LIberal group says one thing, PolitiFact fact checks something else. And it's "True"!!!

 Behold the bias.

Presto!

Change-O:

It's yet another case of Politi-Equivocation.

"Gun violence" implies one person trying to do harm to another. Cases where a gun accidentally discharges and results in death, as well as suicides by gun, don't fit neatly under the heading "gun violence."

Unless you're PolitiFact.

The fact check, without the slightest attempt at justification, classifies all deaths where the instrument of death was a firearm as "gun violence." Therefore, says PolitiFact, the liberal group "Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America" was telling us the unabashed truth.

If only PolitiFact were telling us the unabashed truth about that.

Afters (we don't trust AI except where we already know what it's saying is true. Take this with a grain of salt):

https://x.com/i/grok/share/mwfOcxIMSeEXpGD0P5ZyPmOCb

PolitiFact vs the strawman version of Nikki Haley's claim about teen girls and suicide

 Strawmen are always in season at PolitiFact, particularly when a Republican speaks.

Broken quotations always count as a red flag worth investigating. PolitiFact's is especially worth investigating because the key part of the blurb doesn't come from Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley: "is a reason why."

So, did Haley say it was a reason?

Here's the relevant part of CNN's transcript of its Haley town hall (bold highlights added)

(APPLAUSE) TAPPER: So, woke, the word woke used to be used by progressives to talk about an awareness of inequities and historical inequities, but obviously it means something else to conservatives criticizing it. What does it mean to you? How do you define woke?

HALEY: There's a lot of things. I mean, you want to start with biological boys playing in girl sports. That's one thing. The fact that we have gender pronoun classes in the military now, I mean, all of these things that are pushing what a small minority want on the majority of Americans, it's too much. It's too much. I mean, the idea that we have biological boys playing in girls' sports, it is the women's issue of our time. My daughter ran track in high school. I don't even know how I would have that conversation with her. How are we supposed to get our girls used to the fact that biological boys are in their locker rooms? And then we wonder why a third of our teenage girls seriously contemplated suicide last year. We should be growing strong girls, confident girls.

Then you go and you talk about building a strong military. How are you going to build the morale in a strong military when you're doing gender pronoun classes? Why is it that --

(APPLAUSE)

HALEY: Why is it that you have, you know, kids undergoing critical race theory where if a little girl's in kindergarten if she's -- goes into kindergarten if she's white, you're telling her she's bad. If she's brown or black, you're telling her she's never going to be good enough and she's always going to be a victim. All of these things have gone to where they are pushing, you know, and transgender, the whole issue of the transgender, it's not that people don't think in America you should live the way you want to live. I want everybody to live the way they want to live, but stop pushing your views on everybody else. That's the problem, is there starting to push everything on the rest of us. 

Considering the context, it makes sense to conclude Haley says pushing woke ideology on kids has contributed to the higher suicide rate and that she used biological boys in girls' locker rooms as an example of forcing woke ideology in school.

PolitiFact, however, focuses on its distortion of Haley's argument. Even though Haley did not say that having biological boys with the girls in the girls' locker room caused a higher suicide rate, PolitiFact insists that is what Haley claimed.

PolitiFact asked Haley's campaign to comment, apparently sending a "Have you stopped beating your wife" inquiry to the campaign:

When we asked Haley’s campaign spokesperson to cite research that supported her claim, he sent a statement by Haley that did not answer the question: "We have to grow strong girls, and that is being threatened right now. Whether it’s biological boys going into girls’ locker rooms or playing in girls’ sports, women are being told their voices don’t matter. If you think this kind of aggressive bullying isn’t part of the problem, you're not paying attention."

Note that the campaign's response accords well with our interpretation of Haley's remarks.

But PolitiFact sets its trap, asking for evidence specific to boys in the girls bathroom, with the plan in mind to invoke its fallacious "burden of proof" criterion and find Haley's supposed claim "False."

Teen girls today are experiencing rising rates of suicidal ideation. However, there is no research that suggests this is being caused by the presence of trans athletes in locker rooms.

Research points to other causes, including feelings of isolation or loneliness, feeling like a burden on others, difficulty navigating parental and family relationships and pressures from constant exposure to social media.

Pushing woke ideology on teen girls could not possibly contribute to feeling of isolation or loneliness, feeling like a burden on others, difficulty navigating parental and family relationships and pressures from constant exposure to social media. Right?

Fact checkers have no business putting their own spin on the words of others. Or that would be the case if the modern fact checker weren't in the business of crafting narratives instead of telling the truth.

PolitiFact inventinged a claim for Haley, committing a straw man fallacy, then smacked down its straw man based on the fallacy of appeal to silence. Those two fallacies in PolitiFact's hands add up to a "False" rating for Haley.

 

MetaFact Group: PolitiFact “fact-checks” accurate reporting about study showing vaccines provide less immunity than prior infections

A relative newcomer to the fact-checking the fact-checkers club, MetaFact Group, today published an on-target item showing yet another example of a misleading PolitiFact technique.

It's PolitiFact's method of putting words, or at least an implied argument, into the mouth of another.

