How to fact check like a partisan, featuring PolitiFact

First, find a politician who has made a conditional statement, like this one from Marco Rubio (R-Fla.):

"As long as Florida keeps the same amount of funding or gets an increase, which is what we are working on, per patient being rewarded for having done the right thing -- there is no reason for anybody to be losing any of their current benefits under Medicaid. None," he said in a Facebook Live on June 28."

Rubio starts his statement with the conditional: "As long as Florida keeps the same amount of funding or gets an increase ..." Logic demands that the latter part of Rubio's statement receive its interpretation under the assumption the condition is true.

A partisan fact checker can make a politician look bad by ignoring the condition and taking the remainder of the statement out of context. Like this:

As the partisan fact checker will want its work to pass as a fact check, at least to like-minded partisans and unsuspecting moderates, it should then proceed to check the out-of-context portion of the subject's statement.

For example, if the condition of the statement is the same or increased funding, look for ways the funding might decrease and use those findings as evidence the politician spoke falsely. For a statement like Rubio's one might cite a left-leaning think tank like the Urban Institute, with a finding that predicts lower funding for Medicaid:

The Urban Institute estimated the decline in federal dollars and enrollment for the states.

It found for Florida, that federal funding for Medicaid under ACA would be $16.8 billion in 2022. Under the Senate legislation, it would fall to about $14.6 billion, or a cut of about 13 percent (see table 6). The Urban Institute projects 353,000 fewer people on Medicaid or CHIP in Florida.

Easy-peasy, right?

Then use the rest of the fact check to show that Florida will not be likely to make up the gap predicted by the Urban Institute. That will prove, in a certain misleading and dishonest way, that Rubio's conditional statement was wrong.

The summary of such a partisan fact check might look like this:

Rubio said, "There is no reason for anybody to be losing any of their current benefits under Medicaid."

Rubio is wrong to state that benefit cuts are off the table.

There are reasons that Medicaid recipients could lose benefits if the Senate bill becomes law. The bill curbs the rate of spending by the federal government over the next decade and caps dollar amounts and ultimately reduces the inflation factor. Those changes will put pressure on states to make difficult choices including the possibility of cutting services.

We rate this claim Mostly False.

Ignoring the conditional part of the claim results in the fallacy of denying the antecedent. The partisan fact checker can usually rely on its highly partisan audience not noticing such fallacies.

Any questions?


Correction: July 2, 2017: In the next-to-last paragraph changed "to notice" to "noticing" for the sake of clarity.

PolitiFact absurdly keeps "True" rating on false statement from Hillary Clinton

Today we were alerted about a story from earlier this week detailing a New York Times correction.

Heavy.com, from June 30, 2017:

On June 29 The New York Times issued a retraction to an article published on Monday, which originally stated that all 17 intelligence organizations had agreed that Russia orchestrated the hacking. The retraction reads, in part:

The assessment was made by four intelligence agencies — the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community.”

It should be noted that the four intelligence agencies are not retracting their statements about Russia involvement. But all 17 did not individually come to the assessment, despite what so many people insisted back in October.

The same article went on to point out that PolitiFact had rated "True" Hillary Rodham Clinton's claim that 17 U.S. intelligence agencies found Russia responsible for hacking. That despite acknowledging it had no evidence backing the idea that each agency had reached the conclusion based on its own investigation:

Politifact concluded that 17 agencies had, indeed, agreed on this because “the U.S. Intelligence Community is made up of 17 agencies.” However, the 17 agencies had not independently made the assessment, as many believed. Politifact mentioned this in the story, but still said the statement was correct.

We looked up the PolitiFact story in question. Heavy.com presents PolitiFact's reasoning accurately.

It makes for a great example of horrible fact-checking.

Clinton's statement implied each of the 17 agencies made its own finding:

"We have 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin, and they are designed to influence our election."

It's very easy to avoid making that implication: "Our intelligence agencies have concluded ..." Such a phrasing fairly represents a finding backed by a figure representing all 17 agencies. But when Clinton emphasized the 17 agencies "all" reached the same conclusion it implied independent investigations.

PolitiFact ignored that false implication in its original rating and in a June 2017 update to the article in response to information from FBI Director James Clapper's testimony earlier in the year:

The January report presented its findings by saying "we assess," with "we" meaning "an assessment by all three agencies."

The October statement, on the other hand, said "The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident" in its assessment. As we noted in the article, the 17 separate agencies did not independently come to this conclusion, but as the head of the intelligence community, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence speaks on behalf of the group.

We stand by our rating.

PolitiFact's rating was and is preposterous. Note how PolitiFact defines its "True" and "Mostly True" ratings:

TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing.
MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.

It doesn't pass the sniff test to assert that Clinton's claim about "17 agencies" needs no clarification or additional information. We suppose that only a left-leaning and/or unserious fact-checking organization would conclude otherwise.

Demolition=construction? Yup, says PolitiFact

Bless PolitiFact's heart. Those fact-checking journalists just don't seem to realize that they're having trouble setting aside their biases. Unless they do realize it and wantonly lie in their fact checks.

This is actually the third in our series on PolitiFact's debate-night blogging. We broke with the tradition of mentioning that in the title to bring attention to PolitiFact's fundamental error in the case we will examine.

During the third debate, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, used undocumented workers to construct the Trump Tower in Manhattan.

Let's let PolitiFact's Linda Qiu tell it:

Clinton: "He used undocumented labor to build the Trump Tower."

This is True. Between 1979 and 1980, Trump hired a contractor to demolish a Manhattan building to make way for the eventual Trump Tower. That contractor in turn hired local union workers as well as 200 undocumented Polish workers to meet the tight deadlines.

According to Qiu and PolitiFact, demolishing a building is constructing a building. Or at least not different enough to make a difference in the rating. We assume that if Clinton had said Trump used undocumented workers to demolish the building that once stood where Trump Tower now stands that the claim could rate no higher than "True" on PolitiFact's "Truth-O-Meter." One version of the claim is no more accurate than the other by "Truth-O-Meter" standards.

