Yes, Virginia, state franchise "star chambers" are still a thing

As I noted over at Zebra Fact Check, PolitiFact is saying the people who decide a "Truth-O-Meter" rating have years of PolitiFact experience.

It doesn't appear true. In the past, PolitiFact admitted that state franchises were expected to supply their own board of editors to determine ratings, with PolitiFact supplying additional editors as needed.

It seems that's still the case. But where are the years of experience supposed to come from?

Transparency: How to access PolitiFact's page of corrected or updated fact checks (updated x2)

Note: Page now obsolete, see Update 2 at the bottom

It has long amused us here at PolitiFact Bias how difficult PolitiFact makes it for readers to navigate to its page of corrections and updates. There are pretty much three ways to navigate to the page.


Someone could link to it by hotlinking using the page URL.

This is the method PolitiFact uses to make finding the page seem easy-peasy in tweets or other messages. Works great!



The reader could use a search engine to find it

No, not the search function at the PolitiFact website. That will not get you there.

We're talking about a search engine like Google or DuckDuckGo. Search politifact + corrections + and + updates and reaching the page is a snap.


The reader could navigate to the page from PolitiFact's homepage. Maybe. 

This is the amusing part. We've already noted that using the "search" function at the PolitiFact website won't reach its dedicated page of corrected and updated fact checks (other corrections and updates do not yet end up there, unfortunately).

And without a guide such as the one that follows, most people browsing PolitiFact's website would probably never stumble over the page.

How To Do It

Step 1: On the homepage, move the cursor to the top menu bar and hover over "Truth-O-Meter" to trigger the drop-down menu
Step 2: Move the cursor down that menu to "By Subject," click on "By Subject"
Step 3: On the "Subjects" page, move the cursor to the alphabet menu below the main menu, hover over "c," click "c"
Step 4: Move the cursor to the subjects listed under "c," move cursor to hover over "Corrections and Updates," click "Corrections and Updates"

Done! What could be easier?

The key? Knowing that PolitiFact counts "Corrections and Updates" as a category of "statements" defined by PolitiFact as Truth-O-Meter stories. The list of corrections and updates consists only of fact checks. Corrections or updates of explainer articles, promise ratings and flip-flop ratings (etc.) do not end up on PolitiFact's page of corrections and updates.

What you'll find under "c" at PolitiFact.com

Afters


When I (Bryan) designed the Zebra Fact Check website, I put the "Corrections" link on the main menu.

It's not all about criticizing PolitiFact. It's also about showing better and more transparent ways to do fact-checking.

This isn't exactly rocket science. Anybody can figure out that putting an item on the main menu makes it easy to find.

There is reason to suspect that PolitiFact is less than gung-ho about publicizing its corrections and updates.


Update Aug. 5, 2019: We do have evidence of promise ratings appearing on the list of corrected stories."Flip-O-Meter" stories have subject tags, so we assume those may appear on the list as well.

Update 2, Feb. 2, 2020: PolitiFact updated its website on Feb. 1, 2020, making our instructions obsolete. Details here.

PolitiFact partially unveils spectacularly transparent description of its fact-checking process

"The Week in Fact-Checking," an update on the latest fact-checking news posted at the Poynter website, alerted us to the fact that PolitiFact has updated its statement of principles:

PolitiFact made their methodology more transparent, in keeping with other fact-checkers around the world. (And ICYMI,  PolitiFact has moved its headquarters to Poynter, earning a not-for-profit designation.)

We were surprised we had missed PolitiFact's welcome improvement to its methodological transparency. So we visited PolitiFact.com to check it out.

So ... where is it?

PolitiFact created multiple pages of transparent new content and apparently neglected to equip its website with internal links leading readers to the new content.

Clicking "About Us>>Our Process" on the main menu takes the reader to PolitiFact's 2013 statement of principles.

Clicking "Our Process" on the footer takes the reader to PolitiFact's 2013 statement of principles

There's no apparent way to use PolitiFact's main page to find the new even-more-transparent(!) statement of principles.

But people can see PolitiFact's latest extreme transparency through the Poynter.org website. Or maybe via links posted to Twitter. We haven't noticed any yet, but it's possible.

So there's that.

The new material published on Feb. 12, 2018. As of Feb. 18, 2018, PolitFact.com still funneled readers to its 2013 statement of principles.

We see that as illustrative of the PolitiFact bubble. PolitiFact judges its transparency according to its belief it has published a new statement of principles. Those outside the PolitiFact bubble, unaware of the new statement of principles thanks to PolitiFact's oversight, do not likely take the same view of PolitiFact's transparency.

Why are those outside the bubble so ignorant of PolitiFact's extreme transparency?

PolitiFact Texas unpublished (Updated x3)

It seems like only yesterday we were praising PolitiFact Texas and W. Gardner Selby for taking an important step toward full transparency by making its interviews of experts available to readers.

Now it has come to our attention that PolitiFact Texas has followed PolitiFact National's lead in unpublishing stories when it decides they are defective.

A publisher may have legitimate reasons for unpublishing a story. But in the interest of transparency organizations should not totally remove the defective work from public view. Organizations should archive the story and keep it available before and after the organization puts the needed changes into effect.

