PolitiFact: How can we rig this abortion fact check to help President Biden? Part II

Lo and behold, PolitiFact made changes to the fact check we critiqued in our previous post.

Recall that we lodged three main criticisms of PolitiFact's "Mostly True" confirmation of President Biden's claim the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision made the United States an outlier among developed nations.

1. PolitiFact cherry-picked its pool of "developed nations."
2. It misidentified "Great Britain" as a member of the G7, enabling it to ignore a Northern Ireland spanner in the works
3. It falsely stated members of the G7, except the United States, "have national laws or court decisions that allow access to abortion, with various restrictions."

PolitiFact partially fixed the second problem.

Fixing the second problem without fixing the third problem magnifies the third problem. And PolitiFact, again, failed to follow its own corrections policy.

Let's start with the "clarification" notice and work from there:

CLARIFICATION, June 27, 2022: This story has been clarified to reflect that the United Kingdom, which contains Northern Ireland, is a G-7 nation. It has also been updated to describe current abortion laws in Northern Ireland.

Note the "clarification" notice announces a clarification and an update.

What does PolitiFact's statement of principles prescribe for clarifications and updates?

Clarification:

Oops! PolitiFact's statement of principles offers no procedure for doing a clarification!

The either means that PolitiFact is following its principles because the principles allow it to do whatever it wants, or else it means that PolitiFact isn't really following a principle.

Update:

Updates – From time to time, we add additional information to stories and fact-checks after they’ve published, not as a correction but as a service to readers. Examples include a response from the speaker we received after publication (that did not change the conclusion of the report), or breaking news after publication that is relevant to the check. Updates can be made parenthetically within the text with a date, or at the end of the report. Updated fact-checks receive a tag of "Corrections and updates."

We think it clear that this policy calls for newly added "update" material within the original text to occur with clear cues to the reader where the material was added ("parenthetically within the text with a date"). Otherwise, the new material occurs at the end of the item after the update notice.

It's easier to find PolitiFact updates done incorrectly than ones done correctly. But this example shows an update done the right way:

 

The method shown communicates clearly to readers how the article changed.

This is infinitely more transparent than PolitiFact's common practice of an update notice at the end saying, in effect "We changed stuff in the story above on this date."

Understood correctly, PolitiFact corrected its story. It fixed its mistake in misleadingly identifying Great Britain as a member of the G7. And the "update" was not new information. It was information PolitiFact should have included originally but mistakenly did not.

The fact check continues to do readers a disservice by failing to inform them that the U.K. in 2019 forced Northern Ireland, via special legislation, to permit abortion. That still-missing fact contradicts PolitiFact's claim that members of the G7 other than the United States"have national laws or court decisions that allow access to abortion, with various restrictions." The legislation forcing Northern Ireland to permit legal abortion was not a national law, nor was it a court decision.

The law is specific to Northern Ireland.

We'll end with an image we created for Twitter. It's an image from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, using its comparison feature. Text highlighted in blue was changed from the original text, and we added red lines under the part of PolitiFact's fact check that remains false.

PolitiFact unpublishes 2020 fact check on coronavirus origin

Hat tip to NY Post editor Sohrab Ahmari,whose tweet alerted us to this story.

Though unpublishing stories counts as a bit of a taboo in journalism, PolitiFact appears to prefer the practice when it comes to minimizing some of its most sensational blunders.

The latest? In a Sept. 16, 2020 fact check, PolitiFact declared it a "Pants on Fire" conspiracy theory that the coronavirus might have resulted from humans tampering with it in the lab.

No, we're not making this up:

PolitiFact, placing full confidence in experts it cited, declared that human tampering could not account for the genetic code of the coronavirus (bold emphasis added):

The genetic structure of the novel coronavirus, which has been shared by thousands of scientists worldwide, rules out the possibility that it was manipulated in a lab. Public health authorities have repeatedly said the virus was not created in a lab. Scientists believe the coronavirus originated in bats before jumping to humans. Experts have publicly rebuked Yan’s paper, and it’s unclear whether it was peer reviewed.

The claim is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it Pants on Fire!

Though PolitiFact repented of its fact check to the point of unpublishing it, the IFCN-verified fact checkers admitted no error and have not run a correction, clarification or update to appear on its comprehensive (cough) list of corrections and updates.

Here's the editor's note that greets web surfers when they succeed in stumbling across the archived fact check:

Editor’s note, May 17, 2021: When this fact-check was first published in September 2020, PolitiFact’s sources included researchers who asserted the SARS-CoV-2 virus could not have been manipulated. That assertion is now more widely disputed. For that reason, we are removing this fact-check from our database pending a more thorough review. Currently, we consider the claim to be unsupported by evidence and in dispute. The original fact-check in its entirety is preserved below for transparency and archival purposes. Read our May 2021 report for more on the origins of the virus that causes COVID-19.

The fact check occurred as part of PolitiFact's partnership with Facebook. That means Facebook likely used the fact check to help justify sanctioning (censoring) Facebook accounts that suggested the Wuhan coronavirus originated in a lab.

These are the wrong people (using the wrong methods) to trust with the power of censorship.

On the positive side, PolitiFact redirected the old URL to the (temporarily?) archived version of its fact check. That's better than receiving a 404 error, as has happened in the past with PolitiFact's unpublishing.

PolitiFact's Layers of Editors: Biden says he will ensure enough supply to vaccinate 300 Americans by early fall (Updated)

PolitiFact reported President Biden's plans would ensure covid-19 vaccine supplies large enough to vaccinate 300 Americans by early fall.

The Biden administration has envisioned a more prominent federal role, including setting up 100 vaccine centers across the nation by the end of February. Officials say the biggest roadblock is lack of vaccine supply. Biden announced that his administration aims to purchase enough doses to fully vaccinate 300 Americans by the end of the summer or beginning of the fall.

