Pulitzer update: PolitiFact fails to grow its Pulitzer Prize collection in 2020

Pulitzer Prize winners were announced and PolitiFact extended its losing streak, which dates back to 2010. PolitiFact won a 2009 Pulitzer, for work done in 2008.

Nearly every year we at PolitiFact Bias make note of PolitiFact's losing streak. Why do we do that, given that our Pulitzer losing streak is almost as long as PolitiFact's?

We do it because the 2009 Pulitzer Prize has nothing to do with accuracy, even though PolitiFact advertises itself as "Winner of the Pulitzer Prize" as though to suggest the reverse. And from time to time we even encounter people who seem to want to argue that PolitiFact's 2009 Pulitzer Prize somehow helps offer evidence of its reliability.

That's also why PolitiFact Bias emphasized former Pulitzer Prize juror James Warren's interview with incoming Pulitzer administrator Dana Canedy. Warren mentioned that when he served as a juror he was tempted to fact check the work he evaluated but the rules prevented that. Canedy suggested that policy would likely continue.

This year's list of winners helps underline that policy, as The New York Times' factually challenged 1619 Project snagged a Pulitzer Prize for project principal Nikole Hannah-Jones.

That win ought to help scuttle the notion that Pulitzer Prizes have something to do with reliably reported facts.

Afters:

We suggested to PolitiFact that it should fact check the Times' 1619 Project. So far, PolitiFact does not appear interested in doing so.

Correction May 5, 2020: I (Bryan) inexplicably had the following in the first paragraph of this post: "PolitiFact won a 2009 Pulitzer, awarded in 2010." We know better, or ought to, having written about it numerous times. PolitiFact's 2009 Pulitzer was recognition for what it published in 2008. My apologies for the error, which is now fixed.

PolitiFact Bias fails to win a Pulitzer Prize for its Eighth Straight Year

Sad news: PolitiFact Bias failed to win a Pulitzer Prize in 2019. That makes eight years in a row PolitiFact Bias has failed to win a Pulitzer.

But there's an upside.

Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact has failed to win a Pulitzer for 10 straight years, beating our streak by two years.

We track these numbers, by the way, because PolitiFact tries to use its Pulitzer Prize from 2009 as a type of mark of excellence endorsing the quality of its fact-checking.

We call that a crock. We've documented that Pulitzer juries do not fact check entries submitted for Pulitzer Prize consideration. And PolitiFact's set of entries in 2009 included its preposterous ruling that it was "Mostly True" Barack Obama's uncle helped liberate Auschwitz.

We created this video a few years ago to commemorate PolitiFact's long-running failure to repeat its Pulitzer Prize success from 2009.

We still think it's funny. It's funnier every year, in fact.

What??? No Pulitzer for PolitiFact in 2018?

We're not surprised PolitiFact failed to win a Pulitzer Prize in 2018.

The Pulitzer it won back in 2009 was a bit of a fluke to begin with, stemming from prize submissions in the public service category and arbitrarily used by the Pulitzer board to justify the prize for "National Reporting."

Since the win in 2009, PolitiFact has won exactly the same number of Pulitzer Prizes that PolitiFact Bias has won: Zero.

So, no, we're not surprised. But we think Hitler might be, judging from his reaction when PolitiFact failed to win a Pulitzer back in 2014.

Facebook comments show the dire need for the PolitiFact Bias website

Over the past few days, we received a number of comments on our Facebook page that help show the dire need for our work.

We are not identifying the person by name, though we expect it's easy to find on our page. It's a public page and the comments were posted in response to our public posts on our page. In short, it's public.

We discourage any attempt to harass this person or make contact with them against their wishes.

Beyond that, we offer thanks for the comments because we can use them to help educate others. We're using quotation marks but correcting errors without making them obvious. So the quotations are not always verbatim.

We're spotlighting these comments because they are so typical of our critics.

Update on that Pulitzer Prize mark of excellence

How often have we seen people appeal to PolitiFact's 2009 Pulitzer Prize as proof of its standard of accuracy?

We've tried to explain to people that the Pulitzer judges aren't likely to fact check the fact checkers. The Pulitzer judges look for things like style, impact and relevance.

Thankfully, we just ran across an interview that helps make our point.

