The Weekly Standard: 'Will PolitiFact Ever Correct Its Biggest Obamacare Error?'

Just a few weeks ago, I was lamenting the decreased volume of criticism directed at PolitiFact.  But as Obamacare promises continue to crash and burn, picking on PolitiFact is back in style.  And few do it better than The Weekly Standard's Mark Hemingway:

PolitiFact has a pretty terrible and rather partisan history of Obamacare fact checks. However, there's one, in particular, about Obamacare that remains especially puzzling. It's the "half-true" rating the organization gave when President Obama promised that, If you like your health insurance, you can keep your health insurance under Obamacare. This was not a casually tossed-off statement by the president, either. It was made repeatedly and quite deliberately in an attempt to sell America on Obamacare.

Treat yourself to reading every word.  Hemingway nails it, and his conclusion is not to be missed.

Another Black Knight for PolitiFact

The comedy film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" is justly famous for its fight scene between King Arthur and the mysterious Black Knight who attempts to block his path.

Arthur defeats the Black Knight, first chopping off an arm, then another arm, then a leg and then the other leg.  As the Black Knight suffers each stage of defeat he defiantly continues to challenge Arthur to continue the fight.

PolitiFact's efforts to defend itself from criticism often run parallel to the Black Knight's fighting prowess against Arthur.

The latest duel pits PolitiFact editor Bill Adair against critics who say Fiat's confirmation that it will produce over 100,000 Jeep vehicles annually at a Chinese manufacturing plant undercuts PolitiFact's 2012 choice for "Lie of the Year."  The Romney campaign produced an ad saying Obama sold Jeep to Italians who will build Jeeps in China.  PolitiFact ruled the ad "Pants on Fire" in October before selecting it as the "Lie of the Year" in December.

The original ruling drew plenty of criticism, and the recent confirmation of the deal to produce Jeeps in China produced a renewal of that criticism, perhaps best expressed by Mark Hemingway of The Weekly Standard.

"It's just a flesh wound."

On Jan. 18 Adair responded to the latest round of criticism:

A number of readers emailed us this week about news reports that Chrysler is moving forward with a partnership in China to produce Jeeps. They wondered: Doesn’t that disprove our Lie of the Year -- that Mitt Romney said Barack Obama "sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China" at the cost of American jobs?
No, it doesn’t.

It bears emphasis that Jeep sold about 50,000 American-made Jeeps in China in 2012. Somehow no mention of Jeep exports to China crept into any of PolitiFact's fact checking of the Romney ad.

Adair's right about one thing, at least.  All of PolitiFact's "Lie of the Year" selections contain a significant element of truth, so of course it doesn't matter to PolitiFact if the ad is true.  It can still qualify as "Lie of the Year."  The tough thing for Adair to explain, which he doesn't attempt, is how the ad can be technically true yet receive a "Pants on Fire" rating as election day approached.

It's just another dismal defense of a PolitiFact blunder.

Mark Hemingway, by the way, responded with Arthurian effectiveness to Adair's post the same day it was published.

We'll give away the ending:

PolitiFact has a reputation for alternately being unresponsive or inadequately responding to criticisms. And they haven't done anything to remedy that today.

Exactly.

(The video contains language some may find offensive.  Oh, and there's lots of obviously fake blood.)






Jeff adds (1/30/13):
Adair's most recent CYA/non-response to Hemingway is typically awful of the genre, and PolitiFact has had some stinkers. Chock full of evasions and denials, it would seem that Adair is completely unable to confront the facts that lurk in front of his face. Take a look at the opening paragraph of his nada culpa, and pay special attention to the quotation marks:

[Readers] wondered: Doesn’t that disprove our Lie of the Year -- that Mitt Romney said Barack Obama "sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China" at the cost of American jobs?

No, it doesn’t.

The entire basis for the Pants of Fire rating is something the Romney ad never claimed. If it did, why didn't PolitiFact quote the relevant portion? The portion that Adair quotes is entirely accurate, even by PolitiFact's own admission. The only falsehood here is PolitiFact's invention that the Romney ad claimed it would cost American jobs.

