Hugh Hewitt v. PolitiFact (Power Line Blog)

Via Power Line blog, the liberal bloggers at PolitiFact tangle with conservative radio show host Hugh Hewitt:

The issue: During a television appearance, Hewitt said the ACA is in a death spiral. PolitiFact did its usual limited survey of experts and ruled Hewitt's statement "False."

Part 1: PolitiFact Strikes Hugh Hewitt

A favorite part:

Allison Graves evaluates Hugh’s assertion regarding the Obamacare death spiral for PolitiFact. She defines the question in a manner that tends to belie Hugh’s assertion, cites some relevant authorities and rates Hugh’s assertion False.

I think this is a question on which reasonable minds can disagree, depending on how the question is framed. I would rate Graves’s judgment False in implying the contrary.

Part 2: Pol[i]tiFact strikes Hugh Hewitt (2)

A favorite part (quotation of Hewitt):

PolitiFact is a liberal-agenda-driven group of classically lefty “journalists” masquerading as a non-partisan evaluators of arguments. In this case their defense of their “journalism” rests on a partial and biased recounting of a 10:20 a.m. Meet the Press roundtable discussion, one which omits my stated acknowledgment of a differing argument therein, and their discounting of the expert testimony of a major insurance company president, along with a Sunday afternoon three-hour “deadline” window for response following a perfunctory email to a booker of a show that runs Monday through Friday, when the host is himself online and answering a journalists’ questions and comments.

To this we would add that PolitiFact's story misrepresents a Congressional Budget Office report.

PolitiFact cited the CBO in support of its finding that the ACA is not in a death spiral:

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, as part of its recent analysis of the GOP legislation, described the Affordable Care Act as stable.

PolitiFact failed to link to the CBO in this fact check, but the source wasn't hard to find. The tough part was figuring out why PolitiFact added its own spin to the CBO's view (bold emphasis added):

Stability of the Health Insurance Market>

Decisions about offering and purchasing health insurance depend on the stability of the health insurance market—that is, on having insurers participating in most areas of the country and on the likelihood of premiums’ not rising in an unsustainable spiral. The market for insurance purchased individually (that is, nongroup coverage) would be unstable, for example, if the people who wanted to buy coverage at any offered price would have average health care expenditures so high that offering the insurance would be unprofitable. In CBO and JCT’s assessment, however, the nongroup market would probably be stable in most areas under either current law or the legislation.

Under current law, most subsidized enrollees purchasing health insurance coverage in the nongroup market are largely insulated from increases in premiums because their out-of-pocket payments for premiums are based on a percentage of their income; the government pays the difference. The subsidies to purchase coverage combined with the penalties paid by uninsured people stemming from the individual mandate are anticipated to cause sufficient demand for insurance by people with low health care expenditures for the market to be stable.

Under the legislation, in the agencies’ view, key factors bringing about market stability include subsidies to purchase insurance, which would maintain sufficient demand for insurance by people with low health care expenditures, and grants to states from the Patient and State Stability Fund, which would reduce the costs to insurers of people with high health care expenditures. Even though the new tax credits would be structured differently from the current subsidies and would generally be less generous for those receiving subsidies under current law, the other changes would, in the agencies’ view, lower average premiums enough to attract a sufficient number of relatively healthy people to stabilize the market.

Is it defensible journalistic practice to leave out the "probably" and "most areas" caveats in the CBO report?

Something tells us that if PolitiFact caught a Republican omitting that kind of information, it would result in a rating of "Half True" or worse. Assuming the Republican wasn't making a point that a liberal would like, of course.

Afters:

We just finished listening to PolitiFact's Aaron Sharockman spending an hour on the Hugh Hewitt Show. Sharockman reaffirmed the paraphrase of the CBO we quoted above. When a transcript becomes available, we will look at whether Sharockman magnified the distortion from the original fact check.

Power Line: "Trump 4, PolitiFact 1"

John Hinderaker, writing for the Power Line blog, does a quick rundown of five PolitiFact fact checks of President Donald Trump. Hinderaker scores the series 4-1 for Trump.

Read it through for the specifics.