PolitiFact has rated as “half true” a headline by the Gateway Pundit that accurately summarizes the findings of a study by Maccabi Healthcare and Tel Aviv University, showing those vaccinated against COVID-19 were 13 times more likely to still be infected than those not vaccinated (but recovered from covid--Ed.). The study states “SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees had a 13.06-fold (95% CI, 8.08 to 21.11) increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to those previously infected.”

PolitiFact said the headline was misleading because the study had not yet passed peer review and the headline also supposedly implied that it was a good idea not to receive the vaccine (bold emphasis added):

The headline accurately reflects some of the study’s findings but ignores the study’s limitations, including that only one vaccine was tested, and that other studies have found that COVID-19 poses much greater danger to people who have not been vaccinated.

Without that context, the headline leaves the impression that it’s safer to get COVID-19 and hope to recover than to try to avoid it by getting vaccinated. That’s not true.

This is the same PolitiFact that recently told us that fossil fuel power plants kill millions of birds annually without informing its readers that the estimate was based almost entirely on predictions of how many birds climate change might kill in the future. The research paper averaged predicted future bird deaths out over a 40-year period. Because science. See more details at Bryan's Zebra Fact Check site.

It's okay for PolitiFact fact checkers to skimp on context. But it's not okay for you, me, or Gateway Pundit.

MetaFact Group also made a critical point about the legitimacy of the Gateway Pundit article:

(K)nowing that natural immunity maybe [sic] superior to vaccine-based immunity is a relevant point of discussion for a university considering whether it can mandate its students, faculty and staff take the COVID-19 vaccines.

Read the article at Meta Fact Group and bookmark the site.

PolitiFact attack on DeSantis attacks a straw man

PolitiFact's supposed fact check of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) of Florida did not fact check what DeSantis said. Instead it attacked a straw man version of DeSantis' words.

The tag we use on these kinds of stories here at PolitiFact Bias is "altered claims." It's a relatively common occurrence. We just don't have time to document them all.

The problem sticking out like a sore thumb yet invisible to PolitiFact? DeSantis didn't say anything about what's driving the coronavirus surge. Look for yourself. Here's PolitiFact's account of what DeSantis said, with our highlights of DeSantis' actual words:

DeSantis unloaded on Biden during an Aug. 4 news conference in Panama City, Fla. 

"He’s imported more virus from around the world by having a wide open southern border. You have hundreds of thousands of people pouring across every month," DeSantis said. "You have over 100 different countries where people are pouring through. Not only are they letting them through — they're then farming them out all across our communities across this country. Putting them on planes, putting them on buses."

DeSantis doubled down in a fundraising letter later that day: "Joe Biden has the nerve to tell me to get out of the way on COVID while he lets COVID-infected migrants pour over our southern border by the hundreds of thousands. No elected official is doing more to enable the transmission of COVID in America than Joe Biden with his open borders policies."

See? There's not a word from DeSantis about what's driving the current coronavirus surge.

Perhaps the fact checkers somehow derived the core of their fact check based on the news report they cited in the story (WPTV):

DeSantis accused Biden of accelerating the pandemic through lax security at the U.S.-Mexico border.

But again, DeSantis didn't say anything about accelerating the pandemic. He said Biden's border policy was "helping to facilitate" the spread of covid-19:

(")And so he's not shutting down the virus, he's helping to facilitate it in our country."

"Facilitate" is not the same word as "accelerate." They don't mean the same thing.

"Accelerate" is not the same word as "drive." They don't mean the same thing.

In like manner, "facilitate" doesn't mean the same thing as "drive." 

It's irresponsible and wrong for journalists to play the telephone game with key terms.

The fact check's conclusion derives almost entirely from PolitiFact's straw man focus:

DeSantis said Biden has driven the current coronavirus surge because he "imported more virus from around the world by having a wide open southern border." 

The available evidence shows that coronavirus hot spots tend to be clustered either far from the border or on the water, whereas the entire land border with Mexico has fairly low rates. The hotspot locations tend to correlate with low rates of vaccination among the public. 

In addition, the U.S. does not have a "wide open" border. Most people who are encountered are turned away under a Trump-era policy that Biden continued. 

We rate the statement False.

DeSantis did not say Biden has driven the current coronavirus surge. DeSantis said Biden had done more than any other elected official to facilitate the spread of covid. PolitiFact's experts affirmed that border crossings under Biden represent a valid concern. PolitiFact never bothered comparing Biden's border policy to that of any other elected official (Gov. Cuomo, maybe?).

PolitiFact put two other (post-publication note: we deal with one of them!) elements in its fact check that we find worthy of note.

'Hotspot Locations Tend to Correlate With Low Rates of Vaccination'

That sentence was a fact check of Biden, albeit carried out with a carelessness that totally undermines its validity.

Let's take a look at the map of "hotspots" PolitiFact provided.

 

Now take a look at the Johns Hopkins map (as of Aug. 8, 2021--archived version doesn't show the map) showing vaccine percentages by state (fully vaccinated, top; at least one dose, bottom):

 

The claim from President Biden and repeated by PolitiFact, deserved far more scrutiny than it got (look at Nebraska and Nevada, just for starters).

PolitiFact supposedly relied on The New York Times to support the notion that low vaccination rates explain the surge's current pattern:

There’s also a more plausible explanation for the coronavirus surge’s current pattern: Case rates are higher in places with lower rates of vaccination. 

