PolitiFact: How can we rig this abortion fact check to help President Biden?

Day by day, it's amazing to watch the kind of material PolitiFact publishes as supposedly "not biased" fact-checking.

From yesterday, June 24, we have this (red X added):

In what respect was President Biden claiming the United States counts as an outlier among "developed nations"? Here's how PolitiFact presented the president's statement:

"With this decision, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court shows how extreme it is, how far removed they are from the majority of this country," Biden said a couple hours after the ruling was released on June 24. "They have made the United States an outlier among developed nations in the world."

How far removed is the Supreme Court from the majority in this country? If we start with the amount of legal education, the gulf between does seem obvious. But Biden surely meant the Court's attitude toward abortion, even though the Court was faced with ruling on what U.S. law says about abortion, and not how to transform popular American attitudes into national law.

And how had the Court "made the United States an  outlier among developed nations of the world"? PolitiFact has published items showing it at least understands that abortion law varies widely among comparably developed nations. If it's "Half True" that "'39 out of 42 (countries) in Europe have more restrictive abortion laws' than Mississippi" then how is PolitiFact supposed to pull Biden's fat out of the fire on this one?

PolitiFact called in the Spin Team (our term!) of Madison Czopek and Tom Kertscher. The team developed a PolitiFantastic interpretation of Biden's claim:

While the high court’s decision leaves in place state laws that permit abortion, it removes the national right to an abortion — something that is widely guaranteed by laws or court rulings in other developed nations.

So ... President Biden was just saying that Court made the United States, home of the 10th amendment, an outlier on the basis of  its newfound lack of an explicit or de facto national abortion access law?

But what other developed nations have something like the 10th amendment in their constitutions? If they lack such a thing then isn't this a pointless exercise? The U.S. is an outlier because of the structure of its federalist system, not simply because of the Court.

Damn those torpedoes! PolitiFact's going full speed ahead!

Would you believe ...

... no mention of 'federalism'?

PolitiFact came oh-so-close to unraveling the mystery of the missing federal law setting abortion policy nationally in the United States:

The high court ruled 6-3 to uphold a restrictive Mississippi law and 5-4 to reverse Roe, with the majority opinion saying "the Constitution makes no express reference to a right to obtain an abortion." The decision ended nearly 50 years of federally protected access to abortion and returned power to individual states to set their own laws.

That means access to abortion varies widely in the U.S.

 Correct, PolitiFact. It's almost like the European Union that way.

In the EU, Malta is the only country where abortion is still completely prohibited. But Poland has a near-total ban in place, and many EU states have a range of legal barriers to abortion, such as mandatory counselling, waiting periods between a request and the abortion, third party consent, low upper time limits and limited legal grounds that force many women to travel to other countries, and all the increased restrictions on travel due to Covid-19, especially where access to abortion pills and self-managed abortion have not been made available.

 It's going to be really something when these fact checkers discover the concept of federalism.

... 'developed nations' don't need to be restricted to just the G7?

PolitiFact cleverly removed Malta and Poland from the "developed nations" list by restricting that list to the G7:

Developed nations consisting of the world’s leading economies are sometimes referred to as the G7, or the Group of Seven, which includes the U.S. and six other industrialized nations. Unlike the U.S., those six have national laws or court decisions that allow access to abortion, with various restrictions.

Would you believe PolitiFact has no consistent history of confining "developed nations" to the G7?

... 'Great Britain' as a G7 nation?

Would you believe Great Britain isn't listed as a G7 nation even though PolitiFact includes "Great Britain" on its list?

Would you believe that Great Britain isn't the same thing as the United Kingdom with respect to abortion law?

Great Britain technically refers to the main British island, made up of England, Scotland and Wales. "Great Britain" is sometimes used as a synonym for the United Kingdom, but if PolitiFact meant it that way then it should have pointed out that the U.K. only passed a law later resulting in liberalized abortion law in Northern Ireland in 2019.

"U.K." literally means "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland."

So the United Kingdom was the G7 outlier until 2019. The G7 went with no outlier for a couple of years before the SCOTUS struck down the Roe v. Wade precedent.

Why did PolitiFact miss all this stuff?