We can't pass up the opportunity to remind our readers that PolitiFact prides itself on paying careful attention to the way politicians use words:

Words matter – We pay close attention to the specific wording of a claim. Is it a precise statement? Does it contain mitigating words or phrases?

That's a joke, right?

Contrary to PolitiFact, "demolition" and "construction" do not carry the same meaning. The construction of a new building will typically not start until after the complete demolition of the building occupying the site of the proposed new construction. If undocumented workers demolished the building the Trump Tower replaced, then they finished their work before construction of the Trump Tower began. If they finished their work before construction began, then it is misleading at best to say they helped construct the Trump Tower.

How can a fact checker botch something that obvious?

A vintage PolitiFact "gotcha" fact check

When was PolitiFact anything other than a horrible, left-leaning fact check organization?

We don't buy it.

Take this example from 2007, which caught our eye while we reviewed PolitiFact's preposterous ruling of "Mostly False" for the idea that France and Germany thought Iraq had WMD.

When Republican Fred Thompson was running for president in 2007, he argued that the "Iraq Study Group" said Iraq was planning to get its nuclear program up and running again despite sanctions.

PolitiFact to the rescue! "False," screamed the trademarked "Truth-O-Meter."

According to PolitiFact, the "Iraq Study Group" (put together by Congress) had made no such finding. So Thompson's claim was false.

Hilariously, unless you were Fred Thompson, PolitiFact bothered to note that the "Iraq Survey Group," the CIA group tasked in Iraq with assessing Iraq's WMD capability, had made a claim that pretty much matched what Thompson said:

So we find Thompson's claim to be False.

It's possible that Thompson was referring to the Iraq Survey Group, a CIA panel that was formed to investigate whether there were weapons of mass destruction or the intent to produce WMDs in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The report found that Saddam did not produce or possess any weapons of mass destruction for more than a decade before the U.S.-led invasion, but that he "aspired to develop a nuclear capability — in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks."

Gotcha. 

PolitiFact eventually got around to writing up a statement of principles, which it published in February 2011. We would highlight PolitiFact's declaration about "gotcha" journalism.

Is the statement significant? We avoid minor "gotchas"’ on claims that obviously represent a slip of the tongue.

Too late for Fred Thompson, unfortunately. Thompson's stuck with that undeserved "False" on his record. Maybe PolitiFact went with it because it was a major "gotcha"?

This is the type of fact check that signaled early on to us that something was wrong with the new fact checker in town.

The worst part? PolitiFact isn't getting better.

Extremely deceptive abortion ad looks "Half True" to PolitiFact

In arguing that PolitiFact displays a liberal bias, we suggest that big mistakes harming conservatives or helping liberals/progressives potentially make a strong argument for PolitiFact's liberal bias. If PolitiFact's biggest blunders harm conservatives or help liberals, it strengthens our case against PolitiFact.

PolitiFact veterans Angie Drobnic Holan and Louis Jacobson, editing and writing for upstart franchise PolitiFact Nevada, give an absolutely sensational example supporting our case.

The political arm of the nation's largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, ran an ad saying Republican candidate Joe Heck voted to "criminalize abortion for rape victims."

The ad's vagueness misleads its audience in two main ways, suggesting:

• Rape victims risk criminal charges for seeking an abortion
• Criminal charges would apply for any abortion sought by a rape victim, regardless of the number of weeks elapsed since the pregnancy started

PolitiFact's research confirmed that the bill Heck voted for would not result in criminal charges for rape victims. The penalties were reserved for abortion providers.

PolitiFact completely overlooked the other main deception. We would call the second deception the main one. PolitiFact mentioned in its fact check that the abortion bill Heck supported would ban abortion after 20 weeks in nearly all cases, including for rape victims. But PolitiFact penalized Planned Parenthood Votes not a bit for allowing the ad's audience to think Heck was criminalizing abortion for all rape victims.

Note the resounding silence in PolitiFact's summary paragraphs, echoing the silence in the rest of its story:

The Planned Parenthood Votes ad said that "Joe Heck voted to criminalize abortion for rape victims."

The group has a point that a bill Heck voted for and co-sponsored would have criminalized medical professionals from performing abortions after 20 weeks for rape victims who are not at risk of death or significant physical health complications due to pregnancy, at least in Washington, D.C. This would have eliminated all legal abortions for women in that category.

However, the ad blurs the issue of whether medical professionals or the women themselves would be at risk of prosecution. Only medical professionals would face legal consequences under the bill, but the ad’s imagery implies otherwise, using only women as visuals. On balance, we rate the ad Half True.

For some reason, it did not seem important to PolitiFact to point out that abortions after 20 weeks occur rarely. A FactCheck.org fact check cited the Guttmacher Institute in saying abortions after 20 weeks account for 1.2 percent of all U.S. abortions. Unless we assume that rape victims tend to wait longer for their abortions than other women, the statistic means that the law would affect very few rape victims.

How does this not draw the attention of a fact checker? It's like meeting Cyrano face to face and failing to notice his nose.

We suggest that mistakes like this favoring a cause dear to the political left make a good evidence of PolitiFact's liberal bias. This is the kind of mistake you look for from a fact checker that has a liberal bias.

This is one of many we've found from PolitiFact. But it's an especially obvious one.


Afters

We contacted the writer and editor of the fact check to point out the highly misleading part of the ad they had failed to mention. If we receive any response from the PolitiFact team or a change to the fact check we will update this item.

We note that PolitiFact will not erase the evidence of its bias by changing its fact check days after publishing. A writer got the flawed story past a team of editors. Fixing the story will not change that. If PolitiFact fails to change its story and the rating it gave to Planned Parenthood Votes, it will show something worse than unintentional bias: It will show a lack of integrity.

"Trump Effect" reveals PolitiFact as mindless partisans

Need proof that PolitiFact is staffed and run by mindless partisans? Read on.

PolitiFact thoroughly butchered the truth with a fact check of one of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's claims last week. Clinton said parents and teachers were complaining of a "Trump Effect" in our schools. The "Trump Effect" described by Clinton involved a rise in bullying and harassment targeting "students of color, Muslims, and immigrants.”

