PolitiFact Tweezes Green New Deal Falsehoods

In our post "PolitiFact's Green New Deal Fiction Depiction" we noted how PolitiFact had decided that a Democrat posting a falsehood-laden FAQ about the Green New Deal on her official congressional website escaped receiving a negative rating on PolitiFact's "Truth-O-Meter."

At the time we noted that PolitiFact's forbearance held benefits for Democrats and Republicans alike:

Many will benefit from PolitiFact's apparent plan to give out "Truth-O-Meter" mulligans over claimed aspects of the Green New Deal resolution not actually in the resolution. Critics of those parts of the plan will not have their attacks rated on the Truth-O-Meter. And those responsible for generating the controversy in the first place by publishing FAQs based on something other than the actual resolution also find themselves off the hook.

 We were partly right.

Yes, PolitiFact let Democrats who published a false and misleading FAQ about the Green New Deal off the hook.

But apparently PolitiFact has reserved the right to fault Republicans and conservatives who base their criticisms of the Green New Deal on the false and misleading information published by the Democrats.

PolitiFact Florida tweezed out a such a tidbit from an editorial written by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.):

False? It doesn't matter at all that Ocasio-Cortez said otherwise on her official website? There is no truth to it whatsoever? And Ocasio-Cortez gets no "False" rating for making an essentially identical claim on her website?

This case will get our "tweezers or tongs" tag because PolitiFact is once again up to its traditional shenanigan of tweezing out one supposed falsehood from a background of apparent truths:

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., outlined his opposition to the Democrats’ Green New Deal in a Feb. 25th Orlando Sentinel op-ed:

"If you are not familiar with it, here’s the cliff notes version: It calls for rebuilding or retrofitting every building in America in the next 10 years, eliminating all fossil fuels in 10 years, eliminating nuclear power, and working towards ending air travel (to be replaced with high-speed rail)."

...

Let’s hit the brakes right there -- do the Democrats want to end air travel?

See what PolitiFact did, there?

Scott can get three out of four points right, but PolitiFact Florida will pick on one point to give Scott a "False" rating and build for him an unflattering graph of  "Truth-O-Meter" ratings shaped by PolitiFact's selection bias.

The Jestation Hypothesis

How does PolitiFact Florida go about discounting the fact that Ocasio-Cortez claimed on her website that the Green New Deal aimed to make air travel obsolete?

The objective and neutral fact checkers give us the Jestation Hypothesis. She must have been kidding.

No, really. Perhaps the idea came directly from one of the three decidedly non-neutral experts PolitiFact cited in its fact check (bold emphasis added):

"It seems to me those lines from the FAQ were lighthearted and ill-considered, and it’s not clear why they were posted," said Sean Hecht, Co-Executive Director, Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA law school.

Hecht's FEC contributions page is hilariously one-sided.

Does anyone need more evidence that the line about making air travel obsolete was just a joke?

"No serious climate experts advocate ending air travel -- that's simply a red-herring," said Bledsoe, who was a climate change advisor to the Clinton White House.

Former Clinton White House advisor Bledsoe is about as neutral as Hecht. The supposed "red-herring," we remind readers, was published on Ocasio-Cortez's official House of Representatives website.

The neutral and objective fact-checkers of PolitiFact Florida deliver their jestational verdict (bold emphasis added):

Scott wrote in an op-ed that the Democrats’ Green New Deal includes "working towards ending air travel."

The resolution makes no mention of ending air travel. Instead, it calls for "overhauling transportation systems," which includes "investment in high-speed rail." Scott seized on a messaging document from Democrats that mentioned, perhaps in jest, getting rid of "farting cows and airplanes." But we found no evidence that getting rid of airplanes is a serious policy idea from climate advocates.

Apparently it cannot count as evidence that Democrats have advocated getting rid of airplanes if a popular Democratic Party representative publishes this on her website:

The Green New Deal sets a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, at the end of this 10-year plan because we aren’t sure that we will be able to fully get rid of, for example, emissions from cows or air travel before then. However, we do believe we can ramp up renewable manufacturing and power production, retrofit every building in America, build the smart grid, overhaul transportation and agriculture, restore our ecosystem, and more to get to net-zero emissions.

