PolitiFact finds Republican's opinion "Pants on Fire" false

PolitiFact says it doesn't fact check opinions.

Republican Pennsylvania senate Majority Leader Jake Corman says he doesn't believe unproven voter fraud claims had any role in (causing) the Capitol riot.

Who is lying?

PolitiFact would have you believe it's Corman making the false claim. But Corman provided perhaps the clearest possible indication that he was giving an opinion.

"Opinion" means someone expressed what they believe, not necessarily what they proffer as established fact.

Note that PolitiFact's headline/deck makes it look like Corman made a statement of fact. But by the fourth paragraph of its fact check, PolitiFact makes an admission against interest:

"House Democrats yesterday called on state Republicans to accept some responsibility for some of the violence that we saw at the U.S. Capitol last week because of unproven voter fraud claims," Maisel said. "What role do you think that played?" 

"I don’t think it played any role," Corman responded.

"I don't think" counts as perhaps the classic introduction to a person's opinion. "In my opinion" might challenge it. 

It ought to astonish that a fact checker could claim it does not fact check opinion and then ignore such an obvious sign that a statement was offered as an opinion. Unfortunately, we cannot register surprise at this, thanks to PolitiFact's track record.

And PolitiFact does not merely make the mistake of fact-checking an opinion. It also apparently equivocates, transforming the role of election fraud claims in motivating the gathering of protesters into a role in causing the violence.

The fact checker interested in staying worthy of the name steers clear of such murky issues of cause and effect.

Hold PolitiFact's beer:

But there’s plenty of evidence that people who traveled to Washington and stormed the Capitol did so because they believed the election was rigged and unfairly stolen from President Donald Trump. He told them so repeatedly. And Corman, like many Republican officials in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, frequently helped advance Trump’s narrative.

There's plenty of evidence that people who traveled to Washington and stormed the Capitol did so because they believed the election was rigged and unfairly stolen from Mr. Trump? Will the fact checker offer evidence that the violence done in association with storming the Capitol stemmed from that motivation?

 Do not hold your breath, gentle reader.

Just before PolitiFact offers its conclusion, we get this:

And the president’s insistence that the election was stolen but could still be reversed with Congress’ help is what rioters cited when asked by reporters why they were there and what they hoped to achieve.

So PolitiFact tells us rioters said the unsupported election claims motivated their actions. And the good news is that PolitiFact provides an embedded supporting link in the paragraph.

The bad news? The link supports the highlighted text, that being "the president's insistence that the election was stolen." It offers no support for the claim the rioters used the unsupported election claims as their motivation.

And that paragraph encapsulates PolitiFact's approach to the fact check. Its proof that unsupported election fraud claims led to the Capitol riot consists of proof that GOP lawmakers made those claims PolitiFact calls unsupported.

To realistically establish a causal link, a fact checker should show that believing unsupported claims about election fraud meaningfully correlates with violent action such as was exhibited at the Capitol.

We should expect the staff at PolitiFact to know that.

PolitiFact's fact check is a disgrace to fact-checking.


Afters:

Color us surprised that this counts as the first time we have tagged a post with "Jessica Calefati." She's among PolitiFact's worst. And that's really saying something.

PolitiFact Wisconsin and the Worry-O-Meter

PolitiFact Wisconsin had no representation in our article on the worst 17 PolitiFact fact checks of 2017.

A May 18, 2018 fact check of Republican Leah Vukmir should help ensure PolitiFact Wisconsin makes the list for 2018.

Vukmir, a Republican looking for an opportunity to run against Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) in the 2018 election cycle, has used a hyperbolic ad campaign to paint Baldwin as weak on terrorism. Vukmir said Baldwin worried more about the architect of the 9-11 terrorist attacks than confirming Gina Haspel to head the CIA.

The key to Democrat opposition to the Haspel nomination stemmed from Haspel's involvement in the enhanced interrogation program, which included the technique of waterboarding. The CIA released a disciplinary review saying Haspel had no involvement in the decision to use enhanced interrogation, but that she simply carried out the orders she was issued.

PolitiFact Wisconsin adroitly skipped over all that and took the liberty of re-interpreting Vukmir's claim:

Does U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin have so much more concern for a 9/11 terrorist, compared to the president’s nominee to run the CIA, that she would vote against the nominee?