Clinton used a survey report from the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center as evidence supporting her statement. PolitiFact rated Clinton's claim "Mostly True," despite the fact that the report offered no real support for the claim. I fisked the report and PolitiFact's fact check with an article at Zebra Fact Check.

The final point in that article leads to some strong evidence of PolitiFact's liberal tilt. I charged that PolitiFact used a different standard for Clinton's claim about the "Trump Effect" than it used for a recent claim Trump made about rising crime.

PolitiFact's wildly different approaches to the two claims make a great case that PolitiFact allows liberal bias to influence its work. Given the likely role of bias in slanting the fact-check, I elected to expand on the point here at PolitiFact Bias.

Parallel Statistical Claims

Trump said crime is rising, and implicitly placed blame on the Obama administration.

Clinton said, by implication, that bullying and harassment are on the rise in our schools and placed explicit blame on Trump's campaign.

PolitiFact's eye-grabbing presentations

Supporting Evidence?

FBI crime statistics supported Trump's claim with respect to violent crime, and a number of newspaper articles directly supported that aspect of Trump's claim.

The only data supporting Clinton's claim came from a small number of anecdotes (less than 100) collected from a biased sample of teachers.

PolitiFact's interpretation of the claims

PolitiFact decided Trump was claiming the rise in crime was a trend and not simply an anomalous bump (we are unable to detect the evidence that helped PolitiFact make that determination).

PolitiFact made no suggestion that Clinton was claiming a trend.

PolitiFact's approach to the evidence

In Trump's case, PolitiFact used data from 2014 and before to judge Trump's 2016 claim that crime is rising. PolitiFact for some reason did not consider preliminary data from 2015 that supported Trump's claim with respect to violent crime.

In Clinton's case, PolitiFact ignored evidence of dropping school bullying and harassment prior to 2016 to focus on the evidence available from 2016: A handful of anecdotes. It's worth noting that one of the experts PolitiFact cited in its Clinton fact check says no real consensus exists on the reliability of bullying/harassment metrics.

PolitiFact reaches its conclusions

On Trump:

If you look at overall violent and property crimes -- the only categories that would seem inclusive enough to qualify as "crime," as Trump put it -- he is flat wrong. In fact, crime rates have been falling almost without fail for roughly a quarter-century. We rate his claim Pants on Fire.

The Trump addendum (after critics pointed out PolitiFact ignored data from 2015):

While the preliminary data shows spikes in crime rates in some cities, Trump’s statement was broad, without qualifiers, and it came amid comments that painted an overarching image of a nation in decline. Trump didn’t say that crime was rising "recently" or "in recent months" or "over the past year" or "in some places."

PolitiFact kept its "Pants on Fire" rating for Trump in spite of the supporting evidence.

On Clinton:

The term Trump Effect is a product of the survey’s authors. And the survey is unscientific because it's based on anecdotal reports. But experts in bullying told us the Southern Poverty Law Center’s survey and their sense of current trends in schools supports Clinton’s point.

PolitiFact's artistic license

The Trump and Clinton claims differ in that Trump's claim lacks specifics. As we see in the Trump addendum above,  PolitiFact takes what Trump did not say as its license to interpret the "crime is rising" claim as a broad trend instead of a observation supported by contemporary news reports--news reports PolitiFact did not bother to mention in its own reporting.

The two claims also differ in that Trump flatly stated crime was rising while Clinton implied it by attributing it to "parents and teachers." Would PolitiFact have been forced to give Trump a "Mostly True" rating if he had said "Newspapers are reporting crime is rising"?

We deeply doubt it. PolitiFact would assuredly have focused on the point Trump was implying, that crime is rising, not on the mere fact that newspapers were reporting it. Maybe Trump could have raised his rating all the way up to "False" with that rephrasing?

Yet if Trump had used that phrasing, we would have an extremely close parallel between the two claims. Both politicians would imply a statistical trend. But only Trump would have widely-accepted data to partially support his claim. Clinton would not, the alleged opinions of PolitiFact's experts notwithstanding.

The blame game?

 In Trump's case, the "Pants on Fire" ruling canceled any need to deal with Obama's responsibility for rising crime. If crime isn't rising, obviously Obama is not at all to blame for rising crime.

But what about that "Trump Effect" that parents and teachers are worried about? Is the "Trump Effect" Trump's fault if a handful of teachers say it is?

PolitiFact opted to simply drop the issue of causation in Clinton's case. Clinton was able to explicitly blame implicitly rising harassment ("Mostly True") on Trump without any consequences from PolitiFact.

Conclusion

PolitiFact's inconsistency favors the left. See the "Afters" section for even more evidence of the same.

Afters: The needs of the "many"

PolitiFact's hard-left defense of Clinton contained another notable inconsistency involving a comparison to a different fact check of Donald Trump.

PolitiFact exaggerated the survey evidence supposedly supporting Clinton by claiming "many" teachers blamed Trump for increasing bullying and harassment:

Many of these teachers, unsolicited, cited Trump’s campaign rhetoric and the accompanying discourse as the likely reason for this behavior.

The Zebra Fact Check investigation suggests PolitiFact was misled about the number of teachers saying Trump was responsible for increasing bullying or harassment. Out of almost 2,000 teachers participating in the survey, 849 answered the question about bullying or biased language and of those 123 mentioned Trump. A fraction of those placed any kind of blame on Trump for anything. We would generously estimate that 25 teachers blamed Trump for something (not necessarily bullying or harassment) in answering that question. This implies that, to PolitiFact, "many" can be less than 1.25 percent of 2,000.

Yet when Donald Trump said "many" of the celebrities supporting Hillary Clinton weren't so hot lately, PolitiFact offered no hint that it would allow the bar to be set so low:

Trump has a point that out of hundreds of celebrities endorsing Clinton, some have faded.

Whether Trump had a point or not, PolitiFact rated his claim "Mostly False."