Our favorite part occurs at the end:

We could go through this exercise multiple times every day. Correcting the Democratic Party “fact checkers” would be a full-time job that I don’t plan to undertake. Suffice it to say that Trump is more often right than are the press’s purported fact checkers who pretend to correct him.

We continue to marvel at PolitiFact's supernatural ability to ignore substantive criticism. How often does it answer charges that it has done its job poorly?

If PolitiFact is an honest and transparent attempt at objective fact-checking, then we think PolitiFact should aggressively defend itself against such charges, or else change its articles accordingly.

On the other hand, if PolitiFact is a sham attempt at objective fact-checking, maybe it's smart to ignore criticism, trusting that its readers will conclude the criticisms did not deserve an answer.

Maybe there's an explanation that splits the difference?

Rasmussen Reports: Except for Clinton voters, people distrust fact checkers (Updated)

Hat tip to Power Line blog for highlighting the Rasmussen survey and thereby bringing it to our attention

A couple of days ago, I emailed Jeff D. sharing what I felt was one of the good things to come out of this election season: "(T)he media have allowed the mask to slip as perhaps it never has before."

The same type of thinking was apparently happening at Power Line blog at about the same time leading to a post about media credibility on Sept. 30, 2016:

If this year’s presidential election has a silver lining, it is the final demise of “mainstream media.” Which is not to say that liberal media are going away; they aren’t, of course. But liberal media’s claim to being mainstream–reliable, objective, fair, unlike fringe or partisan news sources–is gone forever. That is a good thing.

Making the good thing even better, the Power Line post shared some details about a new Rasmussen Reports survey showing that people do not trust media fact checkers. But there's an exception. Among Clinton voters, 59 percent trust the fact-checkers:

Eighty-eight percent (88%) of voters who support Trump in the presidential race believe news organizations skew the facts, while most Clinton backers (59%) trust media fact-checking. Among the supporters of Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, sizable majorities also don’t trust media fact-checking.

These findings are no surprise given that voters think it's far more likely reporters will try to help Clinton than Trump this election season. 

Rasmussen makes the percentages of Johnson and Stein supporters who trust fact checkers available to its platinum subscribers. We'd report the numbers if Rasmussen had published them.

This finding ought to serve as a wake up call to media fact checkers. If a relatively slim majority of one party's voters place their trust in you while the others do not, there exists a fundamental problem of credibility. Yet credibility is the only currency for fact-checkers.

Though PolitiFact Bias is not widely read (yet), we think the survey shows most people see, at least to some extent, the same problems we see with PolitiFact and its fact-checking cohorts.

The fact checkers need to find out about this trust gap and figure out how to shrink it.

May we suggest they start by visiting PolitiFact Bias for a few ideas?


Update Oct. 2, 2016

We missed a version of the story from The Hill, which reports less than a third of Americans trust fact checkers:

A survey of likely voters by Rasmussen Reports shows just 29 percent trust media fact-checking of candidates, while 62 percent believe news organizations twist the facts to help candidates whom they appear to support.

We would love to see a survey that compared public trust in each of the mainstream fact checkers.

So far, we haven't noticed any fact checker acknowledging this story. Perhaps that will change on Monday.

Power Line: "On crime, Trump's right and PolitiFact is wrong"

We profusely thank Power Line writer Paul Mirengoff for linking to PolitiFact Bias prominently in his post.

Power Line blog slammed PolitiFact today over its slipshod fact check of Donald Trump's claim that crime is increasing. PolitiFact absurdly rated Trump's claim "Pants on Fire" despite not considering crime data more recent than 2014:

How did Politifact err on such a basic question? It erred by looking at no data past 2014. Sean Kennedy at AEI Ideas blows the whistle.

Trump made his statement on June 7, 2016. Thus, his claim that crime is rising can only be fact-checked by analyzing current data. By failing to do so, Politifact confirmed that it is either incompetent, hopelessly biased, or both.

While it's true PolitiFact relied at least partly on a pair of experts it interviewed, Mirengoff and Kennedy make a great point. Where was PolitiFact in January 2016 when the Washington Post was claiming an increase in violent crime for early 2015 compared to early 2014?

The number of violent crimes committed across the country was up in the first half of 2015 compared with the same period a year earlier, with increases seen across the country and spanning different types of crimes, federal authorities said Tuesday.