Vukmir's claim was more simple than PolitiFact Wisconsin's creative paraphrase (source: PolitiFact):

Tammy and her party are more interested, and they’re more worried about, the mastermind of 9/11 -- the individual that plotted and ultimately killed over 3,000 Americans on our soil. And she‘s more worried about those individuals than to support a very strong woman with a track record to be the head of the CIA.

Note that Vukmir did not say anything about what motivated Baldwin to withhold support for Haspel.

We suspect PolitiFact Wisconsin counts as a minority for its inability to figure out Vukmir's message: Opposing Haspel's nomination based merely on her following orders within the CIA hampers the CIA's ability to do its job effectively. Imagine working at the CIA and thinking one must second-guess the orders one receives to have a realistic shot at one day leading the CIA.

PolitiFact Wisconsin's fact check spent not a word on that angle of the story, sticking instead to its own idea that Vukmir must show that Baldwin personally showed significant worry about Khalid Sheik Mohammed in order to earn a rating better than "Pants on Fire."

Farcical Fact-Checking

To fact check what Vukmir actually said, PolitiFact Wisconsin would have needed evidence not only showing Baldwin's level of worry for Mohammed but also her level of worry for Haspel's nomination. Otherwise there's no baseline for determining one is greater than the other.

After all, Vukmir clearly made a claim comparing the two.

And how does one assess levels of worry without asserting an opinion? One might go by what a person said, but that assumes an entirely forthright subject. We don't know the answer. And PolitiFact offered no evidence it has an answer.

PolitiFact's approach was preposterous from the outset. It showed no specific level of worry over Mohammed and no specific level of worry over the Haspel nomination. And yet concluded that one was not lower than the other.

Vukmir's statement was best interpreted as hyperbole expressing the damage to CIA operations stemming from refusing a leadership role to a fully qualified woman for nothing more than following orders associated with the enhanced interrogation program--a program that the CIA described to leading congressional members of both parties without apparent objection at the time.

PolitiFact says it grants license for hyperbole. Exceptions doubtless stem, as we've said before, from Republicans trying to use hyperbole without a license.

• Is the statement rooted in a fact that is verifiable? We don’t check opinions, and we recognize that in the world of speechmaking and political rhetoric, there is license for hyperbole.

PolitiFact says it doesn't rate opinions. We suppose PolitiFact is entitled to its own opinion.


After Vukmir made her claim about Baldwin, Baldwin ended up voting in opposition to the Haspel nomination.

Are fact checkers fact-checking opinions more? Blame Trump! (Updated)

The fact checkers at PolitiFact apparently can't keep themselves from allowing their opinions to seep into their work.

Fortunately, we can all blame President Trump. That way, the fact checkers need not acknowledge any error.

A Feb. 6, 2018  PolitiFact fact check took as an assertion of fact Trump's apparent opinion that the word "treason" might apply to Democrats who failed to applaud good news about the United States during Trump's State of the Union Address.

PolitiFact, in classic straw man fashion, insisted that "treason" had to refer to the type codified in law, and so rated Trump's claim "Pants on Fire" (bold emphasis added):

Trump said that at the State of the Union address, Democrats, "even on positive news … were like death and un-American. Un-American. "even on positive news … were like death and un-American. Un-American. Somebody said, ‘treasonous.’ I mean, yeah, I guess, why not? Can we call that treason? Why not?"

There’s a good reason why not: Declining to applaud the president doesn’t come anywhere near meeting the constitutionally defined threshold of treason, which in any case can’t occur except in wartime. Rather, legal experts agree that it is a clear case of constitutionally protected free speech. We rate the statement Pants on Fire.

In fact, "treason" has a broader definition than PolitiFact allowed:

1. the offense of acting to overthrow one's government or to harm or kill its sovereign.
2. a violation of allegiance to one's sovereign or to one's state.
3. the betrayal of a trust or confidence; breach of faith; treachery. 

Failing to applaud good news about one's state would, in a sense, violate allegiance to one's state. And, more to the point, one can define words as one likes. One could, for example, choose to define the word "Rump" to refer exclusively to President Trump. One can do such things because words are ultimately just symbols representing ideas, and people can choose what idea to associate with what symbol.

Is it a good idea to use words in ways that run against their commonly understood meanings? That's a different issue.