An analysis by the New York Times found that at the end of July, counties with vaccination rates below 30% had coronavirus case rates well over double the case rates in counties with at least 60% vaccination. And five of the six least-vaccinated states — Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi — are all squarely within the geographical quadrant of the country that has the highest case rates.

PolitiFact's claim relies on specious reasoning, given that the Times conducted nothing like a controlled experiment. The Times showed some charts of test results in high-vaccinated counties compared to low-vaccinated counties. But a vaccinated person is more likely to dismiss mild illness as something other than covid and skip testing. Unvaccinated people would be more likely to get tested and artificially bump the percentage for positive tests in counties with low vaccination percentages.

We'd say that a fact checker who fails to realize this perhaps belongs in another line of work.

Instead of building a straw man out of DeSantis' claim, PolitiFact would have served the public better by doing a serious examination of Biden's implied claim that vaccination effectively provides a significant degree of immunity against covid--to the point where vaccinated persons do not need to worry much about passing the virus on to others (vaccinated and unvaccinated alike).

How does Iceland fit with PolitiFact's rubberstamping of Biden's claim, for example?

From the Brussels Times (bold emphasis added):

About one month ago, the country became the first in Europe to lift all its domestic restrictions, however, on 12 July, it faced a sharp spike in COVID-19 cases for the first time since October, registering 355 new infections, despite over 70% of the total population being vaccinated.

Three-quarters of these were among vaccinated people, and most were linked to the Delta variant of the virus, according to the health authorities. The last such spike in the country had been in late October.

How will mainstream media fact checkers wean themselves from preferring narratives instead of checking facts?

PolitiFact turns incoherent Obama statement into "Half True" claim

 Behold:

Remember President Obama the constitutional scholar?
 
Here, the constitutional scholar makes the ability of 30 percent of the U.S. population to control a majority of Senate seats conditional on filibuster reform.

It's a completely preposterous argument, yet somehow PolitiFact arranges the tea leaves so they spell out "Half True."

As for what Obama got wrong, PolitiFact admits it only obliquely (bold emphasis added):

In the transcript of the interview with Klein, this passage about the filibuster included a link to a Washington Post analysis of the differences between population and representation in the Senate. However, the Post article doesn’t precisely support what Obama said. 

...

While the article’s conclusion is generally consistent with Obama’s point, it doesn’t have anything to do with the filibuster or the 60-vote threshold to end one. Rather, the article looked at representation throughout the entire chamber.

PolitiFact tries to make it "Obama's point" that Senate can magnify the power of small populations. But that wasn't really Obama's point. Obama was arguing for filibuster reform.

There is no filibuster reform that changes that basic feature of the Senate. Obama's argument doesn't even count as coherent.

PolitiFact makes a great show of explicating Obama's claim that "30 percent of the population potentially controls the majority of Senate seats." But that's true regardless of the filibuster. We could keep 1,000 people in each of 49 states and have everybody else move to Alaska. That would give a tiny percentage of the U.S. population a supermajority of Senate seats.

So what? There's no argument for filibuster reform in there.

One might use the above scenario to argue for changing the Constitution itself to make it more democratic. But we would hope that somebody would remember that the undemocratic features in the U.S. Constitution were put there deliberately, specifically because the framers considered democracy in the form of popular rule an exceptionally bad form of government. That's why they set up a republic with a federalist system dividing up political power in a variety of ways.

Watch PolitiFact argue Obama's point was something other than filibuster reform (bold emphasis added):

(W)e crunched the numbers from the 2020 Census and concluded that Obama’s overall point had merit but that he misstated the details.

In particular, Obama said that states with a small percentage of the population could control "the majority of Senate seats." Given today’s partisan tendencies in each state, controlling an actual majority of seats would not be feasible for that small a percentage. However, a small percentage of the population could control enough seats to successfully wield the filibuster, which effectively gives them control over whether a majority can pass legislation.

As illustrated above, a small percentage of the population could potentially wield a supermajority in the Senate. It has nothing to do with the filibuster, and the need for filibuster reform was Obama's point.

Check out PolitiFact's summary version of Obama's point:

Obama said, "The filibuster, if it does not get reformed, still means that maybe 30% of the population potentially controls the majority of Senate seats."

In the Senate’s current makeup, senators representing 29% to 39% of the U.S. population would be sufficient to mount a filibuster and block a vote on legislation, in a sense controlling what can be passed in the chamber.

In the first paragraph PolitiFact relates what Obama actually said. In the second paragraph PolitiFact translates what he said into something completely different. "Majority of Senate seats" turns magically into the number of seats needed to successfully filibuster.

Obama's argument was elaborate window-dressing for the real and truthful argument for filibuster reform: "If we change the filibuster we can pass more of the legislation we want to pass." That statement could earn a "True" from PolitiFact, eh?

It was completely ridiculous for Obama to try to suggest filibuster reform would affect the constitutional ability of small-population states to potentially control a majority of Senate seats. The one is independent of the other. That leaves Obama's true point, the supposed need for filibuster reform, without any coherent support.

It was nice of PolitiFact to overlook that fact in rating Obama's spurious argument "Half True."