Probably because PolitiFact is biased. Very probably.

PolitiScam: It's Not What You Say, It's How PolitiFact Frames It

PolitiFact's Oct. 29, 2018 fact check of President Trump gave us yet another illustration of PolitiFact's inconsistent application of its principles.

The same day as shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue resulting in multiple deaths, Mr. Trump justified not canceling his campaign appearances by saying that terrorizing acts should not alter daily business. Trump used the New York Stock Exchange as his example, saying it opened the day after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

But it didn't open the next day. Trump was flatly wrong.


PolitiFact:

Note that PolitiFact spins its description. PolitiFact says Trump claimed he did not cancel the political rally simply because the NYSE opened the day after Sept. 11. But the NYSE opening was simply an example of the justification Trump was using.

This case involving Trump carries a parallel to a fact check PolitiFact did in 2008 of then-presidential candidate Barack Obama. Both Trump and Obama made false statements. But PolitiFact found a way to read Mr. Obama's false statement favorably:

Obama claimed his uncle helped liberate Auschwitz. But Obama's uncle was never particularly close to Auschwitz. That most famous of the concentration camps was located in Poland, not Germany, and was liberated by troops from the Soviet Union.

One might well wonder how Obama received a "Mostly True" rating for a relatively outrageous claim.

PolitiFact Framing to the Rescue!

It was very simple for PolitiFact to rehabilitate Mr. Obama's claim about his uncle. The uncle was a real person, albeit an uncle in the broad sense, and he did serve with American troops who helped liberate a less-well-known concentration camp near Buchenwald, Germany.

PolitiFact explains in its summary paragraph:

There's no question Obama misspoke when he said his uncle helped to liberate the concentration camp in Auschwitz.

But even with this error in locations, Obama's statement was substantially correct in that he had an uncle — albeit a great uncle — who served with troops who helped to liberate the Ohrdruf concentration/work camp and saw, firsthand, the horrors of the Holocaust. We rate the statement Mostly True.

See? Easy-peasy. The problem? It's pretty much just as easy to rehabilitate the claim Trump made:

There's no question Trump misspoke when he said the NYSE opened the day after Sept. 11.

But even with his error about the timing, Trump was substantially correct that the NYSE opened as soon as it feasibly could following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The NYSE opened the following week not far from where the twin towers collapsed.

PolitiFact only used two sources on the reopening of the NYSE, and apparently none that provided the depth of the Wall Street Journal article we linked. Incredibly, PolitiFact also failed to link the articles it used. The New York Times story it used was available on the internet. Instead, the sources have notes that say "accessed via Nexis."

All it takes to adjust the framing of  these fact check stories is the want-to. Trump was off by a week. Obama was off by a country. Both had underlying points a fact checker could choose to emphasize.

These fact checkers do not have objective standards for deciding how to frame fact checks.


Related: "Lord knows the decision about a Truth-O-Meter rating is entirely subjective"

Quoting quotations that aren't

A comparison of two recent PolitiFact ratings involving Democrat Tim Kaine and Republican Mike Pence

Fresh from our post about PolitiFact overlooking Democrat Tim Kaine's inaccurate version of something Republican Mike Pence said, we stumbled over another PolitiFact item showing PolitiFact applying a different standard.

Pence, during the vice-presidential debate, defended a Trump statement from an attack by Kaine. PolitiFact allowed that Pence's defense was valid since it addressed a flaw in Kaine's attack. But PolitiFact also charged that Pence misquoted Trump.

We will draw attention to the exact words PolitiFact uses, because when PolitiFact assures us in its statement of principles that "words matter," we expect PolitiFact to live up to the standards it applies to others.

Mike Pence was right to defend Donald Trump against critics who claim Trump characterized all Mexicans as rapists. But he's wrong to quote Trump as saying "many are good people."

In the case we evaluated hours ago, PolitiFact did not accuse Tim Kaine of misquoting Pence even though Kaine switched out a word from Pence's statement that changed the meaning.

How does PolitiFact judge when one person is quoting another?

Let's try a comparison between these two cases.

Kaine:

But Gov. Pence said, inarguably, Vladimir Putin is a better leader than President Obama."