Another comically dishonest diversion from Adair is his assertion that PolitiFact isn't making a value judgement on Obama's policy. He writes:

We should be clear, we are not defending President Obama’s auto policy. As independent fact-checkers, we don’t take positions on policy issues. So whether it was advisable to bail out the auto companies, and or whether the bailout  was done with proper safeguards was beyond the scope of our fact-check.

As I pointed out in our original review of this claim back in November, PolitiFact was much more smitten with the Presidents performance back then (emphasis added):

With Ohio’s 18 electoral votes very much in play, the Mitt Romney campaign aims to blunt one of Barack Obama’s key advantages in that state -- his rescue of the auto industry.

Let me be clear: PolitiFact has determined that Barack Obama single-handedly rescued the entire auto industry...they're just not taking a position it.

 

The Weekly Standard: "PolitiFact's Credulous Romney-Ryan Health Care Attacks"

The Weekly Standard's Mark Hemingway once again exemplifies what I'm talking about when I say the criticisms of PolitiFact from the right sustain a higher standard than those from the left.  Hemingway methodically dismantles PolitiFact's facade of misstatements surrounding health care claims by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

Behold as Hemingway warms to his topic:

Perhaps if we all ignore PolitiFact, they'll go away. But for the time being, the supposedly independent organization continues to crank out skewed and partisan work. There's no better example of this than the the current jihad the "fact checking" organization is waging against the Romney-Ryan health care plan.

Hemingway goes on to point out PolitiFact's failure to acknowledge the power of the Independent Payment Advisory Board to implement policies that reduce services for Medicare beneficiaries by decreasing the supply of providers.

He then highlights the mendacity of the Obama campaign and its fact-checking lackey in promoting the claim that Medicare beneficiaries may bear an increased cost of $6,400 per year for Medicare insurance.  The Obama campaign attacked an obsolete version of a Ryan reform,  and PolitiFact evidently granted the Democrats the benefit of the doubt that attacking the old plan was not an attempt to mislead the audience.  The claim in the ad, says PolitiFact, is "Half True."

Hemingway:

PolitiFact presents no evidence that the current Romney-Ryan Medicare plan will costs [sic] seniors anywhere close to $6,000. So how the heck, in the total absen(c)e of evidence, does that statement rate even "half true"?

May I suggest to Hemingway that employing inconsistent standards for judgment can easily assist the opinion journalists at PolitiFact in reaching their apparently partisan conclusions?

Hemingway makes the complex easy to digest, so make the time to read the whole thing.

The Weekly Standard: "PolitiFact Mucks Up the Contraception Debate"

This year has sped by at a breathtaking pace so far, and we've neglected to review some worthy stories about PolitiFact simply because we placed a higher priority on some stories than others.

But it's not too late.

In February, The Weekly Standard's Mark Hemingway weighed in with yet another damning assessment of PolitiFact's talent for fact checking:

Before I explain why PolitiFact is once again being deliberately misleading, grossly incompetent, or some hellbroth of these distinguishing characteristics, you'll have bear with me. Part of the reason PolitiFact gets away with being so shoddy is that it counts on its readers believing that it can be trusted to explain any necessary context to justify its status as judge, jury, and factual executioner.

Obviously the right thing to do now is click the link and read the whole thing for yourself.

For those who don't have the time, I'll sum up:

Hemingway's latest example of PolitiFactian perfidy concerns its use of a Guttmacher Institute publication to support an Obama administration claim that 98 percent of sexually active women use birth control.

The Obama administration was trying to justify its insurance mandate requiring birth control as a basic coverage requiring no copay.

Hemingway noted the Guttmacher Institute's lack of neutrality, a number of the arguments marshaled against its findings and PolitiFact's selective use of the evidence.

At the end of the day, a study drawn from a group of women aged 15-44 does not justify extrapolating the data to the set of all women of any age.  PolitiFact went soft again on an administration claim.

Relevant: Jay Cost with "Bain Capital and Media Bias"

The Weekly Standard's Jay Cost provides a timely reminder of yet another subtle form of media bias:

Most journalists will swear that, despite the fact they vote Democratic, they treat both sides fairly. Indeed, it is a rare event to read a news article that directly attacks the Republican party or one that praises the Democratic party.