It's flatly false that the filibuster, reformed or not, allows a minority population to control a majority of Senate seats. That's a feature of the Constitution, not the filibuster.

A constitutional scholar ought to know that.


Correction June 8, 2021: Removed a redundant "the" from "and the the need for filibuster reform." Hat tip to the the Eye Creatures.

PolitiFact takes Devin Nunes out of context to give "False" rating

PolitiFact says a "Half True" claim is one that is "partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context."

 Also PolitiFact:

Did Rep. Nunes self-stultify when he, a Republican, communicated the notion that Republicans have no way to communicate with the demise of Parler?

PolititiFact's treatment of his claim is almost that simple, and it could have been as simple as that given PolitiFact's failure to consider the context. As a general rule of literary interpretation, the interpreter ought to look for evidence in context that might explain an apparently self-contradictory statement.

To help illustrate that point, we'll look for evidence PolitiFact followed its own published statement of principles in fact-checking Nunes' claim.

What did Nunes say?

For starters, we put together a transcript from the Fox News clip PolitiFact used as its source. Fox News is poor for preserving its videos and also poor for publishing transcripts. Our transcript may end up the best available before much time has passed. We note that regretfully.

We highlight in bold the parts of Nunes' statement that PolitiFact used in its story (punctuation may vary).

The effect of this is that there is no longer a free, and open social media company, or site, for any American to get on any longer. Because these big companies, Apple, Amazon, Google, they have just destroyed a, what was likely, Parler's likely a billion dollar company. Poof, it's gone. 

But it's more than just the financial aspect of that. Republicans have no way to communicate. If, it doesn't even matter if you're Republican or conservative. If you don't want to be regulated by left wingers, that are at Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, where you get shadowbanned, nobody gets to see you, nobody gets to see you, they get to decide what's violent or not violent. It's preposterous. 

So, I don't know where the hell the Department of Justice is at right now, or the FBI, uh, this is clearly a violation of antitrust, civil rights, RICO statutes, there should be a racketeering investigation on all the people that coordinated this attack on not only a company, but on all of those, of those, like us, like me, like you, Maria; I have three million followers on Parler. Tonight, I will no longer be able to communicate with those people. And they're Americans. 

Context, Context, Context

Is it hard at all to see Nunes point in the above? He's saying with the loss of Parler, people (including Republicans) have no social media option that isn't regulated by left wingers. That's the context for "Republicans have no way to communicate." PolitiFact follows that with "And" in its telling. We are confident our transcript is correct. Nunes followed with "If." So the idea he was trying to communicate was "Republicans have no way to communicate if (they) don't want to be regulated by left wingers."

PolitiFact's misquotation of Nunes counts as minor, but as we have noted, when such mistakes help PolitiFact in setting a misleading narrative they count as significant indicators of bias.

He added: "Republicans have no way to communicate. And it doesn't even matter if you're a Republican or conservative. If you don't want to be regulated by left-wingers that are at Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, where you get shadowbanned, nobody gets to see you."

If a fact checker has no interest in seeing the contextual clues explaining a statement, then the fact checker will more likely overlook contextual clues explaining a statement.

Nunes said "If" not "And" and his statement about it not mattering if you're a Republican or conservative was an interruption of his idea that hamstringing Parler took from Republicans the social media company not regulated by left wingers.

How did PolitiFact miss it?

Careless Interpretation Leads to Faulty Premise

When PolitiFact overlooked the context of Nunes' remarks, it led to the false premise that Nunes was literally saying Republicans have no way at all to communicate. Though PolitiFact did not use Nunes own ability to speak to contradict his claim, the evidence the fact checkers used was not far removed from that:

Some users on Twitter found it ironic that Nunes was making his claim on Fox News, the most watched cable network, and a favorite medium for Republicans to communicate.

We may forgive Twittter randos for badly missing Nunes point. But isn't PolitiFact supposed to be better than that?

More:

And long before social media, members of Congress had several venues to communicate with constituents, including some unfiltered ones.

Long before social media (the thing Nunes was talking about), Republicans could communicate with constituents a number of ways! 

One would think that context simply does not exist for PolitiFact.

Want more? PolitiFact has more:

House members can communicate via press releases, send out mass emails or paper mail to constituents, or host phone-in or online town halls. Capitol Hill has places where members can hold in-person press conferences or satellite interviews with media outlets back home or national outlets, or record a video message to email to their constituents.

What does that have to do with social media companies having the power to moderate conservatives who try to use social media? Nothing, really. It's just PolitiFact ignoring the context and fact-checking a straw man version of Nunes' claim. It's the type of thing fact-checkers do routinely, and we've been pointing it out for years and years.

PolitiFact continues on and on in the same vein. But by now we hope our readers get the idea.

 It's just another claim PolitiFact invented in order to find it false.

Afters:

PolitiFact used a number of (scare quote) "expert" sources in this fact check. The quotations likely reflect that the experts were asked whether Republicans can communicate without Parler. PolitiFact does not share with its readers the text of its inquiries. But it's a good bet those inquiries used PolitiFact's false premise as their basis.

PolitiGnatStraining No. 573: Is natural immunity really a vaccination?