 That's an average of three vaccines per planned vaccine center, by our reckoning.

Of course, PolitiFact pretty obviously omitted the word "million" that belonged between "300" and "Americans." So why do we even bother to mention such a small error? It's not even an example of bias, is it?

There are two related reasons why.

First, because PolitiFact loves to trumpet its rigorous system for reporting accurately. Did you know that PolitiFact's system calls for three editors to review each fact check?

The reporter who researches and writes the fact-check suggests a rating when they turn in the report to an assigning editor. The editor and reporter review the report together, typically making clarifications and adding additional details. They come to agreement on the rating. Then, the assigning editor brings the rated fact-check to two additional editors.

The three editors and reporter then review the fact-check by discussing the following questions.

We hope we're correctly assuming that two editors aside from the assigning editor would not dream of discussing the critical questions without bothering to read the fact check. Under that assumption, three editors and one writer together failed to keep the fact check from including a figure that was off by a factor of one million.

So our first point consists of the observation that PolitiFact's system may allow for considerable error, even obvious error.

So far as we're concerned, that by itself is no big deal. Everybody makes mistakes. So that brings us to our second reason for writing this up.

Thanks to its performance since its inception, we have a very low expectation that PolitiFact will run a correction or update and include this item on its page of "corrections and updates."

That's troublesome.

The best journalists make thorough corrections a priority. Take a gander at the expectation the International Fact-Checking Network lays down for its verified signatory fact-checking organizations:

6.3 Where credible evidence is provided that the applicant has made a mistake worthy of correction, the applicant makes a correction openly and transparently, seeking as far as possible to ensure that users of the original see the correction and the corrected version.

PolitiFact makes many--perhaps most--of its corrections secretly and without transparency.

PolitiFact has a sort of loophole in its corrections policy allowing that lack of transparency. And we've written about it before.

Here's the loophole (bold emphasis from the original):

Typos, grammatical errors, misspellings – We correct typos, grammatical errors, misspellings, transpositions and other small errors without a mark of correction or tag and as soon as they are brought to our attention.

The section on "Typos, grammatical error, misspellings" sneaks in an extra category that PolitiFact feels needs no notice of correction. That is the "other small errors." We think that most likely PolitiFact will treat reporting 300 instead of 300 million as a small error and insert the correction without any notice at all to its readers. Under that scenario, PolitiFact will make no attempt to correct the error openly and transparently, and will likewise make no attempt to bring the corrected number to the attention of those who read the erroneous reporting in the original version.

If PolitiFact surprises us and issues a correction notice, we expect it to follow the form "We reported the wrong number of vaccines Biden promised in the original version of this story." PolitiFact prefers to report vaguely on its mistakes instead of detailing the exact nature of the error as full transparency would demand.

Doing the right thing isn't hard: "We reported Biden would acquire vaccines for 300 Americans when we intended to specify 300 million Americans." Nobody would have a real problem with that.

Whatever one thinks about the significance of the error, the PolitiFact method of treating substantive errors the same as it does typos, grammatical errors and misspellings does not scrupulously follow the IFCN's requirement on corrections.

Supposedly the IFCN requires its signatory organizations like PolitiFact to "scrupulously" follow its guidance on corrections. But the truth is the IFCN has turned a blind eye on PolitiFact's correction shenanigans for years. They know about it because I've informed them about it periodically. The IFCN has never directly addressed any of the reports I've sent detailing PolitiFact's failures to follow policy despite showing no clear evidence that the reports have in any way affected PolitiFact's signatory status.

If the complaints carry no validity, the IFCN should transparently declare the how and why of its judgments.

So this isn't evidence of bias. It's evidence that PolitiFact tries to trick its readers into believing it strives to meet the highest journalistic standards. It advertises a system with failsafes that would prevent the type of error it made. PolitiFact and the IFCN assure readers that PolitiFact performs corrections to appropriately high standards.

It's deception.

We'll update this post to report on whatever actions PolitiFact takes to correct its mistake. A sufficiently pathetic response may result in yet another complaint filed with the IFCN.


Update Jan 28, 2021: We sent an email pointing out PolitiFact's error about 1 p.m. When we checked at about 3:30 p.m., the error was fixed. PolitiFact also appended a correction with the milquetoast-style wording we expected. Oddly, neither the correction nor the tag denoting the correction show up for the archived version of the story. Only the corrected wording in the story shows up.

Here's the correction notice:

CORRECTION, Jan. 28: We corrected the number of Americans the Biden administration hopes to fully vaccinate by the end of summer or early fall.

On the plus side, PolitiFact corrected the error, posted a correction notice and even placed the "corrections and updates" tag.

On the negative side, the correction falls well short of full transparency. PolitiFact told readers on what specific topic it erred but not the specific error it made. That style of correction hides from readers the magnitude of the error. And that was probably the plan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We tried to help. Seriously.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What We Liked

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

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

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

Before

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

After

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

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

One Other Positive!

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

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

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

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


Afters

Centered text? Seriously?


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

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

The Worst of PolitiFact's April 2, 2019 Reddit AMA

As we mentioned in a Feb. 2, 2019 post, we love it when PolitiFact folks do interviews. It's a near guarantee of generating material worth posting. In celebration of "International Fact-Checking Day," PolitiFact Director Aaron Sharockman and PolitiFact Editor Angie Drobnic Holan conducted a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" event.

I asked PolitiFact to describe why it advocates transparency while keeping the identities and votes of its "Star Chamber" secret. PolitiFact's "Star Chamber" votes on each "Truth-O-Meter" rating. The majority vote rules, though PolitiFact claims it achieves unanimity for most votes. My question wasn't answered (no great surprise there).

Most of the interactions were boilerplate answers to boilerplate questions. But there were a few items of special interest.

Observing the PolitiFact Code?

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Though Holan flatly said "Everything that gets a correction or an update gets tagged (see all tagged items)," we were ready with two recent cases contradicting her claim. And we let that cat out of the bag.

