t place a dollar amount on the benefit to Rigell. The ad wrongly suggests that his dealerships’ $441,000 in rebates were straight profits and there’s reason to believe Rigell’s actual gain from Clunkers was considerably smaller. So we find the claim to be Half True.

Dec. 18, 2011: PolitiFact Texas

Our sense? Taxpayers picked up built-up costs that otherwise could not be covered. It seems reasonable to call that expenditure a bailout.

The broad sense harmed Republican Rick Perry. The narrow sense would have helped him. PolitiFact Texas opted for the broad sense.

January 13, 2014: PunditFact

Conservative Pundit Charles Krauthammer foreshadowed the Rubio ruling by calling ObamaCare's risk corridor reimbursements a "huge government bailout." When asked, Krauthammer said he was using the broad definition and provided dictionary support. PunditFact decided his statement deserved treatment according to a narrower definition.

We asked Krauthammer why he called this a bailout and he said he relied on the definition from Merriam-Webster. "The act of saving or rescuing something (such as a business) from money problems," he quoted. "A rescue from financial distress."

Rescue is clearly the operative word. We looked at other definitions. The Palgrave Dictionary of Economics spoke of a rescue from "potential or actual insolvency." Investopedia had to prevent "the consequences that arise from a business's downfall."

Using the narrow definition of "bailout" as a principal justification, PunditFact rated Krauthammer's claim "Half True."

June 30, 2014: PolitiFact

If The New York Times says the Ex-Im Bank asked for a bailout in 1987 then it must be true. There's no reason to question the definition used by the Times, right? The definition was not a major issue for the fact check.

Was TARP a "Bailout" Program?

PolitiFact appears to consistently accept that the Troubled Asset Relief Program was a bailout program. But what if we applied the definition the experts suggested for the Rubio fact check?

TARP did not stop at helping out banks that were in trouble when the measure was passed. On the contrary, the measure foresaw banks running into trouble in the near future for the same reasons other banks had run into trouble.

The TARP timeline published by ProPublica makes clear the TARP program bears some key similarities to the ObamaCare features the experts would not call "bailouts."

PolitiFact Plays Games With Definitions

We've found cases where PolitiFact manipulated the definition of "bailout" resulting in unfair harm to conservatives. We found no cases where PolitiFact similarly harmed Democrats.

If anybody can find an example of the latter we missed, we'll be delighted to edit the article to include it. Drop us a line.


Update Dec. 10, 2015
We added the Jan. 13, 2014 PunditFact item, which we intended to include in the original version. Also fixed some stubborn formatting issues.

Hoystory: 'The Hacks at PolitiFact'

We're delighted to point readers toward a new(ish) critique of PolitiFact by Matthew Hoy, one of the critics who saw PolitiFact for what it was very early in the game.

Hoy takes a look at PolitiFact Texas' gnat-straining rating of Ted Cruz's claim the Democratic Party is shrinking. Then Hoy contrasts PolitiFact's treatment of Cruz with the national PolitiFact's kid gloves treatment of President Obama's claim of having contained ISIS (ISIL).

As we said, it did not take Hoy long to see PolitiFact's true face:

They are not fact-checkers, they’re political operatives with bylines.

Please visit Hoystory and read it all.

A report card from PolitiFact Texas

Do PolitiFact's "report cards" mislead people?

You betcha.

PolitiFact's June 4, 2015 item on Rick Perry's PolitiFact report card continues PolitiFact's pattern. There's no warning that PolitiFact does not select stories randomly. Readers just get the eye-candy bar-graph that implies a profile of Perry's general reliability.

PolitiFact editor Angie Drobnic Holan says "There's not a lot of reader confusion out there." Yet on PolitiFact's Facebook page we have comments like these:

"72 percent of his statements are not believable?"

 "15% of the time he is telling the truth."

 "only about 50% lies.??.not bad for a republican.."