PolitiFact truly never ceases to amaze us with its forays into free interpretation of political claims. Perhaps President Trump deserves some of the credit for driving PolitiFact mad via Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Would you believe that Mr. Trump believes that immunity acquired through recovery from the coronavirus counts as a "vaccine"?

That's where PolitiFact went on Dec. 15, 2020:

This analysis will take some doing, because PolitiFact's fact check contains multiple layers of fact check lunacy.

First, we need to see what Trump actually said. PolitiFact covers that adequately in the fact check:

"You develop immunity over a period of time, and I hear we’re close to 15%. I’m hearing that, and that is terrific. That’s a very powerful vaccine in itself," said Trump, who was responding to a reporter’s question about what his message to the American people was as the holidays approach and levels of COVID cases in the U.S. continue to rise.

Immediately after, the fact check runs off the rails at about a 90 degree angle:

It wasn’t the first time Trump had given credence to the idea that if enough people in a population gain immunity to a disease by being exposed to it, the illness won’t be able to spread through the remainder of the population — a concept known as "herd immunity."

Assuming PolitiFact and fact checker Victoria Knight did not seek to deliberately mislead their readers, this looks like a likely case of confirmation bias. Knight and PolitiFact were looking for Trump to say something false and interpreted Trump's claim to create the falsehood they sought. Otherwise, it's a mystery how anyone could interpret Trump's claim as they did.

First, Trump is pretty obviously talking about natural immunity as a metaphorical vaccination. Natural immunity is not entirely unlike immunity acquired via a human-devised vaccination. We would hope that even liberal bloggers working as non-partisan fact-checking journalists would know about figures of speech such as metaphors.

Second, why take the 15 percent plateau as the notion Trump was comparing to a vaccine instead of the concept of naturally acquired immunity? We can't imagine a reason apart from either confirmation bias or premeditated deceit. Naturally acquired immunity has approximately the same role in achieving herd immunity as a vaccine. Both confer immunity, and both would contribute toward a population's potential for herd immunity. If that was Trump's point, as seems to reasonably be the case, he's right.

How does a mainstream fact checker get so far off course so quickly? And why isn't everybody blowing the whistle on this kind of fact-check shenanigan?

As for PolitiFact, it keeps chugging along on one of the sharpest tangents ever devised:

However, experts have warned that attempting to achieve herd immunity naturally, by allowing people to get sick with COVID-19, could result in more than a million deaths and potentially long-term health problems for many. A better way to achieve protection across the population, experts say, is through widespread vaccination.

Why do Knight and PolitiFact think this paragraph has any relevant relationship to Trump's claim? Do they suppose Trump calling natural immunity a "powerful vaccine in itself" represents an intent to change policy to forgo the use of man-made vaccines and seek to combat the virus with natural immunity alone?

This is fact-checking gone insane. The paragraph doesn't belong. PolitiFact could have talked about the role natural immunity plays in achieving herd immunity. Readers could benefit from that explanation. But they get hardly any of that explanation from PolitiFact. Instead, they get railroaded down PolitiFact's branching tree of tangent:

So, we thought it was important to check whether 15% is anywhere close to the herd immunity threshold, and whether this level of natural immunity could be considered "as powerful as a vaccine."

So PolitiFact fact checks whether Trump is right that 15 percent natural immunity could confer herd immunity, even though that really has nothing to do with what Trump said. And where does that "as powerful as a vaccine" line come from? PolitiFact puts it within quotation marks, as though it is quoting Mr. Trump. Is it supposed to be something Trump said?

It's not in the transcript of Trump's remarks that PolitiFact linked. And our Google search using "Trump" AND "as powerful as a vaccine" did nothing to encourage us to believe the quotation came from Trump.

Remember, a team of editors supposedly reviews each PolitiFact fact check. Apparently each of them gave some sort of okay to this dumpster fire of a fact check.

The PolitiFact team overlooked an obvious use of metaphor and then went circus clown on a balloon to turn Trump's claim into something it wanted to fact check.

Viva Frei: PolitiFact is Fake News

Rest assured, PFB readers, the recent lack of new content at PolitiFact Bias has nothing at all to do with improved work at PolitiFact. PolitiFact stinks as badly as ever. We just don't have the time right now to devote to publishing.

But it was worth taking a moment to highlight a video blog by Viva Frei, a Canadian neighbor who happened to notice some problems at PolitiFact.

Frei hits PolitiFact over a story on cash bail, and hits PolitiFact over a fact check of the claim Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, Calif.) broke the law when she tore up the copy of the State of the Union address Trump delivered to her before Congress.

Frei's certainly caught PolitiFact grading a different claim than it claimed to fact check on the bail issue. Only the United States and the Philippines have money bail systems dominated by private commercial bond companies. A good number of other countries have money bail systems, and the claimant, Gavin Newsom, did not bother with that kind of specificity. The "Mostly True" rating could not apply for that reason alone.

Enjoy the video! And hat tip to reader "Brian" for bringing the video to our attention.

PolitiFact Wisconsin: "Veteran" and "service member" mean the same thing

A funny thing happened when PolitiFact examined Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard's claim the Trump administration deports service members.

Instead of ruling on whether the Trump administration was deporting service members, PolitiFact Wisconsin decided to look at whether the Trump administration was deporting non-naturalized service veterans.

Therefore "service members" are the same thing as non-naturalized service veterans?