Oh! Ha ha ha ha ha! Get it? We may not be able to fully get rid of emissions from cows or air travel in only 10 years! Ha ha ha!

So the claim was quite possibly a joke, even if no real evidence supports that idea.

But it's all PolitiFact needs to give a Republican a "False" rating and the Democrat no rating at all for saying essentially the same thing.

This style of fact-checking undermines fact checkers' credibility with centrists and conservatives, as well as with discerning liberals.



Afters

There was one more expert PolitiFact cited apart from the two we showed/noted were blatantly partisan.

That was "David Weiskopf, climate policy director for NextGen Climate America."

Here's a snippet from the home page for NextGen Climate America:

So basically neutral, right?

PolitiFact Florida "fact checker" (liberal blogger) Amy Sherman seems to have a special gift for citing groups of experts who skew hilariously left.

PolitiFact helps Bernie Sanders with tweezers and imbalance

Our posts carrying the "tweezers or tongs" tag look at how PolitiFact skews its ratings by shifting its story focus.

Today we'll look at PolitiFact's June 27, 2017 fact check of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.):

Where Sen. Sanders mentions 23 million thrown off of health insurance, PolitiFact treats his statement like a random hypothetical. But the context shows Sanders was not speaking hypothetically (bold emphasis added):

"What the Republican proposal (in the House) does is throw 23 million Americans off of health insurance," Sanders told host Chuck Todd. "What a part of Harvard University -- the scientists there -- determine is when you throw 23 million people off of health insurance, people with cancer, people with heart disease, people with diabetes, thousands of people will die."

The House health care bill does not throw 23 million Americans off of health insurance. The CBO did predict that at the end of 10 years 23 million fewer Americans would have health insurance compared to the current law (Obamacare) projection. There's a huge difference between those two ideas, and PolitiFact may never get around to explaining it.

PolitiFact, despite fact-checkers admitted preference for checking false statements, overlooks the low-hanging fruit in favor of Sanders' claim that thousands will die.

Is Sanders engaging in fearmongering? Sure. But PolitiFact doesn't care.

Instead, PolitiFact focused on Sanders' claim that study after study supports his point that thousands will die if 23 million people get thrown off of insurance.

PolitiFact verified his claim in hilariously one-sided fashion. One would never know from PolitiFact's fact check that the research findings are disputed, as here.

This is the type of research PolitiFact omitted (bold emphasis added) from its fact check:

After determining the characteristics of the uninsured and discovering that being  uninsured does not necessarily mean an individual has no access to health services, the authors turn to the question of mortality. A lack of care is particularly troubling if it leads to differences in mortality based on insurance status. Using data from the Health and Retirement Survey, the authors estimate differences in mortality rates for individuals based on whether they are privately insured, voluntarily uninsured, or involuntarily uninsured. Overall, they find that a lack of health insurance is not likely to be the major factor causing higher mortality rates among the uninsured. The uninsured—particularly the involuntarily uninsured—have multiple disadvantages that are associated with poor health.

So PolitiFact cherry-picked Sanders' claim with tweezers, then did a one-sided fact-check of that cherry-picked part of the claim. Sanders ended up with a "Mostly True" rating next to his false claims.

Does anybody do more to erode trust in fact-checking than PolitiFact?

It's worth noting this stinker was crafted by the veteran fact-checking team of Louis Jacobson and Angie Drobnic Holan.



Correction July 11, 2017: In the fourth paragraph after our quotation of PolitiFact, we had "23,000" instead of the correct figure of "23 million." Thanks to YuriG in the comments section for catching our mistake.

PolitiFact Texas uses tongs (2016)

Our "tweezers or tongs" tag applies to cases where PolitiFact had a choice of a narrow focus on one part of a claim or a wider focus on a claim with more than one part.

The tweezers or tongs option allows a fact-check to exercise bias by using the true part of a statement to boost the rating. Or ignoring the true part of the statement to drop the rating.

In this case, from 2016, a Democrat got the benefit of PolitiFact Texas' tongs treatment:

So, it was true that Texas law requires every high school to have a voter registrar.

