Thanks!

We thank the excellent blog Legal Insurrection for making "2014: Another year, another laughable Lie of the Year" "Post of the Day" for Dec. 25, 2014.

What a nice present!

Hans Bader: PolitiFact Is The Liar Of The Year

One of the most vocal critics of PolitiFact happens to be one of the best. Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute let loose today on CEI's blog, Open Market. Here's a just a fraction of Bader's thorough dressing-down:

PolitiFact routinely rated claims that were entirety true, indisputable, and not misleading, as “half-true” because they failed to include additional “context,” i.e., liberal spin. For example, Senator “Ted Cruz claims national debt is bigger than the nation’s GDP. Yes, our national debt absolutely, incontrovertibly exceeds the nation’s GDP. But claiming that gets you a ‘Half-True’ because Politifact’s Gardner Selby” thought that saying that was mean-spirited. Similarly, PolitiFact said it was “misleading” and dishonest for a conservative politician to make the true factual observation that Obama “refuses to recognize Jerusalem” as Israel’s capital, even though that fact was concededly true, because the politician did not provide additional context that PolitiFact wanted: namely, that Obama is not the first president to take this position.

Bader reviews several of PolitiFact's most embarrassing displays of ineptitude over the past year, and his article is recommended reading.

We've highlighted Bader's work in the past and we've always been impressed with his critiques. We're flattered to be mentioned in his article with the many other excellent sites. Many thanks!

Hat Tip: Jason Hart at Media Trackers

Big thanks to Jason Hart over at Media Trackers for mentioning us in his recent article. We've highlighted his work before and it's always worth the read. Hart focuses on PolitiFact Ohio, but their problems are representative of PolitiFact's operations as a whole. Few journalists have been as dogged at exposing PolitiFact's flaws and we commend Hart for his efforts.

Make sure to read his post.

Hans Bader: "'Fact Checker' Repeals The Laws Of Supply And Demand: The Bias Of PolitiFact"

Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute brings his expertise to the art of criticizing PolitiFact this week:

The left-leaning, self-proclaimed “fact checker” PolitiFact ignored the most basic economic law, the law of supply and demand, in claiming that cap-and-trade legislation, which is designed to limit energy consumption and increase the price of energy from non-renewable sources, could actually result in “an average lower cost for consumers.” Even the supporters of such legislation, such as President Obama, have admitted that such legislation increases energy costs to consumers. In a January 17, 2008, interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Obama said that “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket” under his cap-and-trade plan to fight global warming. Similarly, a CBS analyst pointed out that a Treasury Department analysis estimated the cost of the Obama administration’s cap-and-trade plan at $1,761 per year for the average American household.

After faulting PolitiFact for its understanding of economics, Bader gives something of a roll call for PolitiFact's most notable critics on the right, including this blog.

Our heartfelt thanks for Bader for the plug.  Please visit openmarket.org to read the rest of Bader's piece and visit some of the many worthy PolitiFact critiques Bader links.

A word to the army of Davids

It was always our intention at PolitiFact Bias to encourage and highlight the work of an army of Davids in confronting PolitiFact's distortions of the truth.

We're happy to say that the army of Davids is growing and producing an abundance of accurate and effective criticism.

The volume of material from that army, unfortunately, presents a great challenge in terms of providing recognition.  We keep a bulletin board of sorts with a list of stories for review.  That list reached its all-time greatest length this week.

We'd love to issue a review of every one of the items on the list, but that's increasingly impractical.  Our "Contra PolitiFact" section in the sidebar features some consistently good sources of material, so please continue using those links to find good material we haven't yet highlighted.

To all those producing quality work critical of PolitiFact, we extend our thanks.  Special mention goes to Matthew Hoy of Hoystory, Jon Cassidy of watchdog.org  (also recently published in Human Events), and pseudonymous blogger "counterirritant."


Jeff adds:

Back in 2008 when I first discovered PolitiFact, it was very difficult for me to believe I was the only one that saw through the subtle twists in reasoning and the inconsistency in PolitiFact's application of standards that overwhelmingly benefited the left. It wasn't long before Bryan and I noticed each other making similar observations and comments on PolitiFact's Facebook page. Back then, we certainly felt very alone in a forest of praise for PolitiFact, and we eagerly shared whatever obscure and rare articles we could find that echoed or supplemented our concerns.

Gradually criticism mounted, and in January of 2011 we created this site with the goal of collecting and promoting the best critiques we could find. Our intention was to establish a collection point for people to research and discover the flaws and bias in PolitiFact's system. 

Almost two years later, that rumble of criticism has grown to a loud roar. An article highlighting a PolitiFact flub was once a rare find, and now the rebukes are so numerous we simply can't keep up.

We'd like to think we contributed to that, but we couldn't have done it without the many readers who email, Tweet, or share our site. A hearty thank you to the many of you who do. Your help in spreading the word has helped pull the perception of PolitiFact's credibility closer to where it belongs.

Spreading the Word

Big thanks to Right Wing News and Ace of Spades for the links this week.

John Hawkins provided a link to us on his site Right Wing News, and Ace Re-Tweeted a mention from one Wayne Austin.

Highlighting the bias and flawed standards at PolitiFact hasn't always been as popular as it is now. When we started PFB we did so in order to offer readers a collection point of disconnected and hard to find criticisms of the supposedly objective fact checkers.

Slowly but steadily the evidence is piling up and PolitiFact is no longer as trusted a source as they once were. We'd like to think we had something to do with encouraging the skepticism, but we wouldn't have been able to do it without our fans promoting our blog.

Thanks to people like Austin, and outlets like Right Wing News, Ace, Legal Insurrection and Big Hollywood, the word is spreading.

Thanks for your support and we look forward to being your source for evidence of and links to evidence of PolitiFact's liberal bias and journalistic failings.

Hoystory: Your fact check of the day

Welcome Hoystory readers!

Big thanks to Matthew Hoy for the mention on his site.

PolitiFact is currently engaged in full damage control after their recent favorable rating of a Joe Biden statement upon noting the sharp contrast with the conclusions at two other well known fact-checking outfits. We're working on a more detailed review of the issue but for now Hoy has a succinct account of the sophistry.

Highlighting PolitiFact's bias hasn't always been as popular as it is now and Hoy was one of the first to do so. His critiques of PolitiFact have always been spot-on and extremely well written. We're flattered by the shout-out.

You can read our reviews of his work here and you can read Hoy's PolitiFact posts on his site here.

Dual hat tips

Hat tips to Big Journalism's John Nolte and WTMJ's Charlie Sykes for posting hotlinks to our site.  We also appreciate the Twitter connections.

PolitiFact keeps flubbing up faster than we can write, so watch for updates.  And those of you who are so inclined, join in on the national critique of PolitiFact.  If you blog a critique of PolitiFact, drop us a line about it.