Trump afforded his critics another marvelous opportunity to criticize his temperament and wisdom, but that criticism belongs in op-eds, not fact checks.

The dastardly Trump forced helpless journalists to abandon their objectivity.

How dare he.


Update Feb. 8, 2018

We weren't going to make a big deal of PolitiFact saying that Trump was suggesting that not applauding for him (Trump) might qualify as treason.

But then PolitiFact started emphasizing that misleading headline on Twitter:

Check out our new video fact-check of President Trump's claim that not applauding for him could be construed as "treason." (It got a Pants on Fire.) https://t.co/Mqf5sZaYBh pic.twitter.com/cuYcKcv09Y

— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) February 8, 2018

That's just bad reporting, and it's a classic example of a biased headline. Trump says failing to applaud good news about the United States might pass as treason, not the failure to applaud President Trump.

Nonpartisan and objective journalists should be able to distinguish between the two.

PolitiFact looking VOXier every day! (Updated)

Remember how Ezra Klein took his Washington Post Wonkblog act independent, starting the fact-challenged left-wing 'splainer site VOX?

PolitiFact is taking pages from the VOX playbook.

PolitiFact has always had VOX's ability to get things remarkably wrong, so the latest new sign of Voxiness comes from PolitiFact stories that venture into 'splaining instead of fact-checking. The item that especially caught our eye was one saying Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is incorrect for saying the United States should have taken Iraq's oil.

Trump's suggested policy on Iraq's oil is a choice with a moral, right/wrong dimension. As such PolitiFact's condemnation of the proposal amounts to moralizing. And isn't that exactly what we want from fact checkers?

We suspect the real reason PolitiFact is delving into overt PolitiSplaining has to do with its desire to share parts of expert interviews like this one:

"Insofar as Mr. Trump's proposals are coherent enough to be subject to analysis and judgment, they appear to be practically impossible, legally prohibited, and politically imbecilic," said Barnett Rubin, associate director of New York University’s Center on International Cooperation.

PolitiFact didn't say that about Trump! It was the expert! The expert did it! Was PolitiFact supposed to not print such a memorable quotation?

At PolitiFact Bias, we have long charged that PolitiFact's fact-checking routinely crosses the line from objective reporting into the realm of opinion journalism. An interview posted recently at Poynter.org, which owns PolitiFact through the Tampa Bay Times, underscores the accuracy of our assessment. Brad Scribner interviewed Lucas Graves, a recognized expert on fact-checking who did intern stints at PolitiFact and FactCheck.org. Scribner asked Graves about the relationship between fact-checking and the traditional "opinion page" in newspapers.

Graves:

It’s actually a misnomer to call the opinion page the opinion page. Really it’s the argument page. People are laying out fact-based arguments. We often confuse that sense of opinion with opinion as taste — where there’s no objective way to say which flavor of ice cream is better, but that’s not true of the kinds of points being made on the opinion page. They do involve facts — facts arrayed into arguments — and those arguments require interpretation. But any important or interesting factual question usually requires interpretation.

PolitiFact founder Bill Adair once called fact checking "reported conclusion journalism" and that’s a really good description.

 Find the whole interview at Poynter's website.


Update/Afters Sept. 12, 2016

We quoted PolitiFact's gem of a quotation from expert Barnett Rubin in our post above. It was quite uncomplimentary to Trump, so much so that we felt it reasonable to question Rubin's neutrality on that basis alone.

In our opinion, PolitiFact did Rubin no favors by quoting him.

We looked up Rubin's record on the FEC database. No surprise: He donates to Democrats.

Is it fine that PolitiFact does not inform its readers about stuff like this?

We wouldn't have that big a problem with it if it didn't represent such a marked pattern.


Correction Sept. 13, 2016: Our final mention of Barnett Rubin misspelled his last name as "Rubion." We apologize for the error, which is now corrected. Same day additional correction: The problem was worse than we noticed: We called Barnett Rubin "Barret" Rubin. We treble our apology.

PolitiFact finds true Rush Limbaugh claim "False"

Unbelievable.  That's PolitiFact's "PunditFact."

Rush Limbaugh said African Americans are now some of the wealthiest people in America.  PunditFact sprang into action:

The key to PunditFact's "False" rating for Limbaugh was simplicity itself.  PunditFact defined "wealthiest" to mean that a person appeared on the Forbes list of wealthiest people.