Pence:

PENCE: He also said and many of them are good people. You keep leaving that out of your quote. And if you want me to go there, I’ll go there.

We used The New York Times' transcript of the vice-presidential debate because PolitiFact had three different versions of Pence's statement. The first one occurs in the article header and has an open quotation mark when Pence says "And":

"also said, ‘And many of them (Mexicans) are good people. You keep leaving that out of your quote."

The second one occurs in the body of the story and repeats the open quotation mark. But it adds a closed quotation mark after "people":

"He also said, ‘And many of them are good people.’ You keep leaving that out of your quote."

The third one occurs in PolitiFact's concluding paragraphs and has no quotation marks within the quotation:

"also said and many of them (Mexicans) are good people. You keep leaving that out of your quote."

The New York Times' version is correct, as is the third version from PolitiFact. The Times' version is correct because AP style reserves quotation marks for precise quotations, not paraphrases or summaries. It follows that AP style will forbid quotation within a quotation where the quotations are not exact. The New York Times follows that rule.

In practice, that means that a person writing in AP style can only justify using punctuation to create a quotation within a quotation when the speaker clearly indicates it is intended as a quotation ("And I quote ...") or where the writer confirms the quotation meets the style guideline's demand for accuracy. To illustrate, the punctuation for "Paul said 'Put the dandelions on the plate'" should ordinarily occur only when it is known that Paul said "Put the dandelions on the plate." Otherwise, the writer ought to assume the speaker is paraphrasing or summarizing: Paul said put the dandelions on the plate.

PolitiFact, judging from its three different attempts at punctuation, had trouble figuring out what to do with Pence's statement. Punctuating Pence's sentence to make a quotation within a quotation would certainly lend an air of authority to its fact check. Anyone with eyes would see clearly see from that version that Pence was trying to quote Trump precisely. So if Pence got the quotation wrong then PolitiFact could justifiably criticize him for it.

Objective fact checkers do not assume quotation if paraphrase or summary better fits the context. If it is possible the words were meant as a paraphrase or summary of another source, then the punctuation should reflect it, as in the version The New York Times published.

Substandard standards

PolitiFact had before it two cases where a candidate spoke of something another person said, where the words used did not match the original words.

Kaine was off by just one word, but PolitiFact did not punctuate Kaine's statement to make a quotation within a quotation.

Pence changed a word and left out two words, but PolitiFact punctuated Pence's statement to make a quotation within a quotation.

Why the difference in treatment?

Kaine's substitution of "better" for "stronger" in his paraphrase of Pence substantially changed Pence's meaning, as we explained in our earlier post.

Pence's substitution of "many" for "some" slightly changed Trump's meaning. Pence's paraphrase was objectively better justified than Kaine's.

PolitiFact did not penalize Kaine for misquoting Pence, for its story did not consider Kaine was quoting Pence.

PolitiFact charged Pence with misquoting Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Kaine received a "Mostly True" rating from PolitiFact.

Pence received a "Half True" rating from PolitiFact.

Pence's statement was more accurate, yet PolitiFact gave it a lower rating than Kaine's.

The only standard we can imagine that justifies these outcomes is the "Republicans lie more" standard. But an objective fact checker should reason from the outcome of numerous fact checks toward the conclusion "Republicans lie more," not reason from "Republicans lie more" to assigning lower fact check ratings for Republicans.

The latter represents a naked expression of ideological bias.

PolitiFact's Policy Plinko: What Rules Get Applied Today?

Yesterday Bryan wrote a piece noting PolitiFact ignores their own policies in favor of subjective whim and it's easy to find evidence supporting him. PolitiFact's application of standards resembles the game of Plinko, wherein they start off at one point, but can bounce around before they reach a final ruling. The notable difference between the two is that Plinko is much less predictable.

In 2012 former editor Bill Adair announced a new policy at PolitiFact that they would begin taking into account a person's underlying argument when determining a rating for a numbers claim. That new policy turned out to be bad news for Mitt Romney:

In Romney's case, PolitiFact says we need to look beyond the numbers and observe the historical context to find the truth:

The numbers are accurate but quite misleading....It's a historical pattern...not an effect of Obama's policies.

