An out-of-context and prejudiced "In Context" feature from PolitiFact

PolitiFact advertises its "In Context" feature as a means of allowing readers decide, considering the surrounding context, the meaning of a politician's words.

The idea's fine in principle. But it takes principles to pull off an idea that's fine on principle and PolitiFact has a tough time with that. Consider PolitiFact's Nov. 1, 2024 feature about comments made by former President Donald Trump.

The third paragraph reminds readers of the ostensible purpose of the "In Context" feature:

With widespread interpretations of Trump’s remarks, we’re using our In Context feature to let voters review his comments in their original context and reach their own conclusions. 

We say this "In Context" passes better as a prejudiced anti-Trump editorial.

Why do we say that?

Even the part of the comment taken completely out of context puts PolitiFact's headline in question. 

Trump, appearing with Tucker Carlson (via PolitiFact's story):

Later, Trump added "I don’t blame (Dick Cheney) for sticking with his daughter, but his daughter is a very dumb individual, very dumb. She is a radical war hawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let's see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face."

What would support the conclusion that Trump describes a "firing squad"? Trump, after all, doesn't use that term in the out-of-context quote or elsewhere.

One element of the statement might reasonably support the "firing squad" idea: Trump describes a number of people (nine) aiming guns at Cheney's face.

What elements of the description fail to support the "firing squad" idea?

1. Cheney has a gun in Trump's description. What "firing squad" execution offers a gun to the target?
2. The guns are aimed at Cheney's face. Firing squads traditionally aim at the heart.
3. The alternative explanation, that Trump was talking about war hawks typically not needing to face battle themselves, has nothing that argues against it unless we count anti-Trump prejudice.

The text of PolitiFact's story links to an out-of-context version of Trump's comments. And though PolitiFact's source list includes a longer clip with the full context, PolitiFact left out what Trump said after "face":

"You know, they're all war hawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying 'Aw, gee, we'll, let's send, uh, let's send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.' But she's a stupid person." (transcript ours, comments start at 7:36)

Obviously, Trump expressed a common theme among politicians, that war hawks are not the ones facing the bullets.

So, even though PolitiFact gathered no reasonable evidence showing Trump was referring to Cheney facing a "firing squad," the fact checkers (actually liberal bloggers) put their own biased interpretation right in the headline to prejudice their readers.

Headlines often aren't written by the person who wrote the story, but we can blame biased journalist Amy Sherman directly because her story pushes the same conclusion: "Trump’s comments about Liz Cheney and a firing squad drew the most public attention."

There's no solid evidence Trump was referring to a firing squad and plenty to suggest he wasn't.

PolitiFact's story contains obvious signs of liberal bias and fails the supposed objective of the "In Context" feature by pushing a conclusion on readers.

PolitiFact North Carolina struggles with Twitter context

PolitiFact North Carolina's "Pants on Fire" rating awarded to the North Carolina Republican Party on Dec. 29, 2020 likely caps the data for our study of PolitiFact's "Pants on Fire" bias. And it gives us the opportunity to show again how PolitiFact struggles to properly apply interpretive principles when looking at Republican claims.

"Democrat Governor @RoyCooperNC has not left the Governor's Mansion since the start of the #COVID19 crisis," the party tweeted on Dec. 27.

Compared to similar claims and barbs, this particular tweet stood out.

That's PolitiFact's presentation of the GOP tweet. The only elaboration occurs in the summary section ("If Your Time Is Short") and later in the story when addressing the explanation from North Carolina GOP spokesperson Tim Wigginton.

Here's that section of the story (bold emphasis added):

Party spokesman Tim Wigginton told PolitiFact NC that the tweet is not meant to be taken literally.

"The tweet is meant metaphorically," Wigginton said, adding that it’s meant to critique the frequency of Cooper’s visits with business owners. He accused Cooper of living "in a bubble … instead of meeting with people devastated by his orders." 

The NC GOP’s tweet gave no indication that the party was calling on Cooper to meet with business owners.

The part in bold is the type of line that attracts a fact checker of fact checkers. 

Was there no indication the tweet was not intended literally?

It turns out that finding something worth widening the investigation merely took clicking the link to the GOP tweet.

I don't see how to embed the tweet, but here's the image accompanying the tweet:

It should strike anyone, even a left-biased fact checker, that the "Where's Cooper" comical graphic is a bit of a strange marriage for the claim Cooper hasn't left the governor's mansion.

That enough isn't enough to take Wigginton at his word, perhaps, but as we noted it does point toward a need for more investigation.

It turns out that the NCRP has tweeted out the image repeatedly in late December, accompanied by a number of statements.

Twitter counts as a new literary animal. Individual tweets are necessarily short on context. Twitter users may provide context a number of ways, such a creating a thread of linked tweets. Or tweeting periodically on a theme. The NCRP "Where's Cooper?" series seems to qualify as the latter. The tweets are tied together contextually by the "Where's Cooper" image, which provides a comical and mocking approach to the series of tweets.

In short, it looks like Wigginton has support for his explanation, and the PolitiFact fact checker, Paul Specht, either didn't notice or did not think the context was important enough to share with his readers.

It's okay for PolitiFact to nitpick whether Cooper had truly refrained from leaving the governor's mansion. The GOP tweets may have left a false impression on that point. But PolitiFact just as surely left a false impression that Wigginton's explanation had no grounding in fact. Specht didn't even mention the Waldo parody image.

"Pants on Fire"?

Hyperbole. Does PolitiFact have a license for hyperbole?