Not bothering to actually fact check whether "many" (l.25 percent?) of Clinton's Hollywood supporters aren't so hot lately seems to be the key to the "Mostly False" rating.

We invite readers to do the fact-checking PolitiFact apparently did not do: Count how "many" teachers blamed Trump for an increase in minority-targeted bullying in their schools. But don't tell PolitiFact what you find. Make them do their own research.

Universal health plans that aren't

From time to time we remind our readers that only the lack of time keeps us from finding many more examples of PolitiFact's bias and incompetence.

Here's one we missed from 2012, involving then-San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro:

As the captured image shows, Castro said Seven U.S. presidents had tried to expand health care to all Americans. PolitiFact rated the claim "Mostly True," but based on very questionable evidence.

Two U.S. presidents tried to provide health care for all Americans. A few others tried to expand the provision of health care to more Americans. In fact, PolitiFact used something like the latter wording to paraphrase Castro, perhaps reasoning that changing what Castro said would make the evidence stack up better in his favor (bold emphasis added):

President Barack Obama’s health care law has been one of the most polarizing aspects of his presidency, with Republicans criticizing it at every turn. But the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, didn’t run from it. He applauded Obama for pursuing expanded health care -- and succeeding where his predecessors had failed.

Castro mentioned expanding health care to "all Americans," not the bar-lowering "expanded health care" offered by PolitiFact. By replacing Castro's actual words, PolitiFact avoided the embarrassment of admitting that Castro was wrong when he went on to say Obama succeeded in providing health care to "all Americans." The Affordable Care Act succeeded in growing the number of Americans who have some type of insurance--often Medicaid--but the ACA did not achieve universal coverage.

It takes universal coverage to bring health care to "all Americans."

Fact-checking is great, right?

The Ultimate List of non-Universal Universal Health Care Plans

 

PolitiFact, Paul Ryan and cherry-picking

Does this add up?

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said during a television appearance that Obamacare was making families pay double-digit premium increases.

PolitiFact gave Ryan's statement its "fact check" treatment, which we're inclined to call liberal blogging.

Step 1:

Ryan is suggesting ... increases in the "double digits." We decided to rate that claim on the Truth-O-Meter.

Step 2:

According to HHS data, 19 out of the 37 states in the federal exchange saw an average rate increase in the double digits. At the low end, rates in Missouri increased by 10.4 percent while Oklahoma saw the biggest hike at 35.7 percent.

Step 3:

Ryan has a point that some plans have seen increases of 10 percent or more with insurance purchased on healthcare.gov. However, Ryan is cherry-picking the high end of rate changes.

Got it? PolitiFact says Oklahoma is experiencing an average Obamacare exchange rate hike of 35.7 percent. And saying "double-digit" rate increases is cherry-picking from the high end of rate changes.

Given that a 10 percent rate hike is "double digits" and the top (average) exchange rate hike is over 35 percent, what kind of sense does it make to say Ryan is cherry-picking the high end of rate changes?

Silly liberal bloggers.

Ryan used a normal ambiguity when he spoke. "Families" does not mean "All families" as PolitiFact claimed Ryan was suggesting. If a substantial number of families are getting hit with double-digit rate increases then what Ryan said was accurate. And by "accurate" I don't mean "True" in the sense of a "Truth-O-Meter" rating. I mean "accurate" in the sense that PolitiFact uses the term when it defines "True" and "Mostly True" for purposes of its cheesy "Truth-O-Meter":

 PolitiFact's definitions are themselves "Half True." You can tell that's the case when Ryan's accurate statement receives its "Half True" rating while Bernie Sanders' inaccurate statement receives a "Mostly True" rating.

PolitiFact fact-checking is a game liberal bloggers play.


Afters

Other than Ryan's office providing supporting URLs dealing with the individual market, what would lead PolitiFact to simply ignore the much larger group plan market in its fact check? Do group plans not count? Does the lack of an employer mandate mean Obamacare does not affect group insurance despite the new regulations it imposes on the group market?

Rate increases? What rate increases?

And according to an Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. survey of smaller employers, most of which have less than 1,000 employees, released Friday, 44% reported premium rate hikes of 6% or more in 2014. Twenty-three percent saw rates in the double digits, the survey showed.

We'll say it again: Silly liberal bloggers.

After Afters

Before I forget the caboose on this PolitiFact trainwreck ...

Ryan missteps by saying the law alone is "making" the premiums increase. Rather, experts say, hikes are more likely the result of insurers underestimating how sick enrollees would be.

Silly cherry-picking liberal bloggers. Obamacare is the reason insurers don't know how sick their enrollees will be. Guaranteed issue. Remember? No, I guess you don't remember.


Correction Dec. 20, 2015: Changed from "Ind." to "Wis." the state which Ryan represents. Hat tip to commenter Pagan Raccoon for pointing out the error.
Correction Dec. 21, 2015: When repeating PolitiFact's 35.7 figure we typo-inflated it to 37.7. That's now fixed. Hat tip to "John Smith" for using the comments section to point out the error.

Unearthing a truth PolitiFact buried,

2009

We've often reminded readers that we only scratch the surface of PolitiFact's mountain of journalistic malfeasance. Reminding us of that point, we have an item from way back on Sept 15, 2009, when PolitiFact was still connected to Congressional Quarterly.

The issue? Economist Thomas Sowell wrote that President Obama let the economic stimulus bill sit on Obama's desk for three days before the president signed it.

PolitiFact:

In a recent column in Investor's Business Daily, economist and political commentator Thomas Sowell said that President Barack Obama was trying to rush his health care bill through Congress. Sowell cited the quick passage of the economic stimulus bill in February 2009 as proof that Obama is too hasty in passing major legislation.

Sowell wrote that "the administration was successful in rushing a massive spending bill through Congress in just two days — after which it sat on the president's desk for three days, while he was away on vacation."

In truth, Sowell wasn't trying to prove Obama was too hasty in passing major legislation. He was arguing Obama passes legislation hastily when there's no apparent reason to rush the legislation.

