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

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

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

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

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

Our ruling

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

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

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

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

Military matters and illegal immigration.

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

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

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

Intentional Spin?

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

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

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

Principles Forsaken

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

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

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

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

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

With PolitiFact, "words matter" sometimes.



Afters

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

The examples remain few, in our experience.

PolitiFact Texas punches "spin cycle" for Julián Castro

Is it possible left-leaning fact checkers still do not realize how their ideologies affect their work?

Consider PolitiFact Texas.

See what PolitiFact Texas did, there?

It presents an accurate hybrid paraphrase quotation of Castro asserting that Section 1325 of U.S. immigration law was put into place in 1929 by a segregationist. And promptly spins the Castro claim into the innocuous-but-loaded "When did it become a crime to cross the U.S.-Mexico border?"

Hilariously, the fact check spends most of its time examining facts other than when it became a crime to cross the border. Instead, it focuses on whether Section 1325 was enacted in 1929 (finding it was not) and whether the legislator who wrote the legislation was a segregationist.

PolitiFact Texas used nine paragraphs to address the segregationist past of Sen. Coleman Livingston Blease, the man who composed the language of an immigration bill in 1929.

Castro was evidently trying to make the point that he was trying to repeal a racist piece of legislation, racist because it was written by a segregationist. Castro was using the genetic fallacy on his audience. PolitiFact took no note of it, instead playing along by fact-checking whether Blease was a segregationist and finding a politically active expert to opine that the Blease-authored legislation was aimed at immigration from Mexico.

Such background does not help establish when it became a crime (at least under certain conditions) to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. It's background information that just happens (?) to support the subtext of Castro's claim.

As for Castro's implication that it was Blease who implemented the policy--as though a U.S. senator has that kind of power--well, that's just not the sort of thing that interests PolitiFact Texas.

In the end, PolitiFact Texas found it false that Blease authored the section of the immigration law Castro mentioned.

But why should that stand in the way of a favorable "Mostly True" rating?

PolitiFact's summary conclusion (bold emphasis added):

Castro said Section 1325 immigration policy, which makes it a crime to enter the country illegally, was "put into place in 1929, by a segregationist."

Technically Blease — a white supremicist [sic] who advocated for segregationist policies and lynching —  was not the author of the statute on illegal entry into the United States as it exists in today’s immigration code. 

But it was the first policy criminalizing all unlawful entry at the nation's southern border, and is considered the foundation of the 1952 policy that  evolved into today's Section 1325.

We rate this claim Mostly True.

Technically false, therefore "Mostly True."

That's how PolitiFact rolls. That's how PolitiFact Texas rolls.

It's spin, not fact-checking. Castro did not assert that the criminalization policy started in 1929. Castro asserted that Section 1325 was put into place in 1929.

Fact checkers should prove capable of noticing the difference. And keeping the spin out of their fact checks.