counterirritant: "Jeepers"

We haven't heard from PolitiFact critic "counterirritant" in a while, but unlike the Great Pumpkin, he did to show up for Halloween and offered us a treat. He takes aim at PolitiFact's campaign ad for Obama fact check regarding Mitt Romney's claim about Chrysler production in China:

He writes:

PolitiFact concludes that the ad is erroneous because it “leaves the clear impression that Jeeps built in China come at the expense of American workers.” [Washington Posts Glenn] Kessler reaches a similar conclusion saying that “the unspoken message is that American jobs are being sent to China, even though the ad carefully tiptoes around that claim.”

It seems pretty simple doesn’t it? The Romney ad claims that American workers will lose their jobs when Jeep production moves to China. Chrysler implies otherwise. Therefore,one can conclude the ad is false — at least if one is a non-fact-checking “fact checker.” An actual fact checkers [sic] might see the disagreement between Romney and Chrysler views to—I don’t know–perhaps, check the facts?

There is a legitimate dispute regarding the facts of Romney's claim. But don't expect PolitiFact to sort out the truth of that. Rather, PolitiFact determined the "clear impression" of Romney's words and used Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne's (impartial?) claim to refute him. That's not fact checking.

Counterirritant gives readers his take:

The Jeeps currently sold in China are produced in the U.S.
...

For those slow on the uptake: Jeep vehicles that will be produced in China by Chinese workers are currently produced in the U.S by U.S. workers.

It's not entirely clear (or even a verifiable fact) that increased production of Jeeps in China will mean American workers will lose their jobs. However, Forbes automotive contributor Dale Buss points out that it's an entirely moot point with regard to Romney's statement:

Romney did not claim that Chrysler was “outsourcing” existing Jeep jobs to China but only that Chrysler is going to “build Jeeps in China.” And that is true.
...

Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne said in an e-mail to workers this week that Jeep assembly lines in the United States “will constitute the backbone of the brand.” But again: Romney never disputed that.

Buss also points out that "...Ohio and Michigan Jeep workers...jobs seem pretty secure right now."

Whatever the facts, the bottom line is PolitiFact failed to illuminate them. Contrary to uncovering facts, this rating is either an amateurish investigation or an intentional dodge of the truth. Regardless of intent, PolitiFact assists the Obama campaign by neglecting to dig into the story and accepting Marchionne's words at face value. PolitiFact wanders closer to a role as a campaign spinmeister with each passing day.

As always, counterirritant is well worth the read. Do yourself a favor and read his short post.

For more on the Chrysler/Romney claim, check out Bryan's analysis over at his new project: Zebra Fact Check.


Afters:

It doesn't take much to spot PolitiFact's reverence for Obama in the opening line of the article:

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

There you have it. An objective, non-partisan fact checking group confirming the undisputed fact that Barack Obama, single-handedly rescued the auto industry. 

counterirritant: "Fail"

Frequent thorn in PolitiFact's side "counterirritant" published another gem last week showing why PolitiFact's credibility has disappeared somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle. The issue this time is how PolitiFact deals with a relatively unambiguous statement from Robert Gibbs: "Nobody knows why [Romney] has a corporation in Bermuda, why he failed to disclose that on seven different financial disclosures."

What makes this fact check interesting is both Vanity Fair and the Associated Press already delved into the claim, and reached conflicting rulings. "counterirritant" explains:

This is an excellent opportunity for a real fact check. Two creditable sources reached diametrically opposite conclusions. Whether Romney failed or not hinges on whether the Vanity Fair or AP analysis of disclosure rules is correct. Conducting a fact check that settled the disagreement would be a great way to determine whether or not there was a failure.

 Any guesses on how PolitiFact fared with the challenge?

Head over to "counterirritant" and read the short post yourself to find out. While there are a few mysteries involving this rating, "counterirritant" makes one thing clear:

Until it can be determined whether the absence of [the corporation] on the disclosures was proper or not, Romney’s failure, or lack thereof, is in doubt. PolitiFact’s failure is, however, doubtless.

We'd add that unlike Amelia Earhart's plane, the location of PolitiFact's bias is well known.



Edit 7/30/12: Added word for clarity in penultimate paragraph-Jeff

counterirritant: "Holy Misrepresentation, Batman!"

Alternate title:  "The unBainable lightness of Bane"

The intermittent "counterirritant" returns with another critique of PolitiFact, this time skewering Poynter's Pedants for ignoring the context of Rush Limbaugh's comments regarding the Bain-Bane connection Limbaugh mentioned on his radio program.

counterirritant (bold emphasis added):

The transcript PolitiFact used as a source offers more support for the radio host than it does the fact checkers. Only two sentences discuss whether the name Bane was selected because of Romney. The first is a question: “Do you think that it is accidental that the name of the really vicious fire breathing four eyed whatever it is villain in this movie is named Bane?” After asking that question, Limbaugh was interrupted and went off on a tangent. When he returned to the subject, he continued: “So, anyway, this evil villain in the new Batman movie is named Bane.  And there’s now a discussion out there as to whether or not this is purposeful and whether or not it will influence voters.” After noting it, Limbaugh never takes a side in the discussion of purposefulness.

The point is inarguable:  PolitiFact fact checked Limbaugh on a statement he never made, unless one insists without reasonable supporting evidence that his question was rhetorical.  PolitiFact didn't bother making the argument and moreover decided against dealing with this issue through its "In Context" feature.  "In Context" functions for PolitiFact pretty much like a "nothing to see here" tag.