 "Pretty weak when pants on fire is nearing your mostly true and true remarks."

 "Appears he has a real problem with dealing in true statements"

Those comments hint strongly at confusion. Why can't PolitiFact see it?

Something to see in Texas after all?

We just finished updating one of our "Nothing To See Here" posts after PolitiFact Texas revisited a speech by Senator John Cornyn's Democratic challenger, David Alameel.

PolitiFact Texas picked on a fairly innocuous statement from Alameel's speech in late June.  We found other statements in the speech we thought were more politically significant.  In our update we review the timeline of the reporting.  We think it's reasonable to suspect that our post helped prompt this new fact check of Alameel by PolitiFact Texas.

This example featuring Alameel shows again how story selection may easily skew the "report cards" PolitiFact publishes to help serve as voter guides.

Nothing To See Here: David Alameel edition (updated)

We picked up on a rating of a Texas Democrat, David Alameel, that looked a tad harsh at first blush.  PolitiFact Texas rated Alameel "False" for saying he had once lived in "La Colonia" since that claim produced the impression he lived in a colonia--a subdivision often lacking electricity or plumbing.  Alameel's "La Colonia" wasn't nearly that bad.  It just happened to share the name.

We figured where one correctly names a place he used to dwell, there's got to be some truth to it.  PolitiFact Texas didn't see it that way for some reason.

Hold the Presses

We were nearly ready to start on a short article recounting how PolitiFact had unfairly treated Alameel when we reviewed, for context, the speech Alameel was delivering when he uttered the statement PolitiFact examined.

We had to change the main focus of the story to "Nothing to See Here."  Alameel's speech is stuffed full of preposterous partisan claims.  Why did PolitiFact focus on the colonia issue when Alameel offered such a smorgasbord of superior fact-check opportunities?

There's nothing to do but simply recount some of the things Alameel claimed (chronological order, many of them consecutive).

Nothing To See Here: the Wendy Davis biography

Over the years, PolitiFact looked into what it said were biographical inconsistencies by Marco Rubio, Ken Lanci and President Obama (among others).

Democratic candidate for governor of Texas, Wendy Davis, the media-annointed darling of the filubuster, has run into some controversy now that it has come out some of the details of her biographical self-description were less than accurate.

Here's how Davis put it for Generation TX:

“I was raised by a single mom. There were four children in our family, and my mother only had a sixth-grade education. And it was really a struggle for us. I went to a very large high school. We had one college counselor, and I was one of those kids who just sort of fell through the cracks.”

What's more, PolitiFact Texas fact checked Texas Governor Rick Perry when he made a statement about Davis being a teen-aged mother "born into difficult circumstances."  PolitiFact Texas' "Half True" rating of Perry included the following:

But in 2012, Davis gave sworn testimony about her life in a lawsuit brought before a panel of federal judges in Washington, D.C. "When I was only 18 I got married," Davis said, according to a transcript of her Jan. 20, 2012, testimony. "I had a baby, I got divorced by the time I was 19 years old. And I had started working, I actually started working when I was 14. I was raised by a single mother. My mother only had a 6th grade education. My parents divorced when I was 11 years old."

Breitbart.com's John Sexton duly noted that PolitiFact was blaming Perry for Davis' half-truth.

We're curious to see if PolitiFact, particularly PolitiFact Texas, will revisit the Davis biography and eventually hold her responsible for Perry's inaccuracy.

Nothing to see here?


Hat tip to PolitiFact Texas' parent paper, the Austin American-Statesman, for making the Generation TX material easy to find.

The Houston Chronicle: "Half of Ted Cruz’s political claims are false, PolitiFact reports" and "Ted Cruz v. PolitiFact: Whose pants are on fire?"

Joanna Raines of the Houston Chronicle wrote a story on March 28 attempting to report PolitiFact's assessment of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

The headline and text of Raines' story hinted at a fallacious reasoning.