But that does not mean media bias does not exist. It does – its exercise is just subtler than this. And the last two weeks have been a great example of how it operates.

Read Cost's entire article for his excellent descriptions of the way the mainstream media can lend aid to its ideological favorites through story selection.

And now let's have a look at the ten most recent stories at PolitiFact:

Main headline today at PolitiFact's main page:  "Checking the facts about Romney and Bain Capital."

(Barack Obama) Says Mitt Romney’s carried interest income was a tax "trick."

(Mary Matalin) Says Debbie Wasserman Schultz "has these offshore accounts" like Mitt Romney.

(Mitt Romney)  "When I was governor, not only did test scores improve – we also narrowed the ach
ievement gap." 

(Barack Obama) Mitt Romney "says the Arizona immigration law should be a model for the nation." 

(Barack Obama)  Says Mitt Romney had millions in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven.

(chain email)  The media won’t publish a real photo of Trayvon Martin with tattoos on his face.

(Barack Obama)  Says Mitt Romney "had millions in a Swiss bank account."

(Steve Doocy)  "If you make more than $250,000 a year … you only really take home about $125,000."

(Marco Rubio)  The health care law "adds around $800 billion of taxes on the American people. It does not discriminate between rich and poor." 

("Obameter" promise item indicating compromise)

The Obama campaign probably can't complain about having the featured article plus four of the ten featured fact checks surrounding its intended campaign narrative.  See if you can locate the Romney campaign's narrative anywhere on the above list.

Is this typical?

Hopefully this example serves to show PolitiFact at its best in favoring the Obama campaign narrative.  But the chances are that Democrats have the advantage most of the time.

It's the nature of the beast.

The Weekly Standard: "Romney to PolitiFact: There You Go Again"

The Weekly Standard's Mark Hemingway was back in PolitiFact's grille back in April.

PolitiFact ruled "Mostly False" a claim from the Mitt Romney campaign that women as a group have suffered 92.3 percent of the net job losses under Obama's presidency.  That ruling brought a swift and stern response from the Romney campaign.

Hemingway filed the battle report:

Given that PolitiFact says Romney's numbers check out, how the heck did PolitiFact then conclude Romney's statement is "mostly false"? Well, they did what fact checkers habitually do whenever they find something factually correct but politically disagreeable—kick up a bunch of irrelevant contextual dirt and lean on some biased sources. Which is why PolitiFact's own language here is absurd: "We found that though the numbers are accurate, their reading of them isn’t" and "The numbers are accurate but quite misleading." I would also note that my friend Glenn Kessler, the fact checker at the Washington Post, evaluated the same claim and deemed it "TRUE BUT FALSE." I do hope that if media fact checkers expect to retain any credibility to evaluate basic empirical claims, they're aware that this kind of Orwellian doublespeak is going to make them a laughingstock.

Read the whole thing, because Hemingway's just warming up with the above. 

The above point, that PolitiFact appears absurd for ruling a true statement "Mostly False" probably can't receive enough emphasis.  PolitiFact's rating system provides no description fitting this type of rating.  If the results make it look like PolitiFact isn't categorizing claims according to whether they fit some type of established objective criteria, it's probably because that's the way it is.

Addendum:

PolitiFact's response to the complaint from the Romney campaign deserves a closer look:

We considered the complaint and interviewed four other economists, none of whom have formal or financial ties to any campaigns. Our additional reporting found no reason to change our ruling, which remains at Mostly False.

Two words:  Fig leaf.

The point is that the original reporting didn't justify the ruling.  If PolitiFact can't see that then it's no surprise that additional reporting fails to sway its made-up mind.

The Weekly Standard: "Liberal Pundits Shocked to Discover PolitiFact Not Always Factual"

Mark Hemingway of the Weekly Standard has earned himself the reputation as perhaps PolitiFact's top critic.  As evidence of that, Hemingway beat me to the "late to the party" theme by about a month after the progressive outrage over PolitiFact's "Lie of the Year" selection for 2011.