No, really.  That's what PunditFact did.

"You've got a black president. You've got a black attorney general. You've got the wealthiest TV performer in American history is a African-American woman. That would be The Oprah," Limbaugh said. "Some of the wealthiest Americans are African-American now."

That last line is quite incorrect.

The go-to source to learn about the wealthiest Americans is Forbes, which tracks the fortunes of the world’s elite. It publishes an annual list of the 400 wealthiest Americans and a list of the world’s billionaires.

PunditFact reasoned that since Oprah Winfrey was the only African American to appear on the list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, therefore what Limbaugh said was false.

No, really.  That's what PunditFact did.

Did Limbaugh say something in context to justify PunditFact narrowing the definition of "wealthiest" to the Forbes top 400?  Not from what we can tell.  Certainly the fact check makes no mention of it.  PunditFact's decision seems entirely arbitrary, especially given how commonly media outlets like Vanity Fair, CNBC, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer use the term for the top 1 percent of earners.

Are those media outlets lying to us?  PolitiFact's analysis suggests they are.  But it gets worse.

 

Hypocrites

PolitiFact is also among the media outlets comfortable with using "wealthiest Americans" to mean something other than the Forbes top 400.

PolitiFact New Jersey did it in a fact check of (Democrat) Steve Rothman.

PolitiFact Florida did it in a fact check of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, where defining "wealthiest Americans" as the top 400 would have reversed the ruling (DWS would have received a "True" rating, implying that CNN's Wolf Blitzer was wrong for claiming the wealthiest Americans foot most of the U.S. tax bill).

National PolitiFact did it in a Obameter item in 2013, rating President Obama's promise that he would raise taxes on those making over $200,000 per year--a figure PolitiFact paraphrased as the earning floor for the "wealthiest Americans."

PolitiFact Texas did it in a fact check of (Democrat) Lloyd Doggett, equating the top 1 percent of earners with the "wealthiest Americans" in a paraphrase.

Oh, and PunditFact did it in a fact check of MSNBC's Joe Scarborough earlier this year.

We could provide many more examples from PolitiFact, but you get the idea.  This is hypocrisy of the highest order.  PolitiFact has no right to decide where Limbaugh draws the line on what constitutes the "wealthiest Americans."  Limbaugh can draw that line anywhere he likes.  And if he happens to draw it at the top 1 percent of earners, like PolitiFact often does, then his statement is quite simply true.

The competition for worst fact check of the year is pretty intense in 2014.  And it's still early.

A Fact Too Far

PolitiFact Rhode Island published an article yesterday that highlights the distance between fact checking and what PolitiFact actually does.

Image from PolitiFact

At issue is radio host John DePetro's comments regarding the current resting place of the deceased Boston bomber: "You know, in a way, think of who else is there. That is, President Kennedy is buried not far from there, in Virginia,"

PolitiFact's findings?

We used the Google Maps Distance Calculator to find the actual span between Kennedy's grave at Arlington and the Al-Barzakh Cemetery on Sadie Lane in Doswell, Virginia.

Driving distance: 87 miles.
Bee-line distance: 74 miles.
That's about 55,817 casket lengths.

When we informed DePetro of the distance and asked if he was still bothered, he wrote in an e-mail, "Yes. Insult to bury him so close to JFK. Johnston landfill was my choice or out to sea."

Notice anything missing?  PolitiFact failed to provide a standardized measurement for the linear distance of "not far." Probably because no such definition exists. It's an opinion, and one DePetro articulated quite effectively.

Any guess on PolitiFact's rating?

[T]o say that such a distance should somehow spark offense strikes us as mildly ridiculous, so we rate his statement Pants on Fire!

This is a wholly inappropriate sentence to include in a supposed fact check. We've long argued that there is simply no objective definition of what makes a claim "ridiculous." It's a subjective term determined only by the personal inclinations of PolitiFact's editors. Compounding that subjectivity, PolitiFact finds DePetro's claim only mildly ridiculous in this case. So now not only is the Pants on Fire rating based on an opinion, it's also subject to a sliding scale, the standards for which have yet to be published. Is it a Truth-O-Meter or a mood ring?