Raines' story was titled "Half of Ted Cruz’s political claims are false, PolitiFact reports."  It's somewhat natural to take PolitiFact's report card-ish stories along those lines, but the fact is that PolitiFact doesn't rate enough statements to draw general conclusions about political figures.  Compounding the problem, PolitiFact offers no hint at all that its system includes controls for selection bias.  Compounding the problem further, PolitiFact often reaches questionable conclusions with its ratings.

Raines published a follow up story on March 29, titled "Ted Cruz v. PolitiFact: Whose pants are on fire?"  That story implicitly acknowledged the last problem on the preceding list.  Raines offered a brief and reasonably fair account of the substance of Cruz's disagreements with PolitiFact.

Unfortunately, the second story contains a strong hint that Raines continues to reason fallaciously:

To navigate these muddy waters, we’re asking for you to weigh in. Cruz’s office has defended itself against PolitiFact’s claims, and we’re going to let you determine who deserves the “pants on fire” rating, Cruz or PolitiFact?

Ugh.

A survey of public opinion serves very poorly as a measure of truth in most instances.  The flawed reasoning goes by the Latin name argumentum ad populum, also known as the fallacious appeal to the people or the appeal to popularity.

Our guide to the truth should remain the state of the evidence, supplemented by consideration of the arguments pro and con.

Raines' first story helped underscore the truth of one of our longstanding criticisms of PolitiFact:  Publish "report cards" for candidates and many readers will assume that the results say something about the candidates unless the fact checkers explain the error behind that assumption.

Ramesh Ponnuru: "PolitiFact vs. Senator Cruz"

Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review takes note of a recent PolitiFact (Texas) flub:

At CPAC, Senator Cruz (who is, I should note, a friend) said that Democrats had told the Catholic Church, “Change your religious beliefs or we’ll use our power in the federal government to shut down your charities and your hospitals.” PolitiFact Texas is on the case, and it finds that in fact Democrats never used those exact words to describe the import of their policies. Its ruling: Cruz’s statement is “incorrect and ridiculous” and therefore merits a “Pants on Fire” rating.

 Ponnuru explains that Sen. Cruz was correct:

The administration’s policy gives these institutions — that is, tells them they have — two choices. They can comply, even if they think doing so violates their consciences (and they are, presumably, the right judges of that question). Or they can refuse to comply and be driven out of operation.

PolitiFact Texas admitted the possibility that the federal government would levy stiff fines that might make it impossible/impractical for various religious entities and businesses to continue operation.  But supposedly found no evidence of a threat to the Roman Catholic Church:

The Catholic bishops have said that potential accumulated fines resulting from refusals to carry out the contraception mandate will cause some institutions to shut down.

Perhaps. However, such prospects do not reflect a direct threat from Democrats or the government. To the contrary, the administration has moved to widen the mandate’s exemption for religious employers and provide a workaround for those who act as their own insurance providers -- with the goal of allowing affected parties to continue their work without violating or changing their beliefs.

Ponnuru likewise points out the trouble with this line of reasoning from PolitiFact.  Visit National Review Online for the rest of the story.

Pete Sepp: "I don't know who the experts you consulted are or whatever policy agendas they may have"

Pete Sepp, vice president for communications and policy for the National Taxpayers Union, usually interacts with PolitiFact as an expert source.  This month, however, the NTU ran an ad that received the PolitiFact treatment, and Sepp ended up as NTU's spokesperson in defending it.  The ad called the federal government's proposed rebate program for drug purchases a "tax."

Sepp did not publish a public rebuttal to PolitiFact.  Rather, we find his arguments hosted by PolitiFact's Texas affiliate.   PolitiFact combined the bodies of three email messages from Sepp on a single reference page.