There is a small amount of truth to the claim, but it ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.

Romney's numbers are accurate, but, gee golly, PolitiFact needs to investigate in order to find out the meaning behind them so no one gets the wrong impression.

Thankfully for Democrats, just a few months later PolitiFact was back to dismissing the underlying argument and was simply performing a check of the numbers:

Some underlying arguments are more equal than others. Contrary to the Romney rating, PolitiFact chose to ignore the implication of the claim:

Our ruling

Clinton’s figures check out, and they also mirror the broader results we came up with two years ago. Partisans are free to interpret these findings as they wish, but on the numbers, Clinton’s right. We rate his claim True.

PolitiFact suddenly has no interest in whether or not the statistics are misleading. They're just here to make sure the numbers check out and all you partisans can decide what they mean.

Sometimes...

Look, kids! Wheel-O-Standards has come all the way back around! And just in time to hit the conservative group the Alliance Defending Freedom:

The organization does not provide mammograms at any of its health centers...

So Mattox is correct, by Planned Parenthood’s own acknowledgement, that the organization does not provide mammograms...

Federal data and Planned Parenthood’s own documents back up the claim from the Alliance Defending Freedom.

That puts the claim in the realm that won’t make either side happy: partially accurate but misleading without additional details. We rate the claim Half True.

We're back to numbers being accurate but misleading! In this rating PolitiFact finds the number of Planned Parenthood facilities licensed to perform mammograms (zero) is accurate, but after editorially judging the statistic gives the wrong impression, PolitiFact issues a rating based on the underlying argument. Because "fact checker" or something.

Why muck up such a great narrative just for the sake of applying consistent standards?

PolitiFact: Point? What underlying point?

In January 2012 PolitiFact's founding editor Bill Adair famously--at least we've tried to make it famous--assured PolitiFact's readers that the most important aspect of a numerical claim is the underlying point:

About a year ago, we realized we were ducking the underlying point of blame or credit, which was the crucial message. So we began rating those types of claims as compound statements. We not only checked whether the numbers were accurate, we checked whether economists believed an office holder's policies were much of a factor in the increase or decrease.

Today PolitiFact rated a State of the Union address claim from President Obama that the private sector created jobs every month since the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as "Obamacare," went into effect.

PolitiFact's rating? "True."

And what about that underlying argument, eh?

There’s room for argument over what the growth would have looked like absent the health care law, but Obama’s statistic is on target. We rate this claim True.

So ... these days it's like "Why mess up Obama's "True" rating by unnecessarily complicating things? We have a deadline!"

We don't mean to imply any kind of meaningful policy change since PolitiFact supposedly altered its policy under Adair. So far as we can tell, PolitiFact employs a subjective set of rules in reaching its "Truth-O-Meter" ratings. That subjectivity will always take precedence over whatever changes PolitiFact makes to its stated policies.

Note (Jan. 14, 2016): Be sure to check out Jeff D's follow up to this post, PolitiFact's Policy Plinko: What Rules Get Applied Today? Jeff gives some examples of the inconsistency talked about in the above post.

PolitiFact and opt-in polling

On Dec. 9, 2015, PolitiFact doled out a "Mostly False" to Donald Trump.

Trump had cited an opt-in poll that found about 25 percent of American* Muslims think it may be okay to commit violent acts against Americans in the name of jihad. PolitiFact found it improper to report the results of the poll:

Trump is referring to a poll conducted by the Center for Security Policy. However, polling experts raise numerous questions about the validity of the poll’s results, including its "opt-in" methodology and the dubiously large percentages of respondents who said they were unaware of ISIS or al-Qaida. Moreover, an official with the Center for Security Policy cautioned against generalizing the poll results to the entire Muslim-American community.

So, the opt-in methodology makes poll results suspect?

Is PolitiFact consistent on that point?

PolitiFact and PunditFact will soon announce our Lie of the Year -- the most significant falsehood of 2015, as chosen by our editors and reporters. We're also inviting PolitiFact readers to vote for the Readers' Choice award.

Here are our 11 finalists and a link to our survey so you can vote for your favorite. We accept write-ins. We also have a mobile-friendly version of this survey.