"Allow five days of public comment before signing bills"

A PolitiFact item from earlier that same year, on January 29, 2009, helps provide some context for Sowell's complaint:

"Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them," Obama's campaign Web site states . "As president, Obama will not sign any nonemergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House Web site for five days."

But the first bill Obama signed into law as president — the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act — got no such vetting.

So, Obama promised he would wait at least five days before signing non-emergency legislation.  The three-day wait for the stimulus bill implies it qualified as an emergency bill. But not such an emergency that Obama couldn't wait a few days before signing it.

The key to PolitiFact's argument? The ultra-literal reading of "sat on the president's desk." In PolitiFact's judgment, since the bill wasn't literally sitting on the desk waiting for the president's signature therefore the case won't support Sowell's point.

Sowell expresses his point:

The only reasonable alternative seems to be that he wanted to get this massive government takeover of medical care passed into law before the public understood what was in it.

Moreover, he wanted to get re-elected in 2012 before the public experienced what its actual consequences would be.

Unfortunately, this way of doing things is all too typical of the way this administration has acted on a wide range of issues.

The example using the stimulus bill followed. Sowell points out spending from the stimulus bill took place over an extended period, making a joke of the notion the stimulus was intended as a strong short-term Keynesian stimulus.

Sowell's point with his example remains: If the stimulus bill was an emergency, then why not sign it as soon as possible?

How did PolitiFact miss Sowell's point? Maybe PolitiFact wasn't interested in Sowell's point. How did PolitiFact miss the context of President Obama ignoring his broken pledge of transparency on legislative action? Maybe PolitiFact wasn't interested in that context.


Correction 8-25-2014:  Referred to the Affordable Care Act in one instance where the stimulus bill was intended.

PolitiFact, the fact checker that makes stuff up

PolitiFact, PolitiFact, PolitiFact.

What can you say about a fact checker that makes up facts out of whole cloth?

The pictures tell the story (albeit the pictures have words embedded).

The PolitiFact fact check:

A capture of the relevant portion of the McConnell ad:

PolitiFact simply invents a straw man argument for Sen. McConnell, suggesting his ad claims the Republican alternative to the Democrats' version of the Violence Against Women Act offered stronger protections for women overall.  But that wasn't the argument in the ad.  The ad simply says "McConnell voted for stronger protections for women than Obama's agenda will allow."  Using that wording allows the ad to refer to select features of the Republican bill that Obama's agenda wouldn't allow.  And PolitiFact confirms it (bold emphasis added):

For starters, Republicans proposed mandatory minimum sentences — ranging from 5 to 15 years — on certain sexual assault crimes.

However, advocates of domestic violence awareness were specifically against the inclusion of these provisions.

So McConnell was right.  Democrats wouldn't support mandatory minimum sentences for certain crimes involving violence against women.  Presumably Democrats opposed longer minimum sentences because allowing people with a history of committing violence against women out of jail sooner presents no threat to women.  Or maybe it gives lawyers more work.

This wasn't just the misleading headline that we so often see in mainstream journalism.  PolitiFact fact-checked the ad as though it was comparing the new VAWA of the Democrats to the Republican alternative.  It's obvious in the fact check's conclusion:

Perhaps McConnell could argue that the mandatory minimum sentences Republicans required in their alternative made for a "stronger" bill, but advocates of domestic abuse awareness opposed this measure as unnecessary.

And the Republican measure was absent several protections for certain groups that were included in the bill Obama signed. McConnell is within his right to oppose those provisions, but it makes it hard for him to prove that he supported "stronger" legislation.

We rate the claim Mostly False.

These fact checkers do not give the facts.  They make them up.

'The Tampa Bay Times endorsed Mitt Romney' (Updated)

This week a person argued on PolitiFact's Facebook page to the effect that PolitiFact isn't biased since the Tampa Bay Times endorsed Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election.

Of course the person had confused the Tampa Bay Times, which owns and runs PolitiFact, with the more conservative Tampa Tribune.  The Times endorsed Obama in 2012, just as it has endorsed Democratic candidates going back at least to 1948.

We don't think the editorial stance of the Times serves as a particularly good evidence of PolitiFact's liberal bias.  But it's worth burying once and for all the notion that the conservative editorial stance at the Times shows a lack of liberal bias at PolitiFact.

Without further ado, the documented evidence of the Times' support for Democratic presidential candidates going back to Truman:

The Tampa Bay Times (St. Petersburg Times) always endorses Democrats for president

2012:  Obama

Obama for president

2008:  Obama

The Times recommends: Obama for President

The Times doesn't make it easy to research its endorsements, so we have to rely on some secondary sources to round out our list.  Google's News Archive made the process perhaps easier than it's ever been.

The clueless guru?

Late last month, we published a limited study on PolitiFact's execution of a simple math problem: calculating percentage error.  Using search parameters that suitably simulate randomness, we found 14 cases where PolitiFact explicitly or implicitly performed a percentage error equation.  PolitiFact used the wrong equation an astounding nine times.  Two of the cases were ambiguous.  Those two we gave the benefit of the doubt.

We tweaked PolitiFact over this failure on June 14 after Neil Brown, editor and vice president of PolitiFact's parent the Tampa Bay Times, called PolitiFact editor Angie Holan a "guru of best practices" in a June 9 tweet.  We said a guru of best practices would do percent error calculations the right way.

On Friday, June 27, 2014, PolitiFact doubled down on its methods in a fact check of President Obama.  President Obama said child care costs more than college tuition in 31 states.  PolitiFact, with veteran staffers Louis Jacobson writing and Holan editing, said the president was cherry picking and eventually gave him a "Mostly True" rating.

PolitiFact's explanation of Obama's cherry-picking caught our attention:

It’s worth noting some clarifying language in the report --"for an infant in center-based care" -- that is absent from Obama’s statement. This is actually the highest-cost example of the four cases the report looked at.

If you look at the cost for a 4-year-old in center-based care -- rather than an infant -- it costs more than in-state college tuition and fees in 19 states. That’s 39 percent fewer states compared with statistics for infant care. (Generally, care for infants is more intensive, so costs tend to go down as children get older.)