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PolitiFact makes statements giving readers the impression that it scrupulously follows its code of principles. In fact, PolitiFact loosely follows its code of principles, as in this example. How do Holan and Sharockman not know this?

One of the examples we used was corrected on approximately March 16, 2019. Most of the uncertainly about the correction date comes from PolitiFact Virginia's decision not to mark the date of the correction. As of April 3, 2019 PolitiFact Virginia had not added the "Corrections or Updates" tag and the story did not appear on PolitiFact's supposed list of all of its corrected or updated stories.

Mythical Truth-O-Meter Consistency

One participant asked a question suggesting PolitiFact does not rate statements consistently (suggesting contemporary ratings of Trump make past ratings look far too harsh). Sharockman implied PolitiFact has kept its system consistent over the years:

But beyond the sheer volume [of Trump ratings--ed.], the standards we use to use [sic] to issue our ratings really hasn't [sic] evolved in the 11 years we've been doing this. In that sense, a Pants on Fire in 2009 should still be a Pants on Fire claim today, and vice versa.

There are two big problems with Sharockman's claim. First, PolitiFact itself announced a change to its rating methodology back in 2012.

Second, PolitiFact has admitted that its ratings are pretty much subjective. Sharockman's chosen example, the dividing line between "False" and "Pants on Fire" is perhaps the most sensational example of that subjectivity. How does Sharockman not know that?

The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy Against PolitiFact?

Someone (not me!) asked "Who fact checks you [PolitiFact--ed.]?"

We found Sharockman's response fascinating and very probably false:

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Sharockman's answer paints PolitiFact as the focus of a concentrated group of hostile editors. With all those people combing PolitiFact material for hours on end, it's amazing that PolitiFact makes mistakes so rarely.

Right?

But is there any evidence at all supporting Sharockman's supposition that "a lot of people are reading everything we write looking for mistakes"? We at PolitiFact Bias announced long ago that we could not do a thorough job vetting PolitiFact's body of work:

As PolitiFact expands its state operations, the number of stories it produces far exceeds our capacity to review and correct even just the most egregious examples of journalistic error or bias.  We aim to encourage an army of Davids to counteract the mistakes and bias in PolitiFact's stories.

Who else could Sharockman have had in mind? Media Matters For America? The (defunct) Weekly Standard?

(We asked Sharockman via Twitter the other day whom he had in mind but received no immediate reply)

We suspect Sharockman of Trumpian exaggeration. He knows at least some people look at some of PolitiFact's work for errors. So to convey his point he turns that into "a lot of people" looking at "everything" PolitiFact publishes looking for errors. It's likely the only organization combing over PolitiFact's entire body of work looking for errors is PolitiFact itself.

And look how many times it fails, without swallowing the fiction that this represents the entire number.

***

Holan and Sharockman are politicians advocating for PolitiFact. It appears we cannot trust PolitiFact to hold its own to account.

PolitiFact Illinois: 'Duckwork's background check claim checks out" (Updated x2)

Huh.

On August 26, 2018 PolitiFact Illinois published a fact check of Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) with the title "Duckwork's background check claim checks out."

We find it hard to believe a fact-checking organization could prove so careless it would badly misspell the last name of one of its senators in a headline.

And we find it even harder to believe the error could last until the next day (today) without receiving a correction.

We will update this item to track whether PolitiFact Illinois runs a correction notice when it fixes the problem.

Assuming it fixes the problem.

Update Aug. 27, 2018:

Apparently "Duckwork" is a fairly common misspelling of Sen. Duckworth's name. NPR (Illinois) made a similar mistake in January 2018 and fixed it on the sly. Don't journalists know better? Misspelling a name warrants a transparent correction.


Update Aug. 28, 2018:

Very early on Aug. 28, 2018, I tweeted a message pointing out this error and tagging the author, editor and PolitiFact Illinois.

@kiannahsepeda Headline reads "Duckwork." Isn't there somebody at @PolitiFactIL that can change the spelling to "Duckworth"?

And append the needed correction notice?@chasejohn https://t.co/VEnWoeZhAF

— Bryan W. White (@ZebraFactCheck) August 28, 2018

When I checked hours later PolitiFact had corrected the spelling of Duckworth's name but added no correction notice to the item.

It's important to note, we suppose, that PolitiFact's corrections policy does not obligate it to append a correction notice on the basis of a misspelled name. That policy, in fact, appears to promise that PolitiFact will fix all of its spelling errors without acknowledging error (italics added for emphasis):

Typos, grammatical errors, misspellings – We correct typos, grammatical errors, misspellings, transpositions and other small errors without a mark of correction or tag and as soon as they are brought to our attention.

That seems to us like an unusually low bar for running a correction. Compare the above with the aggressive use of corrections involving misspelled names by PolitiFact's parent organization, the Poynter Institute.

Here's  one example from that page:

‘Newspapers killed newspapers,’ says reporter who quit the business (March 20, 2013)
Correction: This post misspelled Bird’s last name in one instance.

Journalists traditionally seem to give special attention to misspellings involving names. Misspelling a person's name counts as a different degree of error than a minor typographical error:

In journalism schools across Canada this week, many a freshman student will learn one of the foremost lessons of the J-school classroom: Get someone’s name wrong and you get a failing grade.

In the decade I taught at Ryerson University’s journalism school my students understood that no matter how brilliant their reporting and writing, if they messed up a name, they got an automatic F on that assignment. That’s a common policy of most journalism schools.

Apparently the fact checkers at PolitiFact find such obsessive attention to detail quaint.Which we count as a strange attitude for people calling themselves "fact checkers."

PolitiFact Corrects, We Evaluate the Correction

PolitiFact corrected an error in one of its fact checks this past week, most likely in response to an email we sent on June 20, 2018.