We wish we were kidding. But read PolitiFact's summary conclusion. PolitiFact equates "service members" with "veterans" as though it's the most natural thing in the world, and doesn't even mention citizenship status:

Our ruling

Gabbard said at the same time Trump talks about supporting veterans, "he is deporting service members who have volunteered to serve this country."

The Trump administration expanded the grounds under which people, including veterans, can be deported, which some blame for more veterans being forced to leave the country. That said, GAO documents make clear the issue existed before Trump took office -- something that wasn’t acknowledged in Gabbard’s claim.

Our definition for Mostly True is "the statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information." That fits here.

PolitiFact does mention citizenship issues in the body of the story. It opens, for example, with a frame emphasizing military service and illegal immigration:

Military matters and illegal immigration.

Both are hot-button issues for voters in the 2020 presidential election, though for different reasons.

U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, a Democratic presidential hopeful and major in the Hawaii Army National Guard, linked them when she spoke July 11, 2019 at the League of United Latin American Citizens convention in Milwaukee.

In the quotation PolitiFact Wisconsin provided, Gabbard did nothing to explicitly link military service with illegal immigration. The journalist (or reader) would have to infer the connection. And PolitiFact Wisconsin failed to link to a transcript of Gabbard's speech, linking us instead to the Journal Sentinel's news report that fails to supply any additional context to Gabbard's remarks.

Intentional Spin?

We see evidence suggesting PolitiFact Wisconsin applied intentional spin in its story to minimize the misleading nature of Gabbard's statement.

In context, Gabbard referred to "lip service" Trump offers to "our veterans, to our troops," but PolitiFact lops off "to our troops" in its headline and deck material. That truncated version of Gabbard's statement makes it appear reasonable to assume Gabbard was talking about veterans and not active service members.

Put simply, PolitiFact manipulated Gabbard's statement to help make it match the interpretation PolitiFact's liberal bloggers gave it in the story. PolitiFact not only chose not to deal with the obvious way Gabbard's statement might mislead people, but also chose not to transparently disclose that decision to its readers.

Principles Forsaken

PolitiFact's statement of principles is a sham. Why? Because PolitiFact applies the principles so haphazardly that we might as well call the result situational ethics. The ideology of the claimant appears to serve as one of the situational conditions driving the decision as to which principle to apply in any given case.

In Gabbard's case, she made a statement that could easily be interpreted in a way that makes it false. And PolitiFact often uses that as the justification for a harsh rating. In its statement of principles PolitiFact says it takes into account whether a statement is literally true (or false). It also says PolitiFact takes into account whether the statement is open to interpretation (bold emphasis added).:

The three editors and reporter then review the fact-check by discussing the following questions.
• Is the statement literally true?
• Is there another way to read the statement? Is the statement open to interpretation?
• Did the speaker provide evidence? Did the speaker prove the statement to be true?
• How have we handled similar statements in the past? What is PolitiFact’s jurisprudence?

PolitiFact effectively discarded two of its principles for the Gabbard fact check.

We say that a fact-checking organization that does not apply its principles consistently cannot receive credit for consistent non-partisanship or fairness.

With PolitiFact, "words matter" sometimes.



Afters

We've always been open to legitimate examples showing PolitiFact's inconsistency causing unfair harm to liberals or Democrats.

The examples remain few, in our experience.

Bernie Sanders + PolitiFact + Equivocation = "True"

When PolitiFact plucks a truth from a bed of untruth (or vice-versa) we call it "Tweezers" and tag the example with the "tweezers or tongs" tag.

But every once in a while PolitiFact goes beyond tweezing to pretend that the tweezed item and the bed of untruth were both true.

And that's the case with a PolitiFact Vermont fact check of Democratic Party presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

It's true, as Sanders said, that people in jail in Vermont may vote. Except perhaps those in jail convicted of voter fraud or other crimes that may run afoul of Vermont's constitutional stipulation that voters must maintain "quiet and peaceable behavior."

The problem occurs in the middle of Sanders' claim. Vermont's original 1793 Constitution (like its 1777 Constitution) limits voting to men above a certain age. So it's just not true that it says "everybody can vote."

PolitiFact might have solved the problem in the fact check header by shortening the quotation with an ellipsis. Like this: "In my own state of Vermont ... people in jail can vote." That statement pretty much counts as true if we assume that everyone in jail is of quiet and peaceable behavior by Vermont's definition.

Unfortunately, the text of PolitiFact Vermont's fact check reinforces the false middle of Sanders' claim instead of either explicitly excluding it or providing accurate context. The fact check does not mention that Vermont's early constitution did not allow women to vote. Nor does it let on that men had to attain a certain age to vote.

Given those omissions, we count it a major victory that PolitiFact noted the stipulation that voters must be of "quiet and peaceable behavior"--not that the potential exceptions affected PolitiFact's rating of Sanders' claim:

Our ruling

Sanders said: "In my own state of Vermont, from the very first days of our state’s history, what our Constitution says is that everybody can vote. That is true. So people in jail can vote."

It’s true that Vermont felons can vote from prison today, and we can’t find anything to suggest that hasn’t always been the case in the state. Though it seems quite possible that the efforts being made today to allow them to cast ballots hasn’t always been made.