I'm sorry I missed his article before now.

Hemingway:

So the liberal punditry woke up today to find that PolitiFact has declared the "Lie of the Year" to be Democrats's claim that Paul Ryan's budget will "end Medicare" or "end Medicare as we know it." They're having quite the collective freakout—see Paul Krugman, Jonathan Chait, Matt Yglesias, Brian Beutler, Steve Benen, et al.

Hemingway concedes the "end Medicare" claim has some truth to it:

Accusing Republicans of trying to end Medicare as we know it is also a stupid criticism because the implementation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will also "end Medicare as we know it." And unlike Ryan's plan, Democrats already made IPAB the law of the land. Under IPAB, unelected federal bureaucrats chosen by the president will bypass Congress and set the Medicare budget, and this will likely have pretty dramatic consequences for the program, such as severely restricting doctor access and rationing. It might well prove unconstitutional to boot.

So why all the outrage if Medicare as we know it is already dead and gone?  Hemingway has a hypothesis:

Liberals are freaking out over this because they're so used to PoltiFact and other fact checkers breaking things their way.

Ouch!

But he's probably right.  And, as usual, it's well worth reading the whole article.



Correction 2/21/2012:  Fixed spelling of "Pundits" in the title.

The Weekly Standard: "Pants on (three-alarm) Fire"

The Weekly Standard has some subscriber-only content criticizing PolitiFact Oregon.

Fortunately there's a preview:

PolitiFact Oregon—which works in partnership with the state’s most influential media outlet, the -Oregonian—has been trying and failing to play referee in the race by evaluating the candidates’ statements. First, PolitiFact gave Cornilles its “Pants on Fire” rating for an ad claiming that Bonamici, a state legislator, voted to raise taxes 60 times. Now depending on how broadly you define “tax,” the claim is defensible. But if you want to split hairs—and boy, does PolitiFact ever like to do that—then you would say not that Bonamici has raised taxes 60 times, but that she has raised taxes and fees 60 times.

Maybe PolitiFact Oregon has a Parse-O-Tron instead of a Truth-O-Meter.

There's more to preview at the link, but only subscribers get the whole story.

The Weekly Standard: PolitiFact Can’t Get Its Story Straight on Romneycare and Abortion

Does the truth have a shelf-life?

Jeffrey H. Anderson, writing at the Weekly Standard, takes the fact-finding DeLorean all the way back to 2007 to highlight PolitiFact's conflicting ratings on RomneyCare's coverage of abortions. Before you read Anderson's article, check out the graphics for the remarkably dissimilar PolitiFact articles:

In 2007, PolitiFact says RomneyCare covers abortions:

Image clipped from PolitiFact.com

In 2012, the issue isn't so clear:

Image clipped from PolitiFact.com

Anderson notes:

[The Gingrich rating] sounds reasonable enough — except that the 2007 PolitiFact verdict directly refutes it. 

At first glance the statements have just enough wiggle room between them to possibly have different ratings. But Anderson's article explains there's not enough to justify different ratings..

Also observe how PolitiFact presented Newt's statement. Newt claimed "Romney signed government-mandated health care with taxpayer-funded abortions." Notice PolitiFact's first question: "Did Mitt Romney make taxpayer funded abortion the law of the land?" The difference is that abortion's status as a covered procedure prior to Romney enacting the legislation is independent of Gingrich's claim. The context of Gingrich's ad was that Romney was sympathetic to abortion rights issues. Whether or not abortion was covered by taxpayers under existing Massachusetts law is irrelevant to Gingrich's point. The fact that Romney helped perpetuate the taxpayer funding is enough to make Gingrich's underlying argument accurate.

We'd also like to point out that for a Republican plan, RomneyCare has been the subject of several favorable articles, and even a ridiculous push poll, at PolitiFact. The cynical reader might surmise the kid glove treatment has something to do with RomneyCare's similarity to ObamaCare. Nah, that couldn't be it.




(1/31/2012) Corrected quote of Gingrich's PF statement. No change in context-Jeff

The Weekly Standard: "Damned Lies and ‘Fact Checking’ (cont.)"