Dear PolitiFact,

A recent PolitiFact fact check contains the following paragraph (bold emphasis added):

Soon after, in February 2017, Nehlen wrote on Twitter that Islam was not a religion of peace and posted a photo of a plane striking the World Trade Center with the caption, "9/11 would’ve been a Wonderful #DayWithoutImmigrants." In the following months, Nehlen also tweeted that "Islam is not your friend," implied that Muslim communities should be bombed and retweeted posts saying Bill and Hillary Clinton were murdering associates.

The hotlink ("implied") leads to an archived Twitter page. Unless I'm missing somelthing [sic], the following represents the best candidate as a supporting evidence:

Unless "Muslim no-go zones" represent typical Muslim communities, PolitiFact's summary of Nehlen's tweet distorts the truth. If a politician similarly omitted context in this fashion, would PolitiFact not mete out a "Half True" rating or worse?

If PolitiFact excuses itself from telling the truth where people accused of bigotry are involved, that principle ought to appear in its statement of principles.

Otherwise, a correction or clarification is in order. Thanks.

We were surprised to see that PolitiFact updated the story with a clarification within two days. And PolitiFact did most things right with the fix, which it labeled a "clarification."

Here's a checklist:

1. Paid attention to the criticism
2. Updated the article with a clarification
3. Attached a clarification notice at the bottom of the fact check
4. Added the "Corrections and Updates" tag to the article, ensuring it would appear on PolitiFact's "Corrections and Updates" page

Still, we think PolitiFact can do better.

Specifically, we fault PolitiFact for its lack of transparency regarding the specifics of the mistake.

Note what Craig Silverman, long associated with PolitiFact's owner, the Poynter Institute, said in an American Press Institute interview about letting readers know what changed:

News organizations aren’t the only ones on the internet who are practicing some form of journalism. There are a number of sites or blogs or individual bloggers who may not have the same standards for corrections. Is there any way journalists or anyone else can contribute to a culture of corrections? Where does it start?

SILVERMAN: Bloggers actually ended up doing a little bit of correction innovation. In the relatively early blogging days, you’d often see <strike>strikethrough</strike> used to cross out a typo or error. This was a lovely use of the medium, as it showed what was incorrect and also included the correct information after. In that respect, bloggers modelled good behavior, and showed how digital corrections can work. We can learn from that.

It all starts with a broad commitment to acknowledge and even publicize mistakes. That is the core of the culture, the ethic of correction.

We think Silverman has it right. Transparency in corrections involves letting the reader know what the story got wrong. In this case, PolitiFact reported that a tweet implied that somebody wanted to bomb Muslim communities. The tweet referred, in fact, to a small subset of Muslim communities (so small PolitiFact says they do not exist hey that one failed its fact check and I forgot to remove it from the first published draft) referred to as "no-go zones"--areas where non-Muslims allegedly face unusual danger to their person and property.

PolitiFact explained its error like this:

This fact-check has been updated to more precisely refer to a previous Nehlen tweet

That notice is transparent about the fact the text of the fact check was changed and transparent about the part of the fact check that was changed (information about a Nehlen tweet). But it mostly lacked transparency about what the fact check got wrong and the misleading impression it created.

We think journalists, including PolitiFact, stand to gain public trust by full transparency regarding errors. Though that boost to public trust assumes that errors aren't so ridiculous and rampant that transparency instead destroys the organization's credibility.

Is that what PolitiFact fears when it issues these vague descriptions of its inaccuracies?

Still, we're encouraged that PolitiFact performed a clarification and mostly followed its corrections policy. Ignoring needed corrections is worse than falling short of best practices with the corrections.

Miami New Times: "How PolitiFact Got Its "Fake News" Tag Wrong on Occupy Democrats"

This is not a post highlighting PolitiFact's left-leaning bias.

This is a post serving to remind us that PolitiFact often operates in a slipshod manner.

The Miami New Times came out with a story on Oct. 2, 2017 rightly panning PolitiFact for miscategorizing "Occupy Democrats" as fake news.

Sure, Occupy Democrats publishes false stories. But the folks at PolitiFact (and others in the fact-checking clique) bang the drum reminding everybody that fake news is the publication of deliberately false stories. That's made-up stuff, not just mistakenly or stupidly wrong.

Despite that, PolitiFact listed Occupy Democrats on its page of fake news sources.

(W)hen New Times asked why PolitiFact had classified the liberal Facebook-based news empire Occupy Democrats as "Fake News" in its Fake News Almanac, the site admitted Occupy Democrats should never have been on the list in the first place. The misclassification highlights the difficulty of judging fake news, even for the pros, and raises questions about the reliability of the almanac.

 The New Times obtained a predictable excuse from the PolitiFact's Joshua Gillin:

(Gillin said) the site should not have been included in the almanac because the majority of its posts reviewed by PolitiFact were not designated as fake news, and the two that were deemed fake news date to 2016. For a whole site to be classified as fake news, he said, it must regularly make a "deliberate attempt to mislead."

PolitiFact took Occupy Democrats off the list after getting challenged on its inclusion. But one advantage PolitiFact obtains by making its fake news site almanac an embed instead of a published article stems from canceling its responsibility to issue a correction notice.

Obviously there's neither a need nor responsibility to note corrections made to embedded content right, right?

Just call it the embedded content loophole.

PolitiLies at PolitiFact Wisconsin II (Updated: PolitiFact amends)

In part one of "PolitiLies at PolitiFact Wisconsin," we shared our experience questioning PolitiFact's reporting from a fact check of U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.).

In part two, we will look at PolitiFact Wisconsin's response to having a clear error pointed out in one of its stories.

On May 11, 2017, PolitiFact Wisconsin published a "Pants on Fire" rating of U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan's claim that "Air Force pilots were going to museums to find spare parts over the last eight years."