But it was false that the law requires the registrar to get the children to vote once they're eligible.

PolitiFact averages it out:

Saldaña said a Texas law requires every high school to have a voter registrar "and part of their responsibility is to make sure that when children become 18 and become eligible to vote, that they vote."

A 1983 law requires every high school to have a deputy voter registrar tasked with giving eligible students voter registration applications. Each registrar also must make sure submitted applications are appropriately handled.

However, the law doesn’t require registrars to make every eligible student register; it's up to each student to act or not. Also, as Saldaña acknowledged, registrars aren’t required to ensure that students vote.

We rate this statement Half True.

There are dozens of examples where PolitiFact ignored what was true in favor of emphasizing the false. It's just one more way the PolitiFact system allows bias to creep in.

Here's one for which PolitiFact Pennsylvania breaks out the tweezers:

Sen. Toomey (R-Penn.) correctly says the ACA created a new category of eligibility. That part of his claim does not figure in the "Half True" rating.

We doubt that PolitiFact has ever created an ethical, principled and objective means for deciding when to ignore parts of compound claims.

Certainly we see no evidence of such means in PolitiFact's work.

PolitiFact New York: Facts be damned, what we think the Democrat was trying to say was true

Liberals like to consider the tendency of fact checkers to rate conservatives more harshly than liberals a fairly solid evidence that Republicans lie more. After all, as we are often reminded, "truth has a liberal bias." But the way fact checkers pick which stories to tell and what facts to check has a fundamental impact on how fact checkers rate claims by political party.

Take a June 9, 2017 fact check from PolitiFact New York, for example.

Image from PolitiFact.com

Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) of New York proclaimed that the state of New York has achieved pay equity.

Hochul also proclaimed women are paid 90 cents on the dollar compared to men.

Hochul's first claim seems flatly false, if we count women getting paid $1 for every $1 earned by a man as "pay equity."

Her second claim, putting an accurate number on the raw gender wage gap, typically rates either "Half True" or "Mostly True" according to PolitiFact. PolitiFact tends to overlook the fact that the statistic is almost invariably used in the context of gender discrimination (see "Afters" section below).

In fact, the PolitiFact New York fact check focuses exclusively on the second claim of fact and takes a pass on evaluating the first claim of fact. PolitiFact New York justified its rating by saying Hochul's point was on target (bold emphasis added):

Hochul's numbers are slightly off. The data reveals a gender pay gap, but her point that New York state has a significantly smaller gap compared with the national average is correct. We rate her claim Mostly True.

At PolitiFact Bias, we class these cases under the tag "tweezers or tongs." PolitiFact might focus on one part of a claim, or focus on what it has interpreted as the point the politician was trying to make. Or, PolitiFact might look at multiple parts of a claim and produce a rating of the claim's truthiness "on balance."

PolitiFact in this case appears to use tweezers to remove "We have pay equity" from consideration. That saves the Democrat, Hochul, from an ugly blemish on her PolitiFact report card.

The fact checkers have at least one widely recognized bias: They tend to look for problematic statements. When a fact checker ignores a likely problem statement like "We have pay equity" in favor of something more mundane in the same immediate context, it suggests a different bias affected the decision.

The beneficiary of PolitiFact's adjusted focus once again: a Democrat.

When this happens over and over again, as it does, this by itself calls into question whether PolitiFact's candidate "report cards" or comparisons of "Truth-O-Meter" ratings by party carry any scientific validity at all.



Afters

Did Hochul make her gender wage gap claim in the context of gender pay discrimination?

Our best clue on that issue comes from Hochul's statement, just outside the context quoted by PolitiFact New York, that "Now, it's got to get to 100 [cents on the dollar]."
We draw from that part of her statement that Hochul was very probably pushing the typical Democratic talking point that the raw wage gap results from gender discrimination, which is false. Interpreting her otherwise makes it hard to see the importance of pay equity regardless of the jobs men and women do. We doubt the popularity of having gender pay equity regardless of the job performed, even in the state of New York.

The acid test: Will women's groups react with horror if women achieve an advantage in terms of the raw wage gap? When men make only 83 cents on the dollar compared to women? Or will they assure us that the differences in pay are okay as it is the result of the job choices people make? We'll find out in time.