Lately PolitiFact disappears the entire story and only posts a link to the archived version after republishing a reworked version.

If there's a good excuse for that doughnut hole in transparency we are not aware of it.

We also disapprove of PolitiFact only communicating its decision to unpublish the item on Twitter. That's transparency only for the Twitterverse. Readers deserve better than that.

As a candidate, Greg Abbott called for school principal leadership trainings. On the Abbott-O-Meter in his 4th year as governor, it's a PROMISE BROKEN.https://t.co/gqMtBTpEh9

— PolitiFact Texas (@PolitiFactTexas) January 4, 2018

Update Jan. 10, 2018

We found what is apparently the original version of the Abbott-O-Meter ruling and archived it at the Internet Archive.

Update Nov. 28, 2024

A spike in traffic to this post led us to review it, and it turns out it's overdue for an update.

On Jan. 11, 2018, after we originally posted our Jan. 10, 2018 update, PolitiFact Texas published a new version of the story with the old version appended afterward.

PolitiFact Texas' approach addressed our concern about disappearing the defective version of the story. But PolitiFact left us ample room to continue our criticism based on its failure to use a correction notice. This is what passes for PolitiFact's mea culpa:

The Abbott-O-Meter update below was posted Jan. 4, 2018. It's eclipsed by the update above:

Ordinarily a PolitiFact promise meter features a number of updates, each superseding the earlier updates. Find an "Obameter" example with two entries here. But for whatever reason many of the PolitiFact Texas' "Abbott-O-Meter" promises have no assessments whatsoever. Without investigating, we'd assume that may have something to do with the dissolution of PolitiFact's relationship with the Austin American-Statesman.

PolitiFact, then, used something akin to its normal approach for updating a promise meter story but without acknowledging that its story was mistaken. There's no admission of error and no apology, even though it's apparent that the facts justifying the "Promise Kept" rating were in effect when PolitiFact Texas published its "Promise Broken" update.

Typically the story updates progress along the lines of "In the Works" toward either "Promise Kept," "Promise Broken" or "Compromise." Going from "Promise Broken" to "Promise Kept" in the space of a week or two doesn't really make sense.

PolitiFact made a mistake and failed to follow its corrections policy.

And while all this was happening, the International Fact-Checking Network was publishing as "verified" the claim that PolitiFact "scrupulously" follows its policy on corrections. That was a lie then and it's a lie now.

IFCN assessors don't look closely enough to find mistakes, and the IFCN intentionally keeps its assessors from readily accessing the complaints it receives from the public with virtually zero transparency.

The IFCN supposedly publishes an "annual" transparency report. The first and last such report was from 2020.

We follow Poynter’s corrections policy for our articles and any corrections can be found at this link.

For 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 State of the Fact-Checkers Reports please visit the links attached to the respective years.

Starting from 2020, IFCN publishes annual transparency reports on its Code of Principles. You can download the 2020 report here.

We judge it false that the IFCN publishes an annual transparency report. 

Oh, and of course the link for the 2020 report returns a 404 error.

What an embarrassment.

IFCN transparency means you might be able to find the 2020 report at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

There's a little tidbit about this author in that 2020 transparency report:

Durin [sic] 2020, a very significant amount of complaints have been submitted one [sic] single source against one specific verified signatory, therefore, encouraging us to explore how to navigate such overwhelming attempts without allowing the system to be abused while making sure legitimate complaints are recorded.

Apparently the IFCN settled on the strategy of ignoring my complaints regardless of their legitimacy. Another embarrassment for the IFCN.

Update Nov. 28, 2024: In truth, I should have simply provided a link to the followup story we published on Jan. 11, 2020.

But it was worth tying it in with the International Fact-Checking Network's facade of accountability.

Poynter hides criticism of PolitiFact's transparency?

The Poynter Institute, a journalism school in St. Petersburg, Florida, owns our reason for existence, PolitiFact. I sometimes read articles posted at Poynter, particularly those concerned with fact-checking.

Up through today, I believe Poynter has published every comment I have made.

Poynter re-published the guidelines for fact-checking written by PolitiFact editor Angie Drobnic Holan. I had responded to Holan's PolitiFact article with one of my own published to Medium. At the Poynter website I commented about one of my central points of rebuttal: PolitiFact's claims of accountability to the public can't be taken seriously so long as a story from PolitiFact Missouri from earlier this year sustains its train-wreck status (and it does sustain that status).

I captured the above image right after pushing the button to publish my comment. Note the message that the comment is pending approval. When I visited the page later, I was still able to see evidence I had commented and the comment was pending approval. I was also able to review the content of the yet-to-be-published comment.

Now, when I return to the page, no evidence remains of my comment activity.

Is it possible that the comment remains in moderation and Poynter will publish it later? Sure, that's possible. We will certainly update this item if Poynter publishes the comment.

Meanwhile, here is our message to PolitiFact and the Poynter Institute:

Hiding a problem of transparency does not address that problem of transparency.

 
Update June 30, 2016:

 

Pending for 11 hours. Shall we go for 36?