Does PolitiFact claim or imply that its "Reader's Choice" award accurately reflects the opinion of its readers?

Hmm.


*Though the poll surveyed American Muslims, Trump did not mention that aspect of the poll when he made his claim. PolitiFact apparently found the words Trump chose unimportant when it fact checked his claim.

PolitiFact defines "bailout" (Updated)

On Dec. 1, 2015, PolitiFact handed down a "Mostly False" rating on Marco Rubio's claim he prevented a $2.5 billion bailout of health insurance companies under ObamaCare.

PolitiFact's ruling hinged partly on its definition of "bailout." PolitiFact said giving the insurance companies money to help keep them in business wasn't really a bailout:

But is it really a bailout?  Several experts told us no, stressing that a bailout usually refers to a program used to save a company after the fact, not a mechanism in place to deal with a problem that everyone assumes could occur.

Are these experts engaging in a "No True Scotsman" fallacy? Or did PolitiFact do it for them by torquing the paraphrase? Perhaps PolitiFact used leading interview questions?

We were curious about PolitiFact's history of defining the term "bailout."

April 21, 2010: PolitiFact

Early on, "bailout" might have meant anything to PolitiFact:

A big challenge in analyzing Reid's statement, or any like it, is figuring out what exactly the word "bailout" means.

"It is almost impossible to pin politicians down on this one because 'bailout' has no clear meaning," said Douglas Elliott, a fellow with the Brookings Institution, a public policy think tank. "It could cover a very wide range of things, some of which involve taxpayer money and some don't, and some of which are traditional central banking or deposit insurer roles and others of which are novel."

PolitiFact decided Dodd-Frank didn't prevent bailouts in this fact check, but the definition of "bailout" was not critical to the ruling.

Oct. 27, 2010: PolitiFact Florida

Any "rescue from financial distress" qualifies as a bailout to us. And last year, the National Association of Home Builders did indeed lobby Congress for — and win — a change in tax law that it argued was a "critical stimulus measure for the U.S. economy" that would provide "an infusion of monetary resources for firms struggling to retain workers and undertake economic activity."

The issue in this fact check from PolitiFact Florida was a chain email attack on parties opposing Florida's Amendment 4. Amendment 4 would have made real estate development far more difficult. It was a measure more likely supported by progressives, so PolitiFact Florida's broad definition tended to help progressives.

Oct. 29, 2010: PolitiFact Virginia

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said a Republican was a hypocrite because his car dealership received bailout money from the "Cash for Clunkers" program. For PolitiFact Virginia, the definition of "bailout" wasn't even at issue. Apparently it's clear that "Cash for Clunkers" was a bailout program. The DCCC gets a "Half True" since PolitiFact Virginia couldn't pin down the amount received in the bailout:

But we can’t place a dollar amount on the benefit to Rigell. The ad wrongly suggests that his dealerships’ $441,000 in rebates were straight profits and there’s reason to believe Rigell’s actual gain from Clunkers was considerably smaller. So we find the claim to be Half True.

Dec. 18, 2011: PolitiFact Texas

Our sense? Taxpayers picked up built-up costs that otherwise could not be covered. It seems reasonable to call that expenditure a bailout.

The broad sense harmed Republican Rick Perry. The narrow sense would have helped him. PolitiFact Texas opted for the broad sense.

January 13, 2014: PunditFact

Conservative Pundit Charles Krauthammer foreshadowed the Rubio ruling by calling ObamaCare's risk corridor reimbursements a "huge government bailout." When asked, Krauthammer said he was using the broad definition and provided dictionary support. PunditFact decided his statement deserved treatment according to a narrower definition.

We asked Krauthammer why he called this a bailout and he said he relied on the definition from Merriam-Webster. "The act of saving or rescuing something (such as a business) from money problems," he quoted. "A rescue from financial distress."

Rescue is clearly the operative word. We looked at other definitions. The Palgrave Dictionary of Economics spoke of a rescue from "potential or actual insolvency." Investopedia had to prevent "the consequences that arise from a business's downfall."

Using the narrow definition of "bailout" as a principal justification, PunditFact rated Krauthammer's claim "Half True."