The report also looked at costs for home-based care, which is often a less expensive option for parents. For infants, the cost of home-based care is higher than college costs in 14 states. That’s a 55 percent reduction in states compared to Obama’s 31.

And for 4-year-olds, the cost of home-based care is higher than college in 10 states. That’s a 68 percent reduction in states compared to Obama’s 31.

What's the problem?  One could argue there's no right figure here to use as a baseline for a percent error calculation, except the same principle holds true for calculating a percentage change from a baseline.  And in this fact check we've got a charge of cherry-picking.  Cherry-picking creates a favorable impression compared to alternative baselines.  Calculating the exaggeration above the baseline is exactly like calculating the percentage error.

And guess what?  PolitiFact consistently performs the calculation incorrectly in a way that makes Obama look better.

1. For the 4-year-old group, PolitiFact said the cost was higher for child care in 19 states, 39 percent fewer than the figure Obama used:  31.  Do the calculation using 19 as the baseline and the result tells the effect of Obama's cherry-picking.  The real exaggeration Obama achieves is 63 percent.  PolitiFact's method underestimates the exaggeration by 38 percent (24 percentage points).
2. For home-based care of an infant, the result follows the same pattern.  PolitiFact said the difference was a 55 percent reduction.  In truth, Obama's cherry-picking inflated the number of states by 121 percent.  PolitiFact's calculation reduced Obama's exaggeration by about 55 percent.
   
3. For home-based care of 4-year-olds we see the same story again.  PolitiFact called the difference "a 68 percent reduction."  Using the cost of home-based care for 4-year-olds as the baseline, we find Obama's cherry-picking exaggerates the number of states by 210 percent.  PolitiFact reduces Obama's exaggeration in this case by 68 percent.

The group Obama chose to cherry-pick provided by far the largest group of states.  Any averaging with the other figures from PolitiFact's source, Child Care Aware of America, will lower the figure, especially if we also consider the school-age category that PolitiFact fails to mention.  The costs for that group were lower than for infants and 4-year-olds.

Rigged.

The percentage figures PolitiFact provides do nothing to explain the effects of Obama's cherry-picking.  Instead, they arbitrarily tell the relationship in size between two numbers, doing it in a way that ultimately misleads readers.

It's easy to see what happened with Obama's misstatement.  Obama's figure matches exactly the figure Child Care Aware of America published for four-year-olds receiving child-care services at a center.  Except Obama described the figure incorrectly.  An average for all three groups, considering both center-care and home-care, would render Obama's statement literally false.  He'd be just another politician who described a study using the wrong words, except PolitiFact goes easier on some than it does on others.  Obama's statement is literally false (off by no less than 63 percent).  It misleads his audience.  He gets a "Mostly True" from PolitiFact.

If these are its best practices then PolitiFact needs a new guru.

Kiriath-Arba: "Lipstick on a Pig"

"Stormin Mormon" of the Kiriath-Arba site brought back some nostalgic memories of PolitiFact and the 2008 election with a 2008 post titled "Lipstick on a Pig."

Many will remember how the McCain campaign whined about then-candidate Barack Obama calling Sarah Palin a pig by analogy not long after the Republican convention.  How silly of him, right?

"Stormin Mormon" puts the pieces together correctly, noting the reaction of the crowd to Obama's line while also noting the thin defense set forth by PolitiFact:

Apparently evidence of the fact that this expression has been used in the past somehow expunges Obama from any guilt. That kind of intentionally obtuse analysis is pathetic. Everyone knows "lipstick on a pig" is a common expression, much like "making a purse out of pig's ear" or the more colorful "shining a turd" variants. But just because the expression has previous meaning doesn't mean Obama's comments were innocent. It just means he had the cover he needed to make an obviously pointed reference to Palin and could rely on the sycophants at PolitiFact.org to back him up.

Bingo!  And back him up they did.

One aspect of Obama's speech that remains largely overlooked was his twin analogy dismissing the type of change represented by the McCain/Palin campaign.  He segued straight from the lipstick on a pig comment to talking about "an old fish" wrapped in paper that will still stink. It simply isn't plausible that a twin analogy featuring "old" and "lipstick" in consecutive references is not designed to refer to McCain and Palin.

And Obama seems to wear a knowing smirk throughout.
 


Ah, those were the days!  Here's how PolitiFact summarized its ruling:

We think it's very clear that Obama was saying McCain's effort to call himself the "candidate of change" is like putting lipstick on a pig, trying to dress up a bad idea to look better. Agree or disagree with Obama's point, but his remark wasn't the smear that McCain's people have tried to make it.

If anyone's doing any smearing, it's the McCain campaign and its outrageous attempt to distort the facts. Did Obama call Palin a pig? No, and saying so is Pants on Fire wrong.

It's fair to say that the McCain campaign exaggerated what Obama did.  He didn't call her pig, exactly.  He called her a pig by analogy.  Palin was the pig in lipstick of change and McCain the old fish of change.  The McCain campaign's failure to make that distinction made their complaint backfire.  PolitiFact and the rest of the mainstream media earned an assist, transforming Obama into the victim in the process.

On reading "Game Change," the account of the 2008 presidential campaign by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, I was actually surprised it contained no report of some surreptitious high-fives in celebration of putting one over on the public and the mainstream media.

"Stormin Mormon" made a good set of comments about PolitiFact and the mass media, so visit and read it all.

My Domestic Church: "Analyzing political analysis -Politifact and Bill O'Reilly"

Blogger "Elena" at My Domestic Church (mydomesticchurch.com) notices the bias at PolitiFact:

This recent article on Politifact about the Poverty Rate is a good example of its liberal bias.  First of all, they are taking apart a comment made by Bill O'Reilly made on the Fox News Channel.

During the O'Reilly Factor segment, Bill O'Reilly claimed that President Johnson's "Great Society" programs had done little to decrease poverty and used as evidence an increase in the poverty rate from 14 percent in 1965 up to 14.3 percent in the present day.  O'Reilly was off on the first figure--it was 17.3 percent in 1965.