The Vermont Constitution requires people to be of "quiet and peaceable behavior," but otherwise places no restrictions on who can vote. And Sanders said prisoners "can" vote, not that they always have voted.

We rate this claim True.

 Though PolitiFact claims Vermont's constitution places no restrictions on who can vote (other than "quiet and peaceable behavior"), the fact is that Vermont places a number of restrictions on who can vote:

§ 42. [VOTER'S QUALIFICATIONS AND OATH]

Every person of the full age of eighteen years who is a citizen of the United States, having resided in this State for the period established by the General Assembly and who is of a quiet and peaceable behavior, and will take the following oath or affirmation, shall be entitled to all the privileges of a voter of this state:

You solemnly swear (or affirm) that whenever you give your vote or suffrage, touching any matter that concerns the State of Vermont, you will do it so as in your conscience you shall judge will most conduce to the best good of the same, as established by the Constitution, without fear or favor of any person.

Every person who will attain the full age of eighteen years by the date of the general election who is a citizen of the United States, having resided in this State for the period established by the General Assembly and who is of a quiet and peaceable behavior, and will take the oath or affirmation set forth in this section, shall be entitled to vote in the primary election.

PolitiFact's fact check fairly overflows with misinformation and ends up calling the false parts of Sanders' statement true.

Is this why we have fact checkers or what?

PolitiFact: "European Union"=Germany

PolitiFact makes all kinds of mistakes, but some serve as better examples of ideological bias than others. A July 2, 2018 PolitiFact fact check of President Donald Trump serves as pretty good evidence of a specific bias against Mr. Trump:

The big clue that PolitiFact botched this fact check occurs in the image we cropped from PolitiFact's website.

Donald Trump states that the EU sends millions of cars to the United States. PolitiFact performs adjustments to that claim, suggesting Trump specified German cars and specifying that the EU sends millions of German cars per year. Yet Trump did not specify German cars and did not specify an annual rate.

PolitiFact quotes Trump:

At one point, he singled out German cars.

"The European Union … they send us Mercedes, they send us -- by the millions -- the BMWs -- cars by the millions," Trump said.

Saying Trump "singled out German cars" counts as twisting the truth. Trump "singled out" German cars in the sense of offering two examples of German cars among the millions sent to the United States by the European Union.

It counts as a major error for a fact checker to ignore the clear context showing that Trump was talking about the European Union and not simply German cars of one make (Mercedes) or another (BMW). And if those German makes account for large individual shares of EU exports to the United States then Trump deserves credit for choosing strong examples.

It counts as another major error for a fact checker to assume an annual rate in the millions when the speaker did not specify any such rate. How did PolitiFact determine that Trump was  not talking about a monthly rate, or the rate over a decade? Making assumptions is not the same thing as fact-checking.

When a speaker uses ambiguous language, the responsible fact checker offers the speaker charitable interpretation. That means using the interpretation that makes the best sense of the speaker's words. In this case, the point is obvious: The European Union exports millions of cars to the United States.

But instead of looking at the number of cars the European Union exports to the United States, PolitiFact cherry picked German cars. That focus came through strongly in PolitiFact's concluding paragraphs:

Our ruling

Trump said, "The European Union … they send us Mercedes, they send us -- by the millions -- the BMWs -- cars by the millions."

Together, Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen imported less than a million cars into the United States in 2017, not "millions."

More importantly, Trump ignores that a large proportion of German cars sold in the United States were also built here, using American workers and suppliers whose economic fortunes are boosted by Germany’s carnakers [sic]. Other U.S.-built German cars were sold as exports.

We rate the statement False.

That's sham fact-checking.

A serious fact check would look at the European Union's exports specifically to the United States. The European Automobile Manufacturers Association has those export numbers available from 2011 through 2016. From 2011 through 2013 the number was under 1 million annually. For 2014 through 2016 the number was over 1 million annually.

Data through September 2017 from the same source shows the European Union on pace to surpass 1 million units for the fourth consecutive year.


Does exporting over 1 million cars to the United States per year for three or four consecutive years count as exporting cars to the United States by the millions (compare the logic)?

We think we can conclude with certainty that the notion does not count as "False."

Our exit question for PolitiFact: How does a non-partisan fact checker justify ignoring the context of Trump's statement referring specifically to the European Union? How did the European Union get to be Germany?

Ben Shapiro on Trump and fewer insurance options

Last week PolitiFact issued a completely ridiculous "Mostly False" rating on President Trump's tweet claiming Obamacare had resulted in millions of Americans having fewer health insurance options.

Many, including Jeff and me, pointed out the absurdity on Twitter. But we did not get around to writing it up for the blog.

Ben Shapiro saves us the trouble by summarizing PolitiFact's failure neatly in a short YouTube video.

Enjoy.



Good work, Ben Shapiro.

We expected PolitiFact to walk this one back or at least try to answer the wave of criticism the ruling received. PolitiFact elected to do neither, apparently convinced that its airtight reasoning successfully weathered all the criticism it received.

In other words, industrial strength bubble.

More PolitiFingers on the scale: Loretta Lynch and LGBT hate crimes

Hat tip to journalist Dustin Siggins for bringing this item to our attention.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch received a "True" rating in a June 23, 2016 fact check by PolitiFact Florida. Lynch said members of the LGBT community are more often the victims of hate crimes than members of any other recognized community.

