Debate.org: "PolitiFact is biased"

Debate.org is hosting a debate between Roy Latham and "F-16 Fighting Falcon."  The topic?  PolitiFact's liberal bias.  Latham takes the affirmative position arguing that PolitiFact has a liberal bias, and so will bear the principal burden of proof during the argument.

Latham's initial argument owes a great deal to Jon Cassidy's article from earlier this year in Human Events, which at its best resembles the case we make at PFB.  I see Latham's as a strong argument overall with a few potential warts.

I'm actually more interested in how the contrary side will argue its case.

Popcorn.

Relevant: The AllSides project

A new venture called "AllSides" tries to meet democracy's need for trustworthy information by using ideological transparency, crowdsourcing and some technical inspiration from Tim Groseclose and Jeff Milyo.

We've previously emphasized the relevance of Groseclose's book "Left Turn" to our ongoing critique of PolitiFact's bias problem.

AllSides appears to represent an entirely new attempt to address the problem of getting quality information to voters in a constitutional republic.  We're not big fans of crowdsourcing, but it seems like a potentially reasonable approach to grading sources for their degree of bias.

And speaking of the degree of bias, the quotation that largely accounts for our interest in the AllSides project (bold emphasis added):

During the Democratic National Convention (DNC), Bill Clinton asserted that over the last 52 years, America had experienced more job growth under past Democratic presidents (42 million) than under Republican presidents (24 million).

In covering this assertion, both PolitiFact and The Washington Post's Fact Checker determined that Bill Clinton's job numbers were essentially correct. PolitiFact (AllSides Bias Rating "Left") gave it a "True" rating and went on to make the case that the numbers were even stronger than they appear.

PolitiFact's "Left" rating for bias especially interested me because I've often wondered how PolitiFact would stack up against other fact checkers in terms of sustaining reader trust.

Unless AllSides confused PolitiFact with Politico (which looks somewhat likely), it looks like PolitiFact wears a broad reputation for liberal bias.

We'll look forward to more from AllSides.


Jeff adds:

Consider me one of the skeptics. Crowdsourcing has undeniable value. Whether it's Yelp reviews or an Ebay member's rating, the opinions of large amounts of random people can mean something. But the authority of the masses doesn't hold the same weight with regard to objective reality. An overwhelming number of otherwise rational people vouched for the Macarena's awesomeness. Large groups of people can be wrong. Reality is unencumbered by the burdens of popularity. The fact that most people think PolitiFact is biased to the left doesn't make it so. That finding is better explored through critical study with verifiable and reproducible evidence.

I took AllSides' 'test' and it's no surprise I ended up on the 'Right' side of their scale. The whole process seemed a bit push-poll-ey to me. If someone considers flag burning immoral, but supports flag burning as a constitutional right, which box do they choose on AllSides test? Do you feel extremely strong that abortion is a right [left box] while rejecting the notion that it's the government's responsibility to pay for it [right box]?

Self-assessment is inherently flawed. And it's even less reliable when dealing with convoluted subjects like political philosophy and moral convictions.

Regardless, I say kudos to AllSides for assembling a respectable team of experts. There's no doubt about their sincerity and they deserve the benefit of the doubt. I commend them on their sincere efforts and it's possible they will provide interested readers with valuable, if only anecdotal, information as their project progresses.

I'm not convinced, but I'm looking forward to them proving me wrong. At the very least they deserve credit for producing a much more honest and transparent project than PolitiFact ever has.

[Note: A draft version of this Jeff adds portion was inadvertently published simultaneously with the original post and then immediately removed.]

Relevant: Tim Groseclose explains the proof of media bias for Prager University

A little over a year ago, PFB linked to Power Line blog's excerpts from UCLA political scientist and economist Tim Groseclose's book "Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind."

We're delighted at the opportunity to host this brief video presentation of Groseclose's case:



Hat tip to Breitbart TV and Prager University.

Relevant: "Measuring the Slant"

Power Line blog directs us to free online content from the Claremont Review of Books. 

CRB reviewer James Q. Wilson reviews Tim Groseclose's "Left Turn:  How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind" and its place in media bias studies.

We're following Power Line's lead by not including any excerpted material.  Go.  Read.

Relevant: Tim Groseclose on bias in the media

Massive hat tip to Power Line.

Relevant: "Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind"

Power Line blog has published some excerpted material from a new book,  "Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind."  We find the material relevant in helping explain the liberal bias manifest at PolitiFact.

Find the excerpts here:

Part 1 (the Introduction)
Part 2 (Forward)
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

The book's author, Tim Groseclose, co-published a study of media bias back in 2004, perhaps the first study to succeed at objectively measuring media bias in practice.

From the report:

We measure media bias by estimating ideological scores for several major media outlets. To compute this, we count the times that a particular media outlet cites various think tanks and policy groups, and then compare this with the times that members of Congress cite the same groups. Our results show a strong liberal bias: all of the news outlets we examine, except Fox News’ Special Report and the Washington Times, received scores to the left of the average member of Congress.

It's worth noting that Republicans held a majority in Congress for a good long time during the period from which the study arose.

The Chapter 8 emphasis on Katherine Kersten at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reinforces one of the repeated emphases here at PFB:  Regardless of any conscious attempt to bias the news, journalists tend to lean left.  The left tilt skews story selection (selection bias) and the factual emphasis in the story.  People who think like Kersten, when their presence is known, make up a type of alien minority population in newsrooms.

Groseclose's book is very likely to make reading lists at PFB.