PolitiFact Virginia vanishes an underlying point

Does PolitiFact have principles?

Apparently none that represent an obstacle to reaching whatever "Truth-O-Meter" rating is desired.

Today's example comes from PolitiFact Virginia's Aug. 15, 2016 fact check of Democratic Vice-presidential candidate Tim Kaine. Kaine said former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi couldn't find a place to stay in New York, so Donald Trump let him put a tent on the Trump Estate.

Before we proceed, let us review PolitiFact's definition of its "True" rating on its trademarked "Truth-O-Meter":

TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing.

Kaine said nobody would let Gadhafi stay in New York, then said Trump let Gadhafi set up a tent on his estate. So was Kaine saying Gadhafi stayed at the estate in an elaborate tent?

Isn't that Kaine's implication?

PolitiFact apparently thinks so, otherwise the caption under the "Truth-O-Meter" serves no useful purpose: "Gadhafi a no-show." Isn't it significant that Gadhafi did not end up staying at the estate despite the appearance that's what Kaine implied?

Making PolitiFact Virginia look even more incompetent, the "True" rating overlooks Kaine's primary underlying argument, which PolitiFact understood well enough to use as its lead paragraph:

Tim Kaine says Donald Trump has a fondness for dictators, including the late Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi.

Kaine's evidence that Trump has a fondness for dictators, including Gadhafi, is Trump renting Gadhafi space at the Trump estate--space that Gadhafi apparently did not visit. PolitiFact Virginia, in fact, reported that Gadhafi found a place to stay in New York, even though Kaine said he could not find a place to stay:

Gadhafi ended up staying at Libya’s U.N. mission in midtown Manhattan.

Kaine said Gadhafi could not find a place to stay in New York, implying the Trump estate was the exception. That was false.

Kaine implied Gadhafi stayed at the Trump estate. That was false.

Kaine said Trump allowed Gadhafi to set up a tent at the Trump estate. That was apparently true, but used in a misleading way.

Kaine implied that Trump's arrangement with Gadhafi shows Trump holds an affinity for dictators.

Don't we need stronger evidence than this?

Nah. This is PolitiFact. What Kaine said was "True" and nothing significant was left out.

Perhaps PolitiFact Virginia simply mistakes objectionable fact-checking for objective fact-checking?


Update Sept. 17, 2016: Afters

We're updating this post to add the "tweezers or tongs" tag, with a few words of explanation.

"Tweezers or tongs" denotes stories where PolitiFact has the option of setting a narrow or wide focus on its topic. The nature of the story focus may play a critical role in the final rating. PolitiFact might give a claim a "Mostly False" rating if it contains a "grain of truth." Or, PolitiFact might instead cut the grain of truth like a tiny diamond and present it as a tiny sparkling ring of truth in stories like the one PolitiFact Virginia wrote about Democrat Tim Kaine.

Additional note:  We appreciate the prominent link to the story from Newsbusters, which has its own expanded take. It's worth a read.

Gender pay gap follies with PolitiFact Missouri (Updated)

I've covered the poor job mainstream fact checkers do on Democrats' gender pay gap claims at Zebra Fact Check back in 2014. PolitiFact remains a basket case example among the big three fact checkers. A May 18, 2016 fact check from PolitiFact Missouri perhaps establishes a new low point in fact-checking the gender pay gap.

Our review of this case will look at the major errors first, but this post will go in-depth on the evidence because this case looks very bad for PolitiFact. The facts demand we consider the possibility that PolitiFact Missouri chose and executed this fact check to deliberately favor Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Chris Koster.

The Gender Pay Gap in Missouri

PolitiFact Missouri's fact check focuses on a claim made on Twitter:

Koster tweeted, "The #WageGap isn’t about isn’t about [sic] a few cents — it can mean EVERYTHING to a working woman trying to provide for her family."

His tweet contained a photo with a captain [sic] that stated, "Closing our state’s wage gap would make a $9 billion difference to Missouri women."

Democratic politicians often blur the line between the raw gender pay gap and a gap caused by gender discrimination in the workplace.

