PolitiFact updates its website, makes "Corrections and Updates" even harder to find (Updated: Fixed!)

Over the years we've enjoyed poking fun at PolitiFact's haphazard observance of its policy on corrections. Aside from simply not doing quite a few needed corrections, PolitiFact does things like:

• Correcting stories without a correction notice
• Not tagging stories with "Corrections and Updates" as promised in its statement of principles

We've also needled PolitiFact over the way it hides its supposedly transparent page of corrected or updated claims. Looking up "corrections and updates" along with "PolitiFact" using a search engine would allow readers to easily find the page, but finding that page from PolitiFact's home page was so hilariously complicated that we posted instructions on how to do it.

Now in February 2020 PolitiFact has revamped its website and at long last fixed the problem succeeded in making the problem even worse.

Hopefully the worsening of the situation is only temporary, but PolitiFact's history marinates that hope in thick, gooey skepticism.

Our Feb. 1, 2020 survey of the PolitiFact website makes the "Corrections and Updates" page look like an orphan.

We tried to help. Seriously.

When I (Bryan) heard on Twitter that PolitiFact was updating its website, I tweeted out a reminder for PolitiFact to make its "Corrections and Updates" page more available to readers:

Don't forget to feature a prominent link to your corrections page on your landing page.

Even better if you figure out a way for all corrected stories to appear there (tags for articles!).

— Bryan W. White (@ZebraFactCheck) January 31, 2020

Instead of fixing it, the "Corrections and Updates" page is one of the very few (this is the only other one we found) that did not experience a facelift in keeping with the new look of the website.

For our money, the redesign looks pretty bad on the big screen. And it's not much better on mobile.

But one thing we did like, though perhaps that means it won't last.

What We Liked

In addition to PolitiFact's dodgy behavior on corrections, we've endlessly criticized PolitiFact for publishing sciencey-looking graphs of aggregated "Truth-O-Meter" ratings with no regular disclaimer attached. The ratings are subjective and PolitiFact does not attempt to choose a scientifically representative sample of claims. So the graphs are nonsense in terms of representing a politician's overall reliability.

PolitiFact still isn't attaching any disclaimer, but the new design largely neuters the visual impact of its graphs.

Let's look at Donald Trump's PolitiFact "scorecard" before and after the update.

Before

That has some visual impact. The graph groups the bars closely, emphasizing the visual difference between, say, 5 percent and 35 percent.

After

What a difference! Thirty-four percent looks visually smaller on the new graph than 5 percent looked on the old graph. Sure, there's an attempt to spice it up by adding colors, but the short graph scale and thin lines suck away almost all of the impact.

Do we think PolitiFact did this intentionally so that the graphs would do less to mislead readers? No, unless it's part of an effort to farm out the deception.* But if it stands, it doesn't really matter if it's an accident or a mistake. PolitiFact will probably deceive fewer of its readers as a result.

One Other Positive!

PolitiFact has always offered the total number of each rating for individual politicians. But now it is publishing the totals for PolitiFact as a whole, as well as the states.

That makes doing certain types of research on PolitiFact's numbers easier. Though researchers will still need to realize that the subjectivity of the ratings means they tell researchers about PolitiFact, not so much about the politicians making the claims.

It's a very simple matter now to document how many more ratings Donald Trump has received than did Barack Obama, and in a shorter span of time as candidate/president.

*The downside? Those who are motivated to use PolitiFact "data" to prove Republicans are liars and whatnot will have less work to do in collecting the numbers. People irresponsibly publishing such nonsense may end up misleading more people in spite of the positives we noted.


Afters

Centered text? Seriously?


Updated Feb. 3, 2020 with edits thought already complete: strikethrough and URL linking earlier PFB post about finding PolitiFact's "Corrections and updates" page.

Update Feb 4, 2020: Whether it was the plan all along or whether in response to our cajoling, PolitiFact has added "Corrections and Updates" to its menu, under the heading "About Us."  That fixes one of our major complaints about PolitiFact. Now will PolitiFact add corrected "articles" to its list of corrected stories?

Not a Lot of Reader Confusion XII

We say that PolitiFact's graphs and charts, including its PunditFact collections of ratings for news networks, routinely mislead readers. But PolitiFact Editor Angie Drobnic Holan says there isn't much reader confusion.


Ho-hum. Another day, another example showing that PolitiFact's charts and graphs mislead its readers.

When Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) announced he was running for president, PolitiFact was on the case looking for clicks by publishing one of its misleading graphs of Booker's (subjective) "Truth-O-Meter" ratings.

PolitiFact used a pie chart visual with its Facebook posting:

Note the absence of any disclaimer admitting that selection bias affects story selection, along with no mention of the fundamental subjectivity of the "Truth-O-Meter" ratings.

How is this type of graph supposed to help inform PolitiFact's readers? We say it misinforms readers, such as those making these types of comments (actual comments from PolitiFact's Facebook page in response to the Booker posting):

• "A pretty sad state of affairs when a candidate lies or exaggerates 35% of the time."
• "Funny how Politifact find Trump lying about 70% of the time." 
• "(W)hile that's much better than (T)rump's scorecard, it's not honest enough for my tastes."
  