Elena observed:

Politifact says that this assertion that the poverty rate has stayed about the same is false. But on reading the Politifact article I wonder if they didn't actually prove O'Reilly's point:

Politifact says: • He uses the wrong numbers. The poverty rate -- the percentage of Americans whose income is lower than the federally determined poverty line -- was 17.3 percent in 1965, not 14 percent. For 2009, O’Reilly is correct -- the rate was 14.3 percent.

So if you compare the poverty rate in those two years, it has fallen by 3 percentage points, or by about one-sixth its original level. It didn’t stay roughly constant, as O’Reilly claimed.

Well, he really didn't say it was constant. Still if it was 17.3 in 1965 and it is now 14 or so, that's not very good progress to have in over 46 years!

Elena is exactly right that PolitiFact exaggerates O'Reilly's claim.  In fact, as she later points out, the PolitiFact story repeats the error in the conclusion, with "O’Reilly said the Great Society programs did nothing to reduce poverty."

Elena expands on her contention that PolitiFact's findings support O'Reilly's point with another observation:

But I got a good chuckle over this:

The poverty rate has fallen even further if you start counting a few years before the Great Society began. Between 1959 and 1962, the poverty rate ranged between 20 and 22 percent. If you compare that level to 2009, poverty declined by an even steeper rate -- by more than one-third.

So if we say the poverty rate was 22 in 1962 and fell to 17 in 1965, that's a drop of 5 points in three years - so couldn't we surmise that the poverty rate was dropping faster and further before the government programs started to interfere?

Touche.

Please read the rest here, and remember not to succumb to the error of dismissing information based solely on the source.  Content comes first.

RedState: "Politifact’s Review of Josh Trevino: Mostly Hackery"

Red State, thanks to Leon H. Wolf, has another excellent criticism of a PolitiFact fact check.

Wolf takes PolitiFact Texas to task over its rating of RedState Co-Founder Josh Treviño. Treviño cited a poll on an MSNBC program. PolitiFact subjected (pun intended) the statement to its Truth-O-Meter.

And that gets Wolf to wondering:

Politifact was forced to concede that Trevino’s characterization of the poll showing a plurality opposed to raising the debt ceiling was 100% correct and accurate. So what caused them to rate Trevino’s remarks as “mostly true” instead of “completely and entirely true”?

I'll supply a bit more context than did Wolf in summing up PolitiFact's complaint (he quotes only the latter paragraph):

Treviño’s other point — that Americans favor mostly budget cuts to deal with the deficit — didn’t poll as neatly as his recap suggests.

Asked how they’d prefer members of Congress to address the deficit, 20 percent said only by cutting spending and another 30 percent said mostly with spending cuts. Four percent favored solely tax increases, while 7 percent said they’d prefer to tackle the deficit mostly by tax hikes.

Wolf notes that the 20 percent and 30 percent figures add up to exactly the plurality Treviño describes.  So Treviño's numbers and underlying argument both stand as "True."  Yet contrast the rating of Treviño with a "Mostly True" PolitiFact rating of President Obama using a similar set of figures:

Getting back to Obama's statement, he said, "You have 80 percent of the American people who support a balanced approach. Eighty percent of the American people support an approach that includes revenues and includes cuts." Even the best poll doesn't show support quite that high -- he would more accurately have accounted for the small numbers that support only tax increases or were unsure, putting the number at 70 percent. But his overall point is correct that polls show most Americans support a balanced approach when given a choice between cutting spending or raising taxes. So we rate his statement Mostly True.

The president, using the most favorable numbers, therefore inflates his figure by 14 percent (10 percentage points).  And the president leaves at least as much context unstated as did Treviño.  Treviño arguably left out nothing of importance.

Wolf (bold emphasis added):

Memo to Politifact: the fact that a poll contains additional information that Trevino did not discuss does not make his statement less than entirely truthful. For example: if Trevino had been discussing the latest poll of the Republican caucus in Iowa and had claimed (correctly) that “Bachmann leads Romney 32%-29%,” his statement would not be rated merely “mostly true” because he did not disclose that Pawlenty was at 7%, Santorum at 6%, etc. Trevino by his own statement wasnt’ (sic) discussing the people who wanted the deficit solution split roughly down the middle, he was discussing people who favored “mostly cuts” versus “mostly taxes,” and his statement was (and should have been scored) completely correct.

Treviño used the poll data responsibly and accurately.  The president didn't.  If Treviño is at fault for failing to point out that a plurality are open to additional revenue/tax increases then isn't the president at fault for failing to mention the plurality who favor more reliance on budget cuts than on tax increases?  Yet PolitiFact mentions only Treviño's supposed omission.  The president gets a pass.

Do both men deserve the same grade, PolitiFact?  Seriously?

Red State: "PolitiFact or PolitiSpin?"

Red State blogger "Flagstaff" published a survey of PolitiFact's fact checking in early July.  Though the survey was limited in scope and lacked any apparent scientific construction, the conclusion is solid:

In the end, we can’t trust a newspaper service to grade the truthfulness of politicians for us.  The grades turn on the political bias of the paper, and you can imagine where that is.  We can’t simply believe claims that they’re non-partisan; we must make them prove it by what they write, then do our own evaluation anyway, based on whether what they say makes sense or not.

Flagstaff made a valuable addition in the subsequent commentary thread:

The bias mostly seems to present by nit-picking at petty mistakes of the right, insisting on strict definitional usage of words, finding fault with what is NOT said, and glossing over major errors from the left, supplying exculpatory explanations for obvious mistakes, allowing broad interpretation of leftist words and their intent, basically behaving exactly as the MSM does every day

Yeah.  That.

Visit Red State to read it all.

PJ Tatler: "PolitiFact or PolitiFAIL? MSM “fact checker” refutes itself on Romney’s Obama debt claim" (Updated)

Patrick Poole of Pajama's Media's PJ Tatler feature shows what happens when GOP figures turn PolitiFact-approved factoids into GOP talking points.

Mitt Romney's campaign did exactly that with a fact-checked claim originally from Eric Cantor (R-Va.).