The raw gender pay gap in this case represents the difference in pay between men and women regardless of the job and without accounting for differences in hours worked by full-time employees.

The unexplained gender pay gap is the difference in pay between men and women after explaining part of the gap. The unexplained gap varies depending on what the researchers try to explain, so measurement of that gap may vary.

Some portion of the unexplained gap is perhaps explained by gender discrimination. But the research does not pin down that percentage. Studies that consider more potential explanations tend to show smaller unexplained gaps.

PolitiFact Missouri acknowledged that Koster blurred that line between raw pay gap and any percentage of that gap caused by gender discrimination . But PolitiFact Missouri's generous calculation of wages potentially lost to gender discrimination was close to Koster's $9 billion figure. So Koster eventually skated with a "Mostly True" rating (bold emphasis added):

A study from the Institute for the Study of Labor, an economic research institute based in Bonn, Germany, shows the unexplained wage gap in the United States falls somewhere between 8 percent and 18 percent of the total earnings difference, if the figures are adjusted for additional factors.Using the high-end estimate, the $9.5 billion figure falls to about $7.5 billion.

At first, we thought PolitiFact did the wrong math equation. If  "18 percent of the total earnings difference" may stem from gender discrimination, then taking 18 percent of the total earnings difference ($9.5 billion, according to PolitiFact Missouri) should yield a figure of $1.71 billion. Yet PolitiFact Missouri calculated a figure of $7.5 billion. Our first messages to PolitiFact Missouri about its fact check questioned their math equation.

However, we did not do a good enough job verifying that PolitiFact's description of the report was correct. The report estimates an unexplained gender pay gap between 8 and 18 percent [see embedded Update for clarification] for 2014 2010. So 18 percent represents the total unexplained earnings difference the researchers estimated, not a percentage of the raw gender wage gap. PolitiFact Missouri described the report's results poorly.  PolitiFact Missouri also relied on a study that skimped on gap explanations compared to other studies found through its source list.

Using its preferred study, PolitiFact calculated as much as $7.5 billion of the raw $9.5 billion gap may represent gender discrimination. The math is right. But is PolitiFact Missouri justified in using the 18 percent figure for its calculation?

We think using the high-end estimate from the report containing the highest estimates amounts to cherry-picking. We expect neutral fact checkers to avoid cherry-picking.

After the page break, we'll describe the findings of the reports PolitiFact Missouri cited but ignored for purposes of its math equations. Beyond that, we'll note how PolitiFact passed up an easier fact check of Koster--one with a cut-and-dried poor result for Koster. That other fact check was also from Koster's Twitter feed, so we see no obvious reason why PolitiFact Missouri would have missed it.

Have Democrats ''never held up a Supreme Court nomination"? (Updated)

We said before that PolitiFact does not hold itself to the same standard it applies to others. Though perhaps PolitiFact's scarce adherence to any consistent standard makes that inevitable. Our example comes from a March 20, 2016 fact check of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

Let's start with the misleading headline:

PolitiFact noted in its fact check that Democrats did, in fact, hold up the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork, whom Reagan nominated in 1987. So how does it work out that Reid's statement is "mostly true" anyway?

It's tricky, in keeping with PolitiFact's tradition of convoluted and selective justification.

In context, Reid stipulated that he was talking about lame duck cases. That makes his statement literally true false (see Update below) under an expansive interpretation of "lame duck," since Bork was nominated before 1988, Reagan's final year in office.

Up through this point, one might argue PolitiFact is treating Reid unfairly by rating his true statement only "Mostly True."

But there's much more to this story, and PolitiFact leaves out important parts.

First and foremost, there is no historical parallel to the current situation with the Supreme Court. The Bork nomination is considered a prime turning point in the politization of the confirmation process, and there is no example of a lame-duck nomination since Reagan.

And the current situation during Obama's last year in office sets a new precedent because his choice would not replace a liberal justice but a conservative justice. With his choice of Bork, Reagan was trying to replace the Nixon-appointed Justice Lewis Powell.

PolitiFact's effort to help us understand the truth in politics completely omits any information about differences in the ways these nominations would affect the political balance on the Supreme Court. It's apparently unimportant context in PolitiFact's eyes.