June 30, 2014: PolitiFact

If The New York Times says the Ex-Im Bank asked for a bailout in 1987 then it must be true. There's no reason to question the definition used by the Times, right? The definition was not a major issue for the fact check.

Was TARP a "Bailout" Program?

PolitiFact appears to consistently accept that the Troubled Asset Relief Program was a bailout program. But what if we applied the definition the experts suggested for the Rubio fact check?

TARP did not stop at helping out banks that were in trouble when the measure was passed. On the contrary, the measure foresaw banks running into trouble in the near future for the same reasons other banks had run into trouble.

The TARP timeline published by ProPublica makes clear the TARP program bears some key similarities to the ObamaCare features the experts would not call "bailouts."

PolitiFact Plays Games With Definitions

We've found cases where PolitiFact manipulated the definition of "bailout" resulting in unfair harm to conservatives. We found no cases where PolitiFact similarly harmed Democrats.

If anybody can find an example of the latter we missed, we'll be delighted to edit the article to include it. Drop us a line.


Update Dec. 10, 2015
We added the Jan. 13, 2014 PunditFact item, which we intended to include in the original version. Also fixed some stubborn formatting issues.

Fifty shades of "Half True"

PolitiFact's founding editor, Bill Adair, has said the truth is often not black and white, but gray:

Our Truth-O-Meter is based on the concept that the truth in politics is often not black and white, but shades of gray.

With this post we'll look at an example of PolitiFact shading the truth with its middle-ground "Half True" rating.

Justice Roy Moore, conservative: "Half True"

The first example comes from Feb. 13, 2015. Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore said Alabama hadn't changed its mind about gay marriage since passing a law in 2007 defining marriage in heterosexual terms. Moore was answering a claim from CNN host Chris Cuomo that people in Alabama had changed their views on gay marriage. PolitiFact reported the key exchange:

"Times have changed as they did with slavery," Cuomo said Feb. 12 on New Day. "The population no longer feels the same way. And even in your state, people no longer feel the same way."

Moore held firm that marriage was defined as between a man and a woman, and said, "81 percent as recently as 2006 said it was the definition. They haven’t changed their opinion."

PolitiFact framed its fact check in terms of a contest between the statements from Cuomo and Moore. If support for gay marriage had changed in Alabama, then Moore's claim was not plainly true.

PolitiFact flubbed its interpretation of Moore's response. Moore was not arguing that no change had occurred in opinion polls. Moore referred to the percentage of Alabama voters who approved the heterosexual marriage definition in 2006. The voters had not changed their minds in that the people of Alabama had not moved to change the law they overwhelmingly approved. PolitiFact noted that Moore was referring to that vote, but somehow failed to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Moore's Truth-O-Meter rating: "Half True."

Even if PolitiFact's wrong interpretation was correct, Moore would be off by a scant 14 percent. Democrat Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse once received a "Mostly True" rating for a claim that was off by 27 percent.

Rep. Pete DeFazio (D-Ore.): "Half True"

Our second example comes from a PolitiFact fact check published on Feb. 17, 2015. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) blamed genetically modified crops for the impending extinction of the monarch butterfly.

PolitiFact quotes DeFazio:

"We certainly know there is going to be secondary harm to the environment," he said. "In fact, monarch butterflies are becoming extinct because of this sort of dumping, (the) huge increase in pesticides’ use because of these modified organisms."

DeFazio got a thing or two wrong. Monarch butterflies aren't going extinct. The causal connection between the increased use of herbicides and the decreased wintering population of monarch butterflies has not yet been scientifically established. And, though PolitiFact kindly ignored this mistake, DeFazio referred to "pesticides" instead of "herbicides."  Update Aug. 17, 2018: In fact "pesticides" can encompass plant pests as well as animal pests./update The expert PolitiFact cited mentioned the effects of herbicides on the monarch caterpillar's favored food, milkweed. PolitiFact apparently didn't investigate the effect of pesticide dumping on monarch butterfly populations.

So DeFazio got nothing right, but PolitiFact accepted his extinction claim as a mere exaggeration of the declining wintering population of monarch butterflies. The final ruling: "Half True."


It almost takes a masochist to read PolitiFact's fifty shades of gray.