PolitiFact issued the "Pants on Fire" ruling despite a Fox News report which featured an Air Force captain, identified by name, who said the Air Force had on seven occasions obtained parts for B-1 bombers from museums.

PolitiFact Wisconsin objected to the thin evidence, apparently including the failure of the report to identify any of the museums that allegedly served as parts repositories (bold emphasis added):

The only example Ryan’s office cited was a May 2016 Fox News article in which an Air Force captain said spare parts needed for a B-1 bomber at a base in South Dakota were taken from seven "museum aircraft" from around the country. The museums weren’t identified and no other details were provided.

Yet when we attempted to verify PolitiFact Wisconsin's reporting, we found the text version of the story said Capt. Travis Lytton (no other details were provided?) showed the Fox reporters a museum aircraft from which a part was stripped. Lytton also described the function of the part in the story (no other details were provided?).

The accompanying video showed a B-1 bomber situated next to the name of the museum: South Dakota Air and Space Museum.

If one of the seven museums was not the South Dakota Air and Space Museum, then the Fox News video was highly misleading. The viewer would conclude the South Dakota Air and Space Museum was one of the seven museums.

How did PolitiFact Wisconsin miss this information? And why, when Lytton was plainly identified in the Fox News report, did PolitiFact Wisconsin not try to contact Lytton to find out the names of the other museums?

"Readers who see an error should contact the writer or editor"

We like to contact the writer and the editor when we see an error.

In this case, we contacted writer Tom Kertscher and editor Greg Borowski (May 31, 2017):

Dear Tom Kertscher, Greg Borowski,
Your rating of Speaker Ryan's claim about the Air Force pulling parts from museum planes falsely claims that none of the seven museums were identified.

Yet the Fox News report said the Air Force officer showed reporters the museum plane from which a part was taken. And if you bothered to watch the video associated with the story, the name of the museum appears very plainly in front of the B-1 bomber the officer identified.

http://www.sdairandspacemuseum.com/

And if the names of the museums was a point worth mentioning, then why not contact the officer (identified by name in the Fox News report) and ask him? If he identified one of the museums, would he not identify the others?

After nearly a week, we have received no reply to our message and the PolitiFact Wisconsin fact check still features the same false information about the Fox News report.

Why?

Integrity?


Update June 10, 2017: On June 2017 we received a message from PolitiFact Wisconsin editor Greg Borowski. Borowski said he had not received our email message (we do not know if writer Tom Kertscher, to whom it was also sent, had the same experience). Borowski said after finding out about the criticism PolitiFact Wisconsin "added a note to the item."

PolitiFact Wisconsin removed two false statements from its fact check, one stating that the Fox News report identified none of the museums from which airplane parts were taken, and one stating that the report featured no other details beyond those mentioned in the fact check.

This editor's note was added at the end of the fact check:

Editor's note: This item was updated on June 9, 2017 to say that the Fox News report did identify one museum. That information does not change the rating.

As with the other correction we helped prompt this week, we are impressed by PolitiFact Wisconsin's ability to commit an error and then fix the error without admitting any mistake. The editor's note says the fact check was changed "to say the Fox News report did identify one museum." Why was that change made? The editor's note doesn't say. The truth is the change was made because PolitiFact Wisconsin made a mistake.

It's appropriate for journalists to admit to making mistakes when they make them.  We do not care for the spin we see in PolitiFact Wisconsin's update notices.

Are we being too tough on PolitiFact Wisconsin? We think noted journalist Craig Silverman would agree with us.

Rather than destroying trust, corrections are a powerful tool to reinforce how accountable and transparent we are.

“If you’re willing to admit you’re wrong, people will trust you more,” said Mathew Ingram of Gigaom. “If I said to someone ‘You know, I’m never wrong’ they would think I was a psychopath or a liar, so they would trust me less. That’s versus if I said ‘I screw up all the time.’ They trust you more because you’re more human.”

That’s the paradox of trust: admitting our mistakes and failings make us more deserving of trust.

Correction June 14, 2017: Commenter Vinni BoD noticed our update was dated Sept. 2017. The month was actually June, which was the correct month in two spots where we (inexplicably) had "Sept." instead.

PolitiLies at PolitiFact Wisconsin I (Updated: PolitiFact amends)

Back on May 15, 2017 we noticed a suspicious factoid in PolitiFact Wisconsin's fact check of congressman Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) (bold emphasis added):

Grothman’s quick response: "Planned Parenthood is the biggest abortion provider in the country."

He added that the group is an outspoken advocate for what he termed "controversial" services such as birth control.

The notion that birth control services count as controversial looked suspiciously like the result of a liberal press filter. Curious whether the context of Grothman's statement supported PolitiFact Wisconsin's telling, we had a look at the context (17:55 through 20:55).



The crosstalk made it a bit hard for us to follow the conversation, but a partial transcript from an article by Jen Hayden at the left-leaning Daily Kos seemed reasonably accurate to us. Note the site also features a trimmed video of the same exchange.

It looked to us as though Grothman mentioned the "controversial programs" without naming them, instead moving on to talk about why his constituents can do without Planned Parenthood's role in providing contraceptive services. Just before Grothman started talking about alternatives to Planned Parenthood's contraceptive services, an audience member called out asking Grothman for examples of the "controversial programs." That question may have led to an assumption that Grothman was  naming contraceptive services as an example of "controversial programs."

In short, we could not see any solid justification for PolitiFact Wisconsin's reporting. So we emailed PolitiFact Wisconsin (writer Dave Umhoefer and editor Greg Borowski) to ask whether its evidence was better than it appeared:

Upon reading your recent fact check of Republican Glen Grothman, I was curious about the line claiming Grothman called birth control a "controversial" service.

He added that the group is an outspoken advocate for what he termed "controversial" services such as birth control.

I watched the video and had trouble hearing the audio (I've found transcripts that seem pretty much correct, however). It sounded like Grothman mentioned Planned Parenthood's support for some controversial services, then went on to talk about the ease with which people might obtain birth control. Was there some particular part of event that you might transcribe in clear support of your summary?