PolitiFact almost makes it look like Democrats rolled out the red carpet for Bork compared to Obama's hapless nominee Merrick Garland:

Bork did face a hearing and a Senate vote, which he lost, but his confirmation process made the rules of the game more contentious.

What's left out? The Democrat-controlled Senate Committee that sent Bork's nomination to the Senate recommended the Senate reject the nomination. And Democrats had enough of a majority that Bork had no chance with 52 of 54 Democrats voting against him (four Republicans often associated with the acronym RINO also opposed Bork).

Why is this background important? Let's revisit the context of Reid's reply to Meet the Press host Chuck Todd. Todd played a clip from 2005 of Reid saying the Senate has no constitutional duty to vote on a Supreme Court nomination. Now Reid says the Republicans have that duty. Todd asked Reid what changed. What changed, Reid said, is that the Democrats have never opposed a lame-duck nominee--a history running right up through 1988, before Reid ever claimed the Senate has no duty to vote on a nomination.

Reid's answer to Todd was complete baloney, in context. PolitiFact's fact-check does nothing to emphasize that context to its readers. Instead, PolitiFact readers get a misleading headline sending the message that Democrats hardly at all obstruct the Supreme Court nominations of Republicans.

PolitiFact: Putting the Clintonian "is" in "nonpartisan" since 2007.

Update: "Lame Duck" Lameness

Jeff D. points out the elephant in the room.

PolitiFact:

Before we rule, we wanted to note a slight error in the second part of Reid’s statement that "since 1900 in a lame-duck session, there have been six (nominees) that have all been approved." We have found in a previous fact-check that since the early 1900s, there have been six Supreme Court nominees in election years, and all were confirmed. However, only one was clearly a "lame-duck" nominee, meaning the president making the nomination was no question on the way out (Reagan). The others were nominated by presidents running for re-election to serve another term (Herbert Hoover, William Howard Taft, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, who nominated two people in 1916).

Reid's stipulation that he was talking about lame ducks makes his statement literally false, contrary to the charitable reading I gave it in the post above. Reid's statement was flat wrong, but PolitiFact arbitrarily determined that Reid's exaggeration of 500 percent (of the number of "lame duck" Supreme Court nominations) was a "slight error" that does not appear to count against Reid's eventual rating.

PolitiFact used tweezers to pull out the most truth it could from Reid's statement, leaving behind plenty of falsehood.

Nonpartisan.


Correction March 23, 2016:  Replaced "Mostly False" with "Mostly True" in referring to the rating Reid received from PolitiFact. March 31 update: Added strikethrough of "true" and added "false" to clarify the meaning.

PolitiFact Florida tweezes Governor Scott

We've noted PolitiFact's inconsistency in judging claims narrowly or broadly, using the tag "Tweezers or Tongs" to identify our stories highlighting those inconsistencies.

Our example this time comes from PolitiFact Florida. PF Florida has looked at Florida Governor Rick Scott's claims on environmental spending, working to ensure that people do not believe Florida is spending a record amount on environmental issues generally, even if it's true that the state is spending a record amount to revitalize the Everglades and its natural springs.

The latest rating, a "Pants on Fire" given to Scott for repeating the "record funding" claim drew our attention thanks to the lack of context PolitiFact offered. Supposedly Scott made the claim at a June 2 economic summit attended by, among others, a number of GOP presidential hopefuls.

PolitiFact Florida noted that Scott made his claim in the company of a number of other claims.

As he boasted about the state’s record during his economic summit for GOP presidential contenders in Orlando June 2, Scott reeled off a bunch of statistics about Florida’s budget and economy including this one: "If you care about the environment, we've got record funding."

We confirmed that by locating Scott's speech on CSPAN. We created a clip that provides the context of Scott's remarks.

We have two main questions.

What led PolitiFact Florida to tweeze out that one statement from Scott from the many it could have fact checked?

Should we consider the issue adequately fact-checked when PolitiFact Florida's story publishes no comparative spending totals and fails to separate state funding from federal funding?

We don't think so.

It's tweezers for Senator Paul

Tweezers or tongs?