  

PolitiFact seems to want people to vote for the candidate with the best-looking scorecard. But given that the ratings are subjective and the stories are selected in a non-random manner (nearly guaranteeing selection bias), the "best" scorecard is, in effect, an editorial position based on opinions, not facts.

PolitiFact is selling editorials to its readers with these graphs.

Many in the fact-checking community oppose the use of gimmicky meters (FactCheck.org, Full Fact (UK), for example). If the International Fact-Checking Network and PolitiFact were not both under the auspices of the Poynter Institute then perhaps we'd soon see an end to the cheesy meters.


Correction May 3, 2019: We did XI twice! We updated the second XI to change the title to XII and now we're changing the title of this one to XIII.

PolitiFact's Heart Transplant

In the past we have mocked PolitiFact's founding editor Bill Adair for saying the "Truth-O-Meter" is the "heart of PolitiFact."

We have great news. PolitiFact has given itself a heart transplant.

PolitiFact's more recent (since May of 2018) self-descriptions now say that fact-checking is the heart of PolitiFact:

That's a positive move we applaud, while continuing to disparage the quality of PolitiFact's fact checks.

It was always silly to call a subjective sliding-scale Gimmick-O-Meter the heart of PolitiFact (even if it was or remains true).

The new approach at least represents improved branding.

Now if PolitiFact could significantly upgrade the quality of its work ...




Post-publication update: Added hotlinks to the first paragraph leading to past commentary on PolitiFact's heart.

PolitiFact's Subjective-O-Meter

PolitiFact Florida provides us with yet another sterling example of subjective "Truth-O-Meter" ratings.  PolitiFact "uses" the "Truth-O-Meter" to find the truth in politics.  Translated, that means PolitiFact does its version of fact checking and then picks one of the available "Truth-O-Meter" ratings, ranging from "Pants on Fire" to "True."

PolitiFact Florida gave DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz a "Mostly True" rating for her June 30 claim that nearly 60 percent of women who use birth control use it for purposes other than contraception.  That's supposed to remind us of the awful effect on women from the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision.

Wasserman Schultz's claim is false, as I show with an item at Zebra Fact Check.  But there's another aspect to this case that serves especially well to show the subjectivity of PolitiFact's trademarked "Truth-O-Meter."

PolitiFact rated "Half True" a very similar claim from Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).  We took note of that rating with an item of our own here at PolitiFact Bias.  And PolitiFact Florida noted the Boxer rating as well when it fact checked Wasserman Schultz:

Previously, we fact-checked a similar claim based on the same report. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said on MSNBC in March that "it’s important to note that women take birth control, more than half of them, as a medication for other conditions, so it is an attack on women."

We rated that claim Half True because it required additional clarification about the type of birth control and the survey results. Wasserman Schultz's statement was somewhat more carefully worded.

In what way was Wasserman Schultz's claim more carefully worded?  PolitiFact Florida doesn't say.  But it's true that PolitiFact rated Boxer "Half True" owing to the need for clarification about the type of birth control and the survey results:

Boxer said more than half of women use birth control  "as a medication for other conditions." She was referring specifically to the pill. Guttmacher says 58 percent of women on the pill take it for noncontraceptive reasons. But that number drops to 14 percent if you look at women who take the pill only for noncontraceptive reasons.

Her claim is based in fact, but requires additional clarification about the type of birth control and the survey results. We rate it Half True.

Both of these fact checks by PolitiFact are ridiculously generous, but let's focus on the differences between the Boxer rating and the one for Wasserman Schultz.  The fact is, there's not much of a difference:

Wasserman Schultz said that "nearly 60 percent of women who use birth control do so for more than just family planning."

This claim gets support from a Guttmacher Institute report that found 58 percent of pill users citing at least one non-contraceptive reason. However, Wasserman Schultz’s comment glosses over two important caveats.

Both Boxer and Wasserman Schultz said "birth control" while referring to data on birth control pills.  That accounts for PolitiFact's "clarification about the type of birth control."

Subjective.

The clarification about "survey results" from the Boxer fact check appears to match the second caveat in the Wasserman Schultz fact check.  Both fact checks point out the number of women in the survey who used the pill only for non-contraceptive purposes.

The stated reasons for the ratings are effectively identical, yet the ratings are different.

So let's return to the lone difference PolitiFact identifies, however unclearly: "Wasserman Schultz's statement was somewhat more carefully worded."

We can identify one respect in which Wasserman Schultz was more accurate than Boxer.  Boxer's wording strongly suggested women were using birth control pills for clinical non-contraceptive reasons.  Wasserman Schultz did the same thing, but with greater subtlety.   It's not much of a difference when it comes to justifying a "Mostly True" rating as opposed to a "Half True" rating, especially when the statement is obviously literally false.

It's another case that helps confirm that the "Truth-O-Meter" is subjective.