From what I can tell, the context does not support your account. If people can easily obtain birth control without Planned Parenthood's help, how would that make the service "controversial"? It would make the service less necessary, not controversial, right?

I urge you to either make clear the portion of the event that supports your interpretation, or else alter the interpretation to square with the facts of the event. By that I mean not guessing what Grothman meant when he referred to "controversial programs." If Grothman did not make clear what he was talking about, your account should not suggest otherwise.

If you asked Grothman what he was talking about and he made clear he believes birth control is a controversial service, likewise make that clear to your readers.

The replies we received offered no evidence in support of PolitiFact Wisconsin's reporting. In fact, the reply we received on May 18 from Borowski suggested that Umhoefer had (belatedly?) reached out to Grothman's office for clarification:

Dave has reached out to Grothman's office. So, you;ll [sic] have to be patient.

By June 4, 2017 we had yet to receive any further message with evidence backing the claim from the article. We sent a reminder message that day that has likewise failed to draw a reply.

[Update June 8, 2017: PolitiFact Wisconsin editor Greg Borowski alerted us that the fact check of Grothman was updated. We have reproduced the PolitiFact Wisconsin "Editor's note" at the end of this post]

What does it mean?

It looks like PolitiFact Wisconsin did careless reporting on the Grothman story. The story very likely misrepresented Grothman's view of the "controversial programs" he spoke about.

Grothman's government website offers a more reliable account of what Grothman views as Planned Parenthood's "controversial" programs.

It appears PolitiFact Wisconsin is aware it published something as fact without adequate backing information, and intends to keep its flawed article as-is so long as it anticipates no significant consequences will follow.

Integrity.


Afters

Also see PolitiLies at PolitiFact Wisconsin II,  published the same day as this part.

Update June 8, 2017: PolitiFact removed "such as birth control" from its summary of Grothman's statement about "controversial services."  PolitiFact Wisconsin appended the following editor's note to the story:

(Editor's note, June 7, 2017: An earlier version of this item quoted Grothman as saying that Planned Parenthood is an outspoken advocate for "controversial" services such as birth control. A spokesperson for his office said on June 7, 2017 that the video, in which Grothman's voice is hard to hear at times, may have led people to that conclusion, but that Grothman does not believe birth control is a controversial service. The birth control quote had no bearing on the congressman’s statement about Planned Parenthood and its role in abortions, so the rating of True is unchanged.)

We are impressed by PolitiFact Wisconsin's ability to run a correction while offering the appearance that it committed no error. Saying the original item "quoted Grothman" gives the reader the impression that Grothman must have misspoke. But benevolent PolitiFact Wisconsin covered for Grothman's mistake after his office clarified what he meant to say.

It's really not a model of transparency, and offers Grothman no apology for misrepresenting his views.

We stick with our assessment that PolitiFact Wisconsin reported carelessly. And we suggest that PolitiFact Wisconsin's error was the type of error that occurs when journalists think they know how conservatives think when in reality the journalists do not know how conservatives think (ideological bias).

On the bright side, the portion of the fact check that we criticized now reads as it should have read from the start. We credit PolitiFact Wisconsin for making that change. That fixes the main issue, for there's nothing wrong with having a bias if it doesn't show up in the reporting.

Of secondary importance, we judge the editor's note was subtly misleading and lacking in transparency.

We also note with sadness that the changes to PolitiFact Wisconsin's story do not count as either corrections or updates. We know this because PolitiFact Wisconsin added no "corrections and updates" tag to the story. Adding that tag would make a fact check appear on PolitiFact's page of stories that have been corrected or updated.



Correction June 9, 2017: Removed a redundant "because" from the final paragraph of the update.

PolitiFact fixes fact check on Syrian chemical weapons

When news reports recently appeared suggesting the Syrian government used chemical weapons, it presented a problem for PolitiFact. As noted by the Daily Caller, among others, PolitiFact said in 2014 it was "Mostly True" that 100 percent of Syrian chemical weapons were removed from that country.

If the Syrian government used chemical weapons, where did it get them? Was it a fresh batch produced after the Obama administration forged an agreement with Russia (seriously) to effect removal of the weapons?

Nobody really knows, just like nobody truly knew the weapons were gone when PolitiFact ruled it "Mostly True" that the weapons were "100 percent gone." (screen capture via the Internet Archive)

With public attention brought to its questionable ruling with the April 5, 2017 Daily Caller story, PolitiFact archived its original fact check and redirected the old URL to a new (also April 5, 2017) PolitiFact article: "Revisiting the Obama track record on Syria’s chemical weapons."

At least PolitiFact didn't make its old ruling simply vanish, but has PolitiFact acted in keeping with its commitment to the International Fact-Checking Network's statement of principles?

A COMMITMENT TO OPEN AND HONEST CORRECTIONS
We publish our corrections policy and follow it scrupulously. We correct clearly and transparently in line with our corrections policy, seeking so far as possible to ensure that readers see the corrected version.

And what is PolitiFact's clear and transparent corrections policy? According to "The Principles of PolitiFact, PunditFact and the Truth-O-Meter" (bold emphasis added):

When we find we've made a mistake, we correct the mistake.

• 
  In the case of a factual error, an editor's note will be added and labeled "CORRECTION" explaining how the article has been changed.
  

• In the case of clarifications or updates, an editor's note will be added and labeled "UPDATE" explaining how the article has been changed.
  

• If the mistake is significant, we will reconvene the three-editor panel. If there is a new ruling, we will rewrite the item and put the correction at the top indicating how it's been changed.
  

Is the new article an update? In at least some sense it is. PolitiFact removed and archived the fact check thanks to questions about its accuracy. And the last sentence in the replacement article calls the article an "update":

In the days and weeks to come, we will learn more about the recent attacks, but in the interest of providing clear information, we have replaced the original fact-check with this update.