The Weekly Standard has a follow up to Mark Hemingway's story earlier this month focusing on the foibles of fact checking (link to our review).

The update, under the title "Damned Lies and 'Fact Checking' (cont.)," is mostly subscriber-only content, though the whole of it is available for preview at present on the Standard's "The Scrapbook" main page. 

Without giving too much away, this nugget both serves as an appropriate tease and a colorful summary of the story:

It’s high time liberal pundits figured out that there’s more going on in this fact-checking bordello than raucous piano music. If they’d been paying attention, they would have long ago stopped patronizing these journalistic houses of ill repute.

The Weekly Standard: "Lies, Damned Lies, and 'Fact Checking'"

The Weekly Standard and Mark Hemingway add yet another effective critique of PolitiFact to the growing set:

They call themselves “fact checkers,” and with the name comes a veneer of objectivity doubling as a license to go after any remark by a public figure they find disagreeable for any reason. Just look at the Associated Press to understand how the scheme works.

Yes, Hemingway first uses the Associated Press as his example.  But PolitiFact isn't far behind:

(I)n 2009 the St. Petersburg Times won a Pulitzer Prize for PolitiFact, endowing the innovation with a great deal of credibility. “According to the Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact .  .  . ” has now become a kind of Beltway Tourette syndrome, a phrase sputtered by journalists and politicians alike in an attempt to buttress their arguments.


If the stated goal seems simple enough​—​providing an impartial referee to help readers sort out acrimonious and hyperbolic political disputes​—​in practice PolitiFact does nothing of the sort.

Ouch! 

Hemingway backs his assessment with the same example he used in his 2010 critique of PolitiFact in the Washington Examiner:  Rand Paul's statement about the gulf between average private sector pay and that received by federal workers.  Hemingway again explains the preposterousness of that rating and calls it "non-atypical" of PolitiFact.

What's PolitiFact's problem?  Hemingway's rundown sounds themes familiar to regular readers of PFB:

The media establishment has largely rallied round the self-satisfied consensus that fact checking is a noble pursuit. Nonetheless there are signs of an impending crack-up. In their rush to hop on the fact-checking bandwagon, the media appear to have given little thought to what their new obsession says about how well or poorly they perform their jobs.

It’s impossible for the media to fact check without rendering judgment on their own failures. Seeing the words “fact check” in a headline plants the idea in the reader’s mind that it’s something out of the ordinary for journalists to check facts. Shouldn’t that be an everyday part of their jobs that goes without saying? And if they aren’t normally checking facts, what exactly is it that they’re doing?

In a nutshell, the fact checkers are biased and not particularly good at fact checking.

Remember to read Hemingway's every word.  This review doesn't do it full justice.

The Weekly Standard: "PolitiFact’s Problem with Long Division"

Jeffrey H. Anderson may have a Ph.D., but it's not in mathematics. So when he's faced with the daunting task of taking one number and dividing by another number, he should just leave it to the rocket surgeons over at PolitiFact. This is especially important if old math doesn't produce PolitiFact's desired result.

Anderson sums up the numerical details while answering a PolitiFact analysis:

Last month, I wrote that President Obama’s own handpicked Council of Economic Advisors had released an estimate that the president’s economic “stimulus” had added or saved just one job for every $278,000 of taxpayer money spent. Obama’s economists said the “stimulus” had cost $666 billion to date and had added or saved 2.4 million jobs. $666 billion divided by 2.4 million is $278,000. Yet when Speaker John Boehner tweeted, “POTUS’ economists: ‘Stimulus’ Has Cost $278,000 per job,” PolitiFact Ohio rated [*] his tweet as “False.” PolitiFact Texas and PolitiFact Wisconsin have chimed in with identical scoring of similar statements.

So, what does PolitiFact have against long division?

Had Anderson been a reader of this blog, he would know that when numbers act in defiance of predetermined talking points, PolitiFact simply invents new standards to measure them against. And when it comes to inventing new standards, PolitiFact Ohio gets its cue straight from the top:

After Republicans began to circulate the blog item, White House spokesman Jay Carney said its conclusions were "based on partial information and simply false analysis." White House spokeswoman Liz Oxhorn issued a statement that noted the Recovery Act bolstered infrastructure, education, and industries "that are critical to America’s long-term success and an investment in the economic future of America’s working families."