The interviewer, James Warren, says he served on a Pulitzer jury (confirmed), and states the rules prevented him from following his impulse to fact check the work he was judging:

[JW]
Does the rise of fact-checking play into a new era at all? I recall a few times as a judge wanting to independently verify stuff in entries but not being allowed to. I might have wanted to know if a claimed exclusive was really what an entry later claimed.
[DC]
I'm not sure it's the role of the jury to second-guess work that is being submitted. Now it might be like a parent who over-praises their child. But that's only a matter of enthusiasm, not dishonesty. I don't think there's much of a record at all of Pulitzers suffering from choosing work that hasn't lived up to what it's awarded.

Warren said he was not allowed to independently verify material from Pulitzer entries.

It's worth noting that the interviewee, new Pulitzer Prize chief Dana Canedy, appears to affirm that Pulitzer juries do not see fact-checking contest entries as any part of the job.

It makes no sense to regard the Pulitzer Prize as any type of guarantee of journalistic accuracy. The jurors assume that the submitted works adhere to basic journalistic principles of accuracy and fairness unless the works themselves obviously contradict that idea.

Trust PolitiFact in 2018 because of a Pulitzer Prize awarded in 2009? Bad idea.

And it would have been a bad idea to trust PolitiFact in 2010 based on the Pulitzer Prize in 2009.

What??? No 2016 Pulitzer for PolitiFact?

We're a bit overdue bragging about our prediction last year that PolitiFact would continue its years-long streak of failing to win a Pulitzer Prize.

PolitiFact won a Pulitzer in 2009 for 13 stories relating to the 2008 election. We've been telling anybody who will listen that the win came in large part thanks to technological aspects of PolitiFact. PolitiFact was an online information source that put its stories in a searchable database. That somehow counted as an important advance in journalism at the time.

Since 2009, PolitiFact is 0-7 for Pulitzers. But not to worry. PolitiFact continues to use its Pulitzer Prize win in 2009 to communicate to readers that it is a reliable source of information. PolitiFact reminds readers it is "Winner of the Pulitzer Prize." Check it out via this fresh screen capture:

Subtle, right?

It was pretty much the same story in 2015:

And in 2014:

And in 2013:

And in 2012:

And in 2011 (I wonder why they no longer identify "2009" as the year PolitiFact won?):

And in 2010:

The truth is, if winning a Pulitzer Prize means anything at all about a media source's reliability, it's right next to nothing. We believe we were the first to point out the irony that The Wall Street Journal's Joseph Rago won a Pulitzer Prize in  2011 for a series of editorials that included a pointed criticism of PolitiFact.

In 2014 we created a video of Hitler finding out PolitiFact failed to win a Pulitzer Prize.

We still think it's funny.

No 2014 Pulitzer for PolitiFact (VIDEO)

Adolf Hitler learns PolitiFact failed for the fifth consecutive year to win a Pulitzer Prize

We're not kidding that the Tampa Bay Times' chief executive, Paul Tash, chairs the Pulitzer Prize committee this year.

We're not kidding that PolitiFact's founding editor Bill Adair had a life-sized cutout of President Obama standing in his office.  We don't know how long it was there or if it ended up in the office of Adair's replacement, Angie Drobnic Holan.

Why are we tweaking PolitiFact over its failure to win a Pulitzer this year?  Because PolitiFact uses its 2009 Pulitzer to burnish its reputation for reliability.  But PolitiFact has never been particularly reliable.  The 2009 Pulitzer was likely awarded mostly in recognition of PolitiFact's innovation, specifically producing an attractive and popular online outlet for what journalists think is serious journalism.  The Pulitzer was awarded in 2009 for a set of 13 stories.  That's what the Pulitzer committee was judging, not overall reliability.

Don't forget that hogwash has won Pulitzers in the past.

Win a Pulitzer--for criticizing Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact

PolitiFact's defenders love to point to the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting PolitiFact took home for a collection of 13 stories published in 2008.  People apparently fail to realize the limited scope of judgment brought to bear by Pulitzer juries.

Fortunately, the Pulitzer folks have made it dead easy to turn that argument into a flaccid pretzel:  James Rago of the Wall Street Journal won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing--and part of the collection he submitted contained his column "PolitiFiction," where he criticized PolitiFact's choice for its 2010 "Lie of the Year."

Congratulations to Mr. Rago.

Rago's column on PolitiFact was one of the first stories highlighted here at PolitiFact Bias.

Hat tip to Big Gov Care.