If the new article counts as an update, we think it ought to wear the "update" tag that would make it appear on PolitiFact's "Corrections and Updates" page, where it has yet to appear (archived version).

And we found no evidence that PolitiFact posted this article to its Facebook page. How are readers misled about the original fact check supposed to encounter the update, other than by searching for it?

Worse still, the new article does not even appear on the list for the "The Latest From PolitiFact." What's the excuse for that oversight?

We believe that if PolitiFact followed its corrections policy scrupulously, we would see better evidence that PolitiFact publicized its admission it had taken down its "Mostly True" rating of the claim of an agreement removing 100 percent of Syria's chemical weapons.

Can evidence like this stop PolitiFact from receiving "verified" status in keeping the IFCN fact checkers' code?

We doubt it.


Afters
It's worth mentioning that PolitiFact's updated article does not mention the old article until the third paragraph. The fact that PolitiFact pulled and archived that article waits for the fifth paragraph, nearly halfway through the update.

Since PolitiFact's archived version of the pulled article omits the editor's name, we make things easy for our readers by going to the Internet Archive for the name: Aaron Sharockman.

PolitiFact's "star chamber" of editors approving the "Mostly True" rating likely included Angie Drobnic Holan and Amy Hollyfield.

Another nugget from the Hollyfield interview

In an earlier post we pointed out how managing editor Amy Hollyfield of PolitiFact described its "Truth-O-Meter" in terms hard to reconcile with those used by PolitiFact's creator, Bill Adair.

The Hollyfield interview published at The Politic (Yale University) contains other amusing nuggets, such as this howler (bold emphasis added):

We take accuracy very seriously. Transparency is one of the key things we focus on, which is why we publish all the sources for our fact checks. We flag every correction and have a subject tag called “correction,” so you can see every fact check we’ve put a correction on.

We find Hollyfield's assertion offensive, especially as it occurs in response to a question about this website, PolitiFact Bias.

PolitiFact does a poor job of consistently adding the subject tags to corrected articles.

We pointed out an example in December 2016. PolitiFact California changed the rating of a fact check from "True" to "Half True," publishing a new version of its fact check from months earlier. Weeks later, PolitiFact California has yet to add a tag to the article that would make it appear on PolitiFact's "Corrections and Updates" page.

Maybe PolitiFact California does not regard rewriting an article as a correction or update?

How about PolitiFact Pennsylvania from January 2017? Lawyers pointed out that the Pennsylvania PolitiFact franchise incorrectly described the standard of evidence courts use for criminal cases. PolitiFact Pennsylvania ran a correction (the correction made the fact check incoherent, but that's another story), but added no tag to the story.

So, contrary to what Hollyfield claims, the corrected story is not transparently presented on its "Corrections and Updates" page.

PolitiFact's spotty compliance with its statement of principles is not new. We even complained about the problem to Paul Tash, the president of the Tampa Bay Times (Nov. 18, 2016). But we've noticed no improvement.

PolitiFact does not have a page that transparently informs readers of all of its corrections.

Will you believe Amy Hollyfield or your own lyin' eyes?

Hans Bader: "The Strange Ignorance of PolitiFact"

Hans Bader, writing at Liberty Unyielding, points out a Jan. 19, 2017 fact-checking train wreck from PolitiFact Pennsylvania. PolitiFact Pennsylvania looked at a claim Sen. Bob Casey (D-Penn.) used to try to discredit President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos.

Bader's article initially emphasized PolitiFact Pennsylvania's apparent ignorance of the "reasonable doubt" standard in United States criminal cases:

In an error-filled January 19 “fact-check,” PolitiFact’s Anna Orso wrote about “the ‘clear and convincing’ standard used in criminal trials.”  The clear and convincing evidence standard is not used in criminal trials. Even my 9-year old daughter knows that the correct standard is “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

By the time we started looking at this one, PolitiFact Pennsylvania had started trying to spackle over its faults. The record (at the Internet Archive) makes clear that PolitiFact's changes to its text got ahead of its policy of announcing corrections or updates.

Eventually, PolitiFact continued its redefinition of the word "transparency" with this vague description of its corrections:

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly characterized the standard of evidence used in criminal convictions.

Though PolitiFact Pennsylvania corrected the most obvious and embarrassing problem with its fact check, other problems Bader pointed out still remain, such as its questionable characterization of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education's civil rights stance as "controversial."

For our part, we question PolitiFact Pennsylvania for apparently uncritically accepting a key premise connected to the statement it claimed to fact check:

Specifically, Casey said the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education supports a bill that "would change the standard of evidence." He said the group is in favor of ditching the "preponderance of the evidence" standard most commonly used in Title IX investigations on college campuses and instead using the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard used in criminal cases.

PolitiFact claimed to simply fact check whether DeVos had contributed to FIRE. But without the implication that FIRE is some kind of far-outside-the-mainstream group, who cares?

We say that given PolitiFact Pennsylvania's explanation of Casey's attack on DeVos, a fact checker needs to investigate whether FIRE supported a bill that would change the standard of evidence.

PolitiFact Pennsylvania offers its readers no evidence at all regarding any such bill. If there is no bill as Casey described, then PolitiFact Pennsylvania's "Mostly True" rating serves to buoy a false charge against DeVos (and FIRE).

Ultimately, PolitiFact Pennsylvania fails to coherently explain the point of contention. The Obama administration tried to restrict schools from using the "clear and convincing" standard.

Thus, in order for a school’s grievance procedures to be consistent with Title IX standards, the school must use a preponderance of the evidence standard (i.e., it is more likely than not that sexual harassment or violence occurred). The “clear and convincing” standard (i.e., it is highly probable or reasonably certain that the sexual harassment or violence occurred), currently used by some schools, is a higher standard of proof. Grievance procedures that use this higher standard are inconsistent with the standard of proof established for violations of the civil rights laws, and are thus not equitable under Title IX. Therefore, preponderance of the evidence is the appropriate standard for investigating allegations of sexual harassment or violence.