Sepp's initial email (bold emphasis added):

Based on our experience, calling this rebate plan anything less than a tax fails to capture all of its effects:

1) With a few exceptions that the Secretary of HHS would be able to approve (an uncertain proposition), drug manufacturers would be required to rebate 23 percent of the average manufacturer price (more if the drug price rose quicker than inflation) for a brand-name pharmaceutical that was distributed to lower-income Part D beneficiaries. Otherwise, the company could not participate in providing drugs to Medicaid, Medicare, or other government beneficiaries. Considering there are already genuine rebates (i.e., negotiated discounts) under several such programs, this latest demand from the government for being able to sell to a huge segment of the entire consumer drug market in the U.S. seems more like a mandatory extraction than a voluntary refund.

2) The money collected from these "rebates" don't wind up in the actual consumers' pockets or the various Part D plans; instead they go to a fund that will defray certain government Medicare program costs. A "rebate" as is commonly understood is something that the consumer of product receives after purchase. This "rebate" is nothing of the kind, and represents deceptive terminology.

3) The "rebate" is based on a percentage of price per unit, a lot like the way some excise taxes on products such as some tobacco items work.

4) This "rebate" will in essence squeeze the price bubble somewhere else. Either other Part D beneficiaries get stuck with higher premiums, people in private, non-Medicare plans pay higher prices for their drugs, or drug development and access gets scaled back, or even voluntary discounts start to dry up.

For a good summary of how this could happen, as well as some previous CBO work on this topic. I'd suggest the following link at American Action Forum, which former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin serves at:

http://americanactionforum.org/topic/cost-shifting-debt-reduction-american-seniors

Sepp from his first followup:

I didn't see a feature yet on your site so I thought I'd send you a couple other good links to commentaries that discuss the rebate scheme: 

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/obama-plan-force-rebates-medicare-drug-benefit-drive-costs-thousands-seniors-article-1.976435#ixzz1dhbBGZwe 

http://www.galen.org/component,8/action,show_content/id,13/blog_id,1608/category_id,7/type,33/ 

Yes, there are several groups like ours (AEI, Galen Institute, American Action Forum) who share concern that this proposal amounts to a tax.

And from Sepp's second followup, registering his apparent incredulity at PolitiFact's ruling:

1) "There's nothing in the proposal that calls this a tax and experts we visited say rebates like the one in Medicaid never have been called taxes." I don't know who the experts you consulted are or whatever policy agendas they may have, but here are people in the health policy field who agree with the ad's contention that the rebate proposal is best described as a tax.

Sepp gave four examples then moved to his second point:

2) In another email you had asked, "There's nothing in the proposal that calls this a tax." My answer: well, of course not! Supporters call this a rebate so they can raise revenues for the federal government without branding their scheme a tax and having to answer a lot of inconvenient questions about it. Just because they don't want to call it a tax doesn't mean it won't function like one (see above). That's exactly the point of our ad, and our mission for the past 42 years -- exposing attempts by the political class to cover up a proposal that walks, talks, and hurts like a tax by calling it something else.

Contrast Sepp's argument with PolitiFact's conclusion:

We see how the Obama proposal could be judged a nearly mandatory give-back in that drug companies that decline to give rebates would do so at risk to their bottom lines. It also makes sense that drug companies wouldn’t swallow the costs of the rebates; they’re not free.

Then again, contrary to the ad's statement, there’s no evidence low-income Medicare beneficiaries would pay a 23 percent "tax." And all told, Obama's urged rebate remains that--money paid in return for a purchase or action/opportunity. One would have to connect more dots to make it a tax. We rate the group’s statement False.

What dots require connecting, other than having the term "tax" appear in the text of the bill to describe the rebate?  Good luck finding it in the story.  I couldn't.  It's hard to know when one has met a secret standard, and other than the absurd standard of requiring the bill to describe the rebate as a "tax" it's hard to see what would serve.

One additional brickbat for PolitiFact:  Where is the full context of the ad?  If there's some reason for not giving readers a copy of the ad to look at then the readers deserve to know what it is.