The "Truth-O-Meter" rating counts as an out-and-out gift to Lynch.

Our tipster, Dustin Siggins, pointed out that PolitiFact admittedly could only verify Lynch's claim according to a very incomplete data set:

An important caveat: There are several holes in the reporting of hate crimes to the FBI. Local law enforcement agencies voluntarily report their data to a state agency that compiles the information for the FBI. Some local agencies report no hate crimes or don’t submit a report.

A study by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics found that 60 percent of violent hate crime victimizations were not reported to police in 2012.

A 2016 Associated Press investigation found that more than 2,700 city police and county sheriff's departments have not submitted a single hate crime report to the FBI during the past six years — about 17 percent of all city and county law enforcement agencies nationwide.

The caveat obviously wasn't important enough to drop Lynch's rating below "True."

So Siggins made a solid point about the quality of the data.

We were even more concerned about PolitiFact placing its focus on the "per capita" measurement of hate crimes.

There's simply nothing in Lynch's statement to suggest she was talking about a per capita measurement. PolitiFact reported that Lynch said she relied on a story in The New York Times for her information. And it's true that the Times' story focuses on per capita rates of hate crime.

But how does that excuse Lynch for the words she used?

We don't see how it could, and this type of imprecision frequently counts against the accuracy of a claim.

Compare a recent "False" rating PolitiFact gave to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Trump said Americans pay the highest taxes in the world. He may well have been talking about the U.S. corporate tax rate, which PolitiFact said in 2014 was one of the highest in the world. Trump did not explicitly say he was talking about the corporate tax rate, however. Would it, or should it, make a difference if his campaign had responded to PolitiFact saying he was talking about the corporate tax rate?

We think statements get their degree of truth from their immediate context. Later explanations may help point to a different dimension of that context, even potentially revealing a hidden angle to a fact checker. But the later explanation per se is irrelevant to the truth of the claim.

If Not Per Capita Then Not True

According to the words she used and according to the statistics PolitiFact used, the LGBT community is not the group most victimized by hate crimes. Blacks are more often victimized by hate crimes, as PolitiFact plainly admitted (bold emphasis added):

Another way to look at the data about hate crimes rather than per capita is the sheer number of crimes. By that measure, there were more hate crimes against African-Americans than LGBT residents. But that’s not surprising since African-Americans represent about 13.2 percent of the population according to the U.S. Census, while the LGBT community represents about 2.3 percent of the population, according to a survey done by the Centers for Disease Control (other surveys found a slightly higher rate.)

PolitiFact ignores its own evidence showing Lynch was wrong, implicitly modifies Lynch's comment to refer to the per capita measurement, and awards Lynch a "True" rating.

That's fact-checking?

PolitiFingers on the scale

Did you know that PolitiFact is objective and nonpartisan?

Yes, well, it was a trick question.

Yesterday PolitiFact gave us a fantastic example of placing fingers on the scale to change the outcome of a fact check

The example comes from PolitiFact's March 1 fact check of President Barack Obama. Here's the visual:

The problem?

We just don't find it anywhere close to obvious that this:

"None of the GOP candidates have a climate change plan"

is a plausible paraphrase of this:

"There is not a single candidate in the Republican primary that thinks we should do anything about climate change."

Does PolitiFact writer Lauren Carroll make an effort to justify her paraphrase of Obama? Not from what we can tell.

Carroll's conclusion features a representative gloss:

Bush, who was in the race when Obama made his comment, and Kasich both have said they believe human-caused climate change is real and have said pursuing these alternative energy sources could mitigate the problem. But neither has outlined a specific plan.

For some Republican voters, this stance might be a plus. But it doesn’t change the veracity of Obama’s statement.

So advocating increased private-sector reliance on renewable energy sources to mitigate climate change means that Bush and Kasich think we should do nothing about climate change?

Seriously?

One can make Obama's statement somewhat true by (charitably) assuming that by "we" he means the federal government. If we make enough unfounded assumptions, we can find some truth in Obama's statement. But by the time we've made those assumptions we're not really engaged in fact-checking.

Yet that's what PolitiFact did, effectively putting its PolitiFingers on the scale. It's not logical to conclude that lacking a plan for the federal government to act means that there is no desire to address a problem.

This was yet another sham fact check from the fraudsters at PolitiFact.



Afters

Here's Ben Carson explaining that it's important to sustain the environment. After that, he condemns Obama's climate change plan for putting a high price tag on accomplishing almost nothing:




Jeff Adds: This editorial from Carroll seems like a rating searching for a quote. PolitiFact openly admits they select claims to rate partly based on what they find interesting.

In this case, it's easy to imagine Carroll wanting to highlight (in her view) the GOP's lax attitude toward the climate change issue and went fishing for a quote to use as a vehicle for her to express that view. That scenario would plausibly explain how she made the leap from Obama's explicit claim to the different (and invented) claim she rated.

This example highlights the selective nature of PolitiFact's body of work. Contrary to the myth that they're dispassionate researchers uncovering the truth of all claims, they're partisan actors promoting or ignoring narratives as they see fit.