The White House points out that Recovery Act dollars didn’t just fund salaries - as the blog item implies - it also funded numerous capital improvements and infrastructure projects.

Lumping all costs together and classifying it as salaries produces an inflated figure.

Of course, PolitiFact fails to offer evidence that Anderson did classify the entire stimulus spending as salaries.

Here's where PolitiFact Ohio tags out, and PolitiFact Texas brings some new moves to the ring:

The White House points out that Recovery Act dollars didn’t just fund salaries — as the blog item implies. Lumping all stimulus costs together and classifying the total as salaries produces an inflated figure.

Oops! PF Ohio already said that. Let's try again:

We checked the White House report, and of the $666 billion stimulus total, 43 percent was spent on tax cuts for individuals and businesses; 19 percent went to state governments, primarily for education and Medicaid; and 13 percent paid for government benefits to individuals such as unemployment and food stamps.

The remainder, about 24 percent, was spent on projects such as infrastructure improvement, health information technology and research on renewable energy.

How would Anderson respond to this arithmetical assault?

There are a number of problems with these claims.

First, I never said that the $278,000 per job was all spent on salaries or wages. I would never attribute anything close to that degree of efficiency to the federal government.

I'm really starting to like this Anderson guy.

He continues:

As I wrote in my response to the White House, “This much is clear: Based on an estimate by Obama’s own economists, for every $278,000 in taxpayer-funded “stimulus” money that the Obama administration has spent — whatever it may have spent it on — the “stimulus” has added or saved just one job.” That remains an undeniable fact.

Anderson's article takes up another issue with the stimulus, which is that not only is it incredibly expensive per job created, he also contends that the stimulus is actually causing jobs to be lost. PolitiFact, unsurprisingly, took issue with that claim as well. But Anderson effortlessly debunks PolitiFact's debunkery:

The entire response on this point from PolitiFact (both the Ohio and Texas versions) is to cite Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi, who told the left-leaning website TPMDC that “the Weekly Standard misinterpreted that data.” That was good enough for PolitiFact. Never mind that Zandi is a Keynesian economist whose estimates of the stimulus’s likely effects were cited (see table 4) by Christina Romer, the first head of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, before the “stimulus” was even passed. In other words, Zandi said it would work, and now he says it worked.

In the end we're left with yet another (and multiple) examples of PolitiFact taking an objective, verifiable statement, constructing a straw man, and quickly demolishing their creation. Anderson never implied that the $278,000 figure represented salaries per job. He was making a point regarding the expense of the stimulus overall and putting it into a context that was easily digested by readers. It's impressive (if not disturbing) the lengths PolitiFact went to in order to distort and discard Anderson's valid premise.

Our goal at PolitiFact Bias is to consolidate and condense the best critiques of PolitiFact and provide a collection point of those criticisms. It is not our prerogative nor desire to reprint full articles.This brief review doesn't do justice to Anderson's excellent and thorough work. As always, we encourage you to go to the source and read the whole thing.

On a side note, I'd like to add something I found amusing, repeated verbatim in both the PF Ohio and Texas editions:

Furthermore, the publication created its statistic with the report's low-end jobs estimate. Had it gone with the 3.6 million job figure at the top end of the range, it would have come up with a smaller $185,000 per job figure.

Are we to assume $185,000 per job created would bump the stimulus into the "successful" category?



Bryan adds:

I find it amusing that PolitiFact accepts Mark Zandi's opinions without comment yet spends much of another recent fact check attacking Florida governor Rick Scott's source because of its supposed partiality.

PolitiFact's work generally leaves the impression that it favors liberal sources in terms of both numbers and reputation.  One might say PolitiFact represents Groseclose liberal media syndrome on steroids.

Pending a rigorous evaluation, of course.


*In Anderson's article the original "PolitiFact Ohio rated" hyperlink linked back to Anderson's own piece. I changed it to link to the PF Ohio rating of Boehner's tweet that was described.-Jeff