FIRE objected to that. But objecting to that move from the Obama administration does not mean FIRE advocated using the "beyond a reasonable doubt" (how PolitiFact's story reads now) standard. That also goes for the "clear and convincing" standard mentioned in the original version.

PolitiFact Pennsylvania simply skipped out on investigating the linchpin of Casey's argument.

There's more hole than story to this PolitiFact Pennsylvania fact check.

Be sure to read Bader's article for more.


Update Jan 21, 2017: Added link to the Department of Education's April 4, 2011 "Dear Colleague" letter
Update Jan 24, 2017: Added a proper ending to the second sentence in the third-to-last paragraph 
Update Feb. 2, 2017: Added "article" after "Bader's" in the second paragraph to make the sentence more sensible

Does changing from "True" to "Half True" count as a correction? Clarification? Update? Anything?

The use and abuse of the PolitiMulligan

We've pointed out before PolitiFact's propensity to correct or update its stories on the sly, contrary to statements of journalistic ethics (including its own statement of principles) regarding transparency.

Thanks to PolitiFact, we have another example in the genre, where PolitiFact California, instead of announcing a correction or update, simply executed a do-over on one of its stories.

On July 28, 2016, PolitiFact ruled it "True" that vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence had advocated diverting federal money from AIDS care services to "conversion therapy." But Timothy P. Carney, writing for the right-leaning Washington Examiner, had published an item the day before explaining why the evidence used by Pence's critics did not wash.

I wrote about PolitiFact California's faulty fact check on July 29, 2016 at Zebra Fact Check.

On Dec. 2, 2016, PolitiFact partly reversed itself, publishing a new version of the fact check with a "Half True" rating replacing the original "True" rating.

To be sure, the new item features a lengthy editor's note explaining the reason for the new version of PolitiFact California's fact check. But readers should note that PolitiFact completely avoids any admission of error in its explanation:

EDITOR’S NOTE: On July 28, 2016, PolitiFact California rated as True a statement by Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom that Republican Indiana Governor and now Vice President-Elect Mike Pence "advocated diverting taxpayer dollars to so-called conversion therapy." We based that ruling on a statement Pence made in 2000 on his congressional campaign website, in which Pence says "Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior." Subsequently, our readers and other fact-checking websites examined the claim and made some points that led us to reconsider the fact check. Readers pointed out that Pence never explicitly advocated for conversion therapy in his statement and that he may have been pushing for safer sex practices. Pence’s words are open to other interpretations: Gay and lesbian leaders, for example, say his statement continues to give the impression that he supported the controversial practice of conversion therapy when his words are viewed in context with his long opposition to LGBT rights. Taking all of this into account, we are changing our rating to Half True and providing this new analysis.

PolitiFact California’s practice is to consider new evidence and perspectives related to our fact checks, and to revise our ratings when warranted.

While we credit PolitiFact California for keeping an archived version of its first attempt available for readers, we find PolitiFact's approach a bit puzzling.

First of all, there are no "new evidence and perspectives" involved in this case. Carney's July 27 article ought to have pre-empted the flaw in PolitiFact California's original July 28 fact check, and Zebra Fact Check highlighted the problem again two days later: A fact checker needs to account for the difference in wording between "changing sexual behavior" and "changing sexual preference." Also noted was PolitiFact California's failure to explain the immediate context of the smoking gun quotation it used to convict Pence: The Ryan White Care Act.

PolitiFact California made two major mistakes in its fact-checking. First, it failed to offer due attention to the wording of Pence's statement. Second, it failed to consider the context.

The two major errors resulted in no admission of error. And PolitiFact California's do-over fails to even show up on PolitiFact's list of stories that were updated or corrected.

As for the new "Half True" rating? If "changing their sexual behavior" in the context of the Ryan White Care Act is open to interpretation as "changing their sexual orientation," then we claim as our privilege the interpretation of "Half True" as "False."

In other words, PolitiFact California, creative interpretation is no substitute for facts.


Afters

So apparently it is an update. Just not the type of update that PolitiFact includes on its "Corrections and Updates" page.

Something rotten in PolitiFact Missouri

It's not the bad reporting, it's the cover up.

Okay, it's both.

On May 18, 2016, PolitiFact Missouri published a fact check of the gender pay gap issue. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Chris Koster said closing Missouri's gender pay gap would gain $9 billion for Missouri women. PolitiFact Missouri botched the fact check, calculating that Missouri women would only gain $7.5 billion, not $9 billion. Koster received a "Mostly True" rating.

It read like this at the time:

The bias related portion of the gap could be as much as $7.5 billion. That’s a lot of money, but it isn’t the $9 billion Koster claimed. When we’ve rated such claims before, statements that speak broadly about a wage gap, regardless of the underlying factors, get some benefit of the doubt.

Koster’s claim greatly oversimplifies a very complex situation, but the size of the gap is real. We rate this claim Mostly True.

Now it reads like this (bold emphasis added):

The bias related portion of the gap could be as much as $1.7 billion. That’s a lot of money, but it isn’t the $9 billion Koster claimed. When we’ve rated such claims before, statements that speak broadly about a wage gap, regardless of the underlying factors, get some benefit of the doubt.

Koster’s claim greatly oversimplifies a very complex situation, but the size of the gap is real. We rate this claim Mostly True.

A key figure in the story changed from $7.5 billion to $1.7 billion. Koster's exaggeration, by percentage, went from 20 percent to 429 percent.  The new version of the story carries no correction notice, and the rating remains "Mostly True."

How did we get here? What went wrong at PolitiFact Missouri?

Spoiler: The present version of PolitiFact Missouri's fact check remains far from accurate.