The critique by counterirritant serves as a fine bookend for my "PolitiFlub" critique of the same PolitiFact item.  I took a different tack, showing that even if Limbaugh was making the claim PolitiFact imagined the fact checkers went about their business in entirely the wrong way.


Jeff adds: (07/24/12): Lest there be any confusion about what PolitiFact accused Rush of saying, here's a screenshot of their twitter feed:

(for Glenn Kessler and PolitiFact) How to fact check the job recovery numbers

Originally posted on May 14, 2012 at Sublime Bloviations

A valuable media watchdog watchdog post at the new blog "counterirritant" pointed out a problem with Glenn Kessler's fact check of a claim from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Kessler writes the fact checker feature for the Washington Post.  Romney claimed that in a normal recovery from recession the country should be adding something like 500,000 jobs per month.

counterirritant:

Kessler decided that the best way to “check” this was determine how frequently 500,000 jobs were created in a month in the last 65 year.

The post goes on to very effectively criticize Kessler's methodology throughout.

By a funny coincidence (general leftward lean of the mainstream media, maybe?), PolitiFact used very similar reasoning on the same claim:

Is 500,000 jobs created per month normal for a recovery?

The short answer is "no."

We arrived at this conclusion by looking at the net monthly change in jobs all the way back to 1970. Since Romney was referring to total jobs, rather than private-sector jobs only, we used total jobs as our measurement. And since Romney was talking about job creation patterns during a recovery, we looked only at job creation figures for non-recessionary periods, as defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Finally, we excluded the current recovery.

The Kessler/PolitiFact method is entirely wrongheaded.

Romney didn't claim that 500,000 jobs created per month was a normal figure during a recovery.  I can imagine the furrowed brows of Kessler, Louis Jacobson and other mainstream media fact checkers.  Aren't they the experts?  What am I talking about?

It's actually pretty simple.

The size of the economy changes.  If country A enters a recession losing 1 million jobs  then it takes two months to regain the lost jobs at a rate of 500,000 per month.  If country B experiences a recession losing 10 million jobs then it takes 20 months to regain them at a rate of 500,000 per month.

Not only does the size of the economy vary, but so does the depth of the recession.  The rate of recovery for lost jobs needs  to account for both factors.  Neither Kessler nor PolitiFact gave any apparent consideration to those critical criteria.  It's like comparing prices between now and the 1950s without adjusting for inflation.

The Romney campaign has made a number of statements like the 500,000 jobs claim, and they probably relate to the following chart or one like it from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Clipped from nytimes.com

Romney's claim almost certainly derives from the fact that post-war recoveries usually replace lost jobs much faster than the present recovery. 

So how does one check that claim?  It's not that hard.  Take the bottom point of employment, then count the number of months that it takes to get employment back up to the peak level.  Divide the number of jobs lost by the number of months it took to return to return to the employment peak at the start of the recession.  Do the same for each of the post-war recessions, then average the numbers to obtain the average job recovery time.  After all of that, divide the number of jobs lost from the 2007 recession by the averaged job recovery time.

Why didn't the Washington Post or PolitiFact do anything remotely resembling the fact check I just described?  It could be gross incompetence.  It could be ideological bias.  Or it could be both.


Update 6/7/2012:  Added post title

counterirritant: "The Cracks in the Crystal Ball"

If you're not following Byron York on Twitter, then you may have missed this mic dropping takedown of PolitiFact:

Image from Twitter

York is referring to the covering fire PolitiFact recently laid down for the Obama campaign for their insinuation that Mitt Romney would have heeded Joe Biden's advice and not ordered the hit on Osama bin Laden. "Counterfactual supposition" is an accurate description of Obama's campaign ad. But for a more in-depth analysis, check out this post over at "counterirritant":

Apparently the folks at PolitiFact believe that they have achieved such a mastery of the art of fact checking that they feel the need to branch out — into the art of fortune-telling.
(...)
The obvious rating for PolitiFact to assign is “Pants on Fire.” There is no way for the Obama campaign to know what Romney would or wouldn’t have done as the president. However, the folks at PolitiFact apparently they [sic] believe they have an idea (half an idea?) of what Romney would have done...

It's worth noting that adhering to their own standards is not a strong point for PolitiFact. Remember, that before deciding to rate a claim, PolitiFact asks themselves a few questions: 

Is the statement rooted in a fact that is verifiable? We don’t check opinions 

Fear not PolitiFans, they've found a loophole to help spread Obama's message without violating their sacred standards:

We wondered: Did the ad accurately characterize Romney’s "heaven and earth" quote?

A-ha! It's the ol' "did he cherry-pick this quote accurately?" conundrum. Glad they sorted out the truth of the president's paraphrasing. This isn't the first time PolitiFact has used this ruse to smooth over rough spots in Obama's message, and it's doubtful it will be the last.

There's more to this particular instance of Politiganda, so make sure to head over to counterirritant to read the whole post.



Bryan adds:  Politiganda!  Good one.  It's important to note, and counterirritant nails this point, that Obama took the Romney quotation out of context.  Romney (and others both Republican and Democrat) criticized Obama for publicly declaring the intention to tread on Pakistan's sovereignty.  The Pakistanis did not react well to it and still haven't warmed to Obama.