The numbers of murders, rapes, assaults and robberies were all up over the first six months of 2015. Overall violent crime was up 1.7 percent, an increase that followed two consecutive years of declines, according to the FBI.

"No truth for you!" say the Truth Nazis at PolitiFact.

What About PolitiFact's Neutral Experts?

 

Sometimes we survey PolitiFact's list of experts to see if they have any obvious political leanings.

What have we here?

James Alan Fox: Just one FEC individual donation listed. To Elizabeth Warren, $800. It may not be PolitiFact's expert if there's another James Fox at Northeastern University. Warren's a Democrat.

Raymond Paternoster: The background information on Paternoster was equivocal. Paternoster has authored studies on race and the application of the death penalty. As with what he told PolitiFact, it's hard to confidently pin down his stance (bold emphasis added):

"Mr. Trump is wrong if he is talking about overall crime and even violent crime," agreed University of Maryland criminologist Raymond Paternoster. Any possible upward swing in the past year or so wouldn’t show up in the data currently available, he said.

Paternoster's admission in bold makes us very curious about the context of PolitiFact's interview. What question was Paternoster asked when he answered Trump is wrong? How could Paternoster agree that Trump is wrong without recent data to back the assessment?

More News Reports

 

The Associated Press:

CHICAGO (AP) — Violent crimes — from homicides and rapes to robberies — have been on the rise in many major U.S. cities, yet experts can't point to a single reason why and the jump isn't enough to suggest there's a trend.

Still, it is stumping law enforcement officials, who are seeking a way to combat the problem.

"It's being reported on at local levels, but in my view, it's not getting the attention at the national level it deserves," FBI Director James Comey said recently. "I don't know what the answer is, but holy cow, do we have a problem."

 A bunch of liars?

KUTV (Utah) cited a study by the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice:

WASHINGTON (Sinclair Broadcast Group) — A new study of crime statistics from major cities across the country reveals a rising number of murders in 2015, with violence in three cities fueling half of that increase.

Crime data for the 30 largest cities in the U.S. released by the Brennan Center for Justice indicates a 13.3 percent rise in murders in 2015, but analysts say it is too soon to determine whether this reflects a broader trend.

Note the Brennan Center study involves a comparison between 2015 and 2014. Violent crime in 2016 has thus far built on the violent crime rate in 2015.

As Power Line noted, a fact checker should check the facts before ruling on the facts.





Edit 6/22/2016: Added link to WaPo story in relevant graph. Changed "in" to "an" same graph-Jeff 0857 PST

NTSH: 95 percent of Clinton's claims "Mostly True" or better?

We tip our hats to Power Line blog for making it easy to add a "Nothing To See Here" item.

With "Nothing To See Here" we take note of political statements deserving of a fact check. But we tend to doubt one will occur. Power Line blog noted a problem with a Nicholas Kristoff column in The New York Times. Kristoff, a liberal columnist, wrote a column highlighting Clinton's position head-and-shoulders above the competition when it comes to PolitiFact report cards. But there was a problem: Kristoff got the key numbers wrong.

Power Line's Steven Hayward compared the original version of Kristoff's column with the Times' later correction of the article.

At the bottom of the column is this short correction:

Correction: April 23, 2016: An earlier version of this column misstated some of the percentages of true statements as judged by PolitiFact.

So how did the original version of Kristof’s column read? Here:

PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize winning fact checking site, calculates that of the Clinton statements it has examined, 95 percent are either true or mostly true.

That’s more than twice as high as the percentages for any of the other candidates, with 46 percent for Bernie Sanders’s, 12 percent for Trump’s, 23 percent for Ted Cruz’s and 33 percent for John Kasich’s. Here we have a rare metric of integrity among candidates, and it suggest that contrary to popular impressions, Clinton is far more honest and trustworthy than her peers.

So we go from 95 percent true to 50 percent true and switch out “far more honest and trustworthy than her peers” for “relatively honest by politician standards,” with the blink of a mere correction.

We've repeatedly noted PolitiFact's weak-to-nonexistent efforts to police the misuse of its "report card" data. If PunditFact and PolitiFact let Kristoff slide on this one, what else are they willing to overlook?

It's a fact! It's from a Republican! It's "Pants on Fire"!