When PolitiFact went to fact check Romney, it ended up fact checking its own work and finding it wanting.

Poole summarizes:

So we find that “PolitiFact” changed the basis for their assessment once Republicans started using their own assessment to beat up their boyfriend Barack. So will they start giving out ratings of their own posts?

Visit PJ Tatler for all the gory details.

The evidence of ideological bias would improve if the comparison wasn't between two Republicans, but Poole makes a good point about PolitiFact fact checking itself.  PolitiFact is building a record of wild inconsistency, and it appears to break predominantly against conservatives.


Update:

Changed Tatler links to put focus on Tatler story rather than my added commentary.

The New Republic: "'Politifact' Unfairly Attacks The GOP"

Jonathan Chait of The New Republic blasts PolitiFact for a story unfair to Republicans. Chait's story is notable because he and TNR lean decidedly left.

Chait:

Politifact slams the Republicans:

The important point in each examination is that $500 billion -- the figure confirmed by the NRSC's citations -- are not taken out of the current Medicare budget and are not actual cuts. Nowhere in the bill are benefits actually eliminated, experts said.

The $500 billion are reductions to future spending. The health care law attempts to slow the projected growth in Medicare spending by that amount over 10 years.

Medicare spending will still increase. The Congressional Budget Office estimated it will reach $929 billion in 2020, up from $499 billion in actual spending in 2009....

The NRSC’s claim cites a real figure -- $500 billion -- that is part of the health reform debate. But it incorrectly describes it as $500 billion in Medicare cuts, rather than as decreases in the rate of growth of future spending.

Sorry, this is just wrong. Indeed, it's ridiculous, and nobody should listen to Politifact on this topic.

Chait argues that for a program like Medicare, where the costs are expected to dramatically spike, it is ridiculous not to allow some truth to equating a flat cap with a cut.  Chait likewise argues that cutting Medicare Advantage clearly removes the Medicare Advantage benefit (a subsidy).

The only part of the TNR criticism that I don't quite get is Chait's suggestion that this error accords with a PolitiFact bias that favors cutting entitlement programs.

Why then should PolitiFact object to calling the elimination of the Medicare Advantage subsidy a cut?  Does Chait suppose that ObamaCare represents an attempt to cut entitlement programs?  On that point his argument seems strained.  The rest of it appears pretty solid.

Hoystory: "Same idea, different results"

We at PFB noticed something amiss with the Romney rating on jobs recovery, but eagle-eyed Matthew Hoy of the Hoystory blog takes note of a mind-boggling inconsistency regarding the rating:

Here’s Mitt Romney:

"It’s been a failure in the last several years to get America back on track again. It’s taken longer to get Americans back to work than it took during the Great Depression. This is the slowest job recovery since Hoover. It breaks my heart. I want to get us back to work."

Politifact has rated this statement “false.”

Here’s GOP Senate candidate from Florida, Adam Hasner:

"Obama-Nelson economic record. Job creation … at slowest post-recession rate since Great Depression," Hasner tweeted on May 23, 2011.

Politifact has rated this statement “mostly true.”

Hoy has more to say, so please visit Hoystory to devour the rest.

Our take: The two PolitiFact versions are irreconcilable given that they interpret Mitt Romney to say what Adam Hasner said specifically. The PolitiFact rationalization literally makes no sense. Romney's statement appears easily reconcilable with charts similar to the one Hoy posted showing job recovery as the percentage of jobs recovered since the start of the recession.

Somehow PolitiFact overlooked the existence of those ubiquitous charts as they fact checked these statements (make that when they fact checked Romney's statement, where it should have made a big difference). Go figure.


Jeff adds:

Readers may wonder why we highlighted this post from Hoy. As the subjects of the two ratings are both Republicans, it hardly qualifies as an obvious example of PolitiFact's liberal bias. However, the incomprehensible inconsistency between the two ratings provides evidence that PolitiFact arrives at their conclusions by whim and the subjective opinion of their staff rather than by objective standards and verifiable facts. It's exactly this type of inconsistent formula that allows the personal ideology of the writers to determine the outcome of PolitiFact's ratings. That lack of objective standards has overwhelmingly harmed Republicans more often than Democrats.

I'll add that Matthew Hoy has critiqued PolitiFact nearly since its inception and has done a consistently outstanding job of it. We enthusiastically recommend his PolitiFact posts featured at the link on our sidebar.


Bryan adds:

A pox on the "Save As Draft" button, the use of which temporarily removed this post from view.

Hoystory: "PolitiFraud"

Matthew Hoy of the Hoystory blog blasted two recent PolitiFact stories in a recent post.

The first of the two we have already highlighted.  The second had PolitiFact finding "Half True" a Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) claim that the Bush administration turned the $5.6 trillion surplus it inherited from the Clinton administration into an "$11-plus trillion debt."

Hoy:

Normal people might conclude that being off by 98 percent would earn you a false. You’d be wrong. Politifact deemed this statement “half-true.”

Why?

Well, Politifact writer Louis Jacobson and editor Bill Adair apparently really wanted to believe Hoyer, so they allowed themselves to be convinced by this ridiculous explanation:

But when we spoke to Hoyer’s office, they said he was actually using a different yardstick for the first figure.

They said Hoyer was referring to the $5.61 trillion in surpluses that the Congressional Budget Office — the nonpartisan number-crunching arm of Congress — had predicted in January 2001 would materialize over the next 10 years, based on the fiscal outlook at the end of Clinton’s tenure. (Hoyer’s office confirmed our conclusion about the second figure.)

Not only was Hoyer comparing apples to oranges when he made his statement—conflating annual deficit numbers with the overall national debt—but his extended explanation to Politifact suggests he meant to compare apples to kumquats. That apparently makes it half-okay.

Visiting Hoystory to read the whole thing is mandatory.

The same outfit that wants you to believe it "Barely True" that the U.S. ranked 25th in defense spending as a percentage of GDP wants you to believe it's "Half True" that Bush inherited a $5.6 trillion surplus.

That's the wonderful world of PolitiFact fact checking.