It would be interesting to learn when PolitiFact acquired the magical gift of objectively defining what should or should not cause offense. The fact that PolitiFact Rhode Island isn't offended does not make something inoffensive. That's a personal judgement that has no place in a dispassionate determination of fact.

This article is yet another example of how PolitiFact operates as an editorial site sheathed in a false blanket of objectivity. There is simply no way for them to measure the accuracy of DePetro's opinion, and even less possible for them to place a factual determination on what is or isn't offensive.

This is an opinion piece. It's not a fact check. It is dishonest for PolitiFact to suggest otherwise.

Dustin Siggins: The Most Overlooked 'Lie of the Year"

Persistent PolitiFact critic Dustin Siggins wrote up a piece over at Red Alert Politics asking why the GOP's supposed War on Women was left out of PolitiFact's Lie of the Year contenders. Siggins makes some solid points and it's well worth the read, but his big get was his interview with PolitiFact editor Bill Adair. Adair's response to Siggins was typical, and by typical, I mean comically inconsistent with reality.

Siggins quotes Adair:

"We rate the ‘Lie of the Year’ as the boldest statement or the statement with the biggest reach. Obviously, it’s subjective,” he said. “We didn’t do a fact-check on a statement that there was a War on Women. It was an opinion, and we don’t fact-check opinions. People used it as a sum-up of a variety of aspects of the 2012 campaigns, but it was an overall opinion, not a statement of policy fact.”

Siggins makes the case that the War on Women meme was a policy statement, and points out its wide reaching impact on the election. You should read Siggins argument in his own words and in their entirety. For us though, the rest of Adair's response is a howler.

"It was an opinion, and we don’t fact-check opinions."

This statement is from the same guy that gave Mitt Romney a Pants on Fire rating for saying "We're inches away from no longer having a free economy." (Note: Romney actually earned three Pants on Fire ratings for that same claim, something to keep in mind when PolitiFact pimps out their "report cards") What about Rick Perry's opinion that Barack Obama is a socialist? Bill Adair worked on that one too. Oops! PolitiFact calls both of those statements "hyperbole" (coincidentally, PolitiFact claims to have a policy against rating hyperbole as well). I guess hyperbole doesn't count as opinion.

Unfortunately, Adair doesn't fill us in on the objective metric PolitiFact used when they gave Obama a Half True for his claim that Romney's cuts to education would be "catastrophic." Of course, when Obama claimed that his tax plan only asked millionaires to "pay a little more," PolitiFact "decided that "a little more" is an opinion, not a checkable fact."

"Catastrophic"=Verifable fact. "A little more"=Opinion.

The most hilarious part of this is Adair evades the most obvious problem. The Pants on Fire label itself is entirely subjective. The rating is predicated on a claim being "ridiculous." To this day, Adair has never offered up an objective definition of what makes a claim "ridiculous." So the bottom line is PolitiFact doesn't check opinions, but they do use opinions to assign ratings of fact. (Read Bryan's study on the Pants on Fire/False issue here.)

Adair doesn't clarify the issue by adding yet another version of the Lie of the Year criteria:

"We rate the ‘Lie of the Year’ as the boldest statement or the statement with the biggest reach."

Last year, Angie Drobnic-Holan explained the Lie of the Year was a claim PolitiFact rated "that played the biggest role in the national discourse." Which is it?

Regardless, it's hard to imagine some of PolitiFact's finalists even being in the top 20 claims that fit either definition. In what world does Jack Markels (who?) claim that "Mitt Romney likes to fire people" rank as a "bold" statement that has "the biggest reach," let alone played "the biggest role in the national discourse." Of course, don't waste your time looking for any administration comments on Benghazi in the top ten. The reality is that the finalists for PolitiFact's Lie of the Year exemplifies the problems of PolitiFact's selection bias. I've previously said that I suspect the LOTY is predetermined, and a grab bag of nine ratings is thrown in for looks. The competition PolitiFact selected this year does nothing to change my mind.

Finally, I'll give Adair credit for the most honest thing I've ever heard him say about his body of work thus far:

"Obviously, it’s subjective”

Subjective indeed.

Siggins argues the "War on Women" campaign from the Democrats meets key aspects of Adair's criteria and makes a fine Lie of the Year candidate.  He makes a good argument that's worth reading.