Computer access problems stopped us from joining the vanguard in trashing  PolitiFact's recent "Pants on Fire" rating given to Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio for saying Reagan's strength compared to Carter's weakness led to the release of hostages on the day Reagan was inaugurated in early 1981.

PolitiFact:

Fortunately, Power Line and Red State admirably filled the breach.

Power Line faults PolitiFact for citing the controversial Gary Sick as an expert historical source, then skewers PolitiFact for simply ignoring the evidence supporting Rubio:

Anyway, Politifact continues:

Instead, the Iranians had tired of holding the hostages, and that the administration of Jimmy Carter did the legwork to get the hostages released.

They got tired of it, you see. Riiiight. Okay, if you’re done being convulsed with laughter on the floor, let’s recall what the Washington Post editorial page (!!) had to say about the matter on January 21, 1981:

“Who doubts that among Iran’s reasons for coming to terms now was a desire to beat [Reagan] to town?”

And who doubts that Politifact and other “fact checkers” are too clueless to grasp Rubio’s argument that your reputation in the world counts for something—especially with your enemies.

Red State noted:

The release did coincide with Reagan’s inauguration. Any critique of Rubio’s statement must include an very solid bit of proof that the two events were disconnected. As a matter of fact, the negotiations that led to the release of the hostages were not even signed until January 19, 1981. If as Gary Sick states, it was that the Iranians were afraid of having to start all over again with Reagan then why was the release not effected earlier. While the Reagan administration, rightfully, had nothing to do with the negotiations it is utter lunacy to assert that Reagan’s election did not have a demonstrable effect.

Power Line and Red State do a nice job in pointing out the holes in PolitiFact's version of the events surrounding the hostage crisis. But we would add to their criticisms the point that PolitiFact also pulled its all-too-typical creative straw man technique on Rubio.

Where Rubio staked out the very defensible position that Iran cut its deal with the president from which it thought it would get the better deal, PolitiFact implies Rubio claimed that Reagan's inauguration caused the release of the hostages:

We flagged Rubio’s comment as a misleading framing of history. Reagan’s inauguration in 1981 may have coincided with the release of the hostages, but historians say it did not cause it.

Is that how PolitiFact framed the issue when it contacted its select panel of experts?

Regardless, this looks like a case of PolitiFact non-transparently interviewing a half-dozen experts and then declaring an expert consensus where no such consensus exists in reality.

Via the United States Institute for Peace (bold emphasis added):

Ronald Reagan was sworn into office on January 20, 1981, just as Iran released 52 Americans held hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran for 444 days. The timing was deliberate. The young revolutionary regime did not want the hostages freed until after Jimmy Carter, who had supported the shah and allowed him into the United States, left office. At the same time, Tehran wanted to clear the slate in the face of a new Republican administration that had vowed to take a tougher stand on terrorism and hostage-taking.

 So totally nothing to do with Reagan.

Whatever.

Here's predicting PolitiFact will do what it usually does when confronted with a strong critique from the right: Nothing.

Rubio wrong about welders and philosophers?

Republican presidential contender Marco Rubio made a stir with his debate-night claim that welders make more than philosophers.

A number of sources (Forbes and VOX, for example) have weighed in against Rubio on that claim.

PolitiFact joined the chorus with a fact check calling Rubio's claim "False":

Neither salary nor labor statistics back up Rubio’s claim. Statistically, philosophy majors make more money than welders -- with much more room to significantly increase pay throughout their careers.

We found Rubio's claim interesting from a fact-checking perspective before seeing PolitiFact's version of the story. We wondered if anyone who has a degree in philosophy counts as a philosopher. After all, a person could have a degree in philosophy yet work as a welder. Is that person a philosopher or a welder? The same goes for philosophy professors. Are philosophy professors paid for philosophizing or teaching?

We found a post at the conservative blog Power Line that expressed the argument nicely:

Polifact’s analysis is flawed. One doesn’t become a philosopher by majoring philosophy. John and I both so majored and we don’t claim ever to have been philosophers.

We became lawyers. Our pay reflected what lawyers, not what philosophers, make.

How would PolitiFact have evaluated the issue if Rubio's statement had come from a Democrat, we wonder?