Will PolitiFact take just part of a statement into account (tweezers), or will it focus on the whole of the statement (tongs)?

PolitiFact fact checked a statement from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)

Here's Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) announcing his bid for the presidency:

It seems to me that both parties and the entire political system are to blame.

Big government and debt doubled under a Republican administration.

And it’s now tripling under Barack Obama’s watch. President Obama is on course to add more debt than all of the previous presidents combined.

Paul's first sentence in the above quotation looks like opinion. That leaves three great potential fact checks. First, that the debt doubled under "a Republican administration" (George W. Bush). Second, the debt is now tripling under President Barack Obama. Third, Obama is on course to add more debt than all of the previous presidents combined.

PolitiFact feints as though it will cover the two claims about multiplying the debt. But the "Half True" rating suggests that PolitiFact only rated the claim about Obama tripling the debt. PolitiFact concludes:

Paul said, "Debt doubled" under Bush "and now it’s tripling under Barack Obama’s watch."

This statement is confusing. A person could easily interpret it to mean that debt has tripled since Obama took office -- which would be incorrect. Paul, on the other hand, said that it means debt today, under Obama, is triple what it was when Bush’s term started. 

...

From one not-so-obvious angle, Paul's numbers are correct. But because the statement could so easily be interpreted in another, less accurate way, we rate it Half True.

PolitiFact found Paul was accurate about the doubling of the debt under a Republican administration. So if his statement about the debt tripling under Obama was completely false, combining the true and false statements averages out to "Half True." But PolitiFact doesn't say Paul was wrong about the tripling of the debt, only that it was wrong if taken in the supposedly obvious way, that the debt tripled starting from the time Obama took office. So why isn't Paul's claim "Mostly True"?

Spoiler: PolitiFact rigs the game.

The "Half True" rating doesn't fit. The context of Paul's statement makes clear he's criticizing Democrats and Republicans. But the clincher is Paul's claim that Obama is on course to add more debt than all previous presidents combined.

Looked at in the simplest way, the way people are likely to understand it, the debt from year to year represents the debt of all previous presidents combined. Most added debt, but a few, like Calvin Coolidge, produced a surplus.

If Obama had nearly tripled the debt since he took office then he's not "on course" to add more debt than all previous presidents combined. He'd have done it once already with a good shot at doing it a second time.

Taken properly in context, the only sensible meaning of Paul's statement is the one he gave: He was talking about Obama tripling the debt in the sense of taking the next step past Bush's doubling of the debt.

PolitiFact, unsurprisingly, did not quote Paul's statement about Obama adding more debt than all the presidents preceding him combined. Leaving out important context helps PolitiFact apply its tweezers treatment.

Fact checkers shouldn't blame politicians when people interpret their statements incorrectly or stupidly. Fact checkers should explain the correct or most sensible interpretation to help those people understand it correctly.

Tweezers: PolitiFact and the Indiana boycott

Sometimes PolitiFact focuses on one part of a statement. Sometimes PolitiFact spreads its focus to cover the whole of a statement. We use the "Tweezers or Tongs" tag for posts where we draw a contrast involving PolitiFact's choice of focus.

On April 2, 2015, PolitiFact published a story looking at a statement from Red State's Erick Erickson. Erickson wrote about Indiana's version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the willingness of some on the left to punish Indiana economically for passing the legislation.

PolitiFact lays out the basics, we provide the bold emphasis:

In a column for conservative grassroots site RedState.com, editor-in-chief Erick Erickson criticized business owners and people on the left who say the law will allow anyone to cite religious belief in refusing to serve gays and lesbians. Erickson’s opening sentence hones in on Apple chief executive Tim Cook for what he sees as hypocritical business practices.

"To recap: Tim Cook (please, please click this link) and the left are happy to do business in countries that stone to death or otherwise jail gay people, but will not do business with Indiana," Erickson wrote, "which merely passed a law insisting that the ‘free exercise’ clause of the first amendment be on the same legal footing in courts as the ‘free speech’ clause of the first amendment."

Obviously Erickson wasn't talking only about Apple CEO Tim Cook. He mentioned "the left." And Erickson has a point that some on the left took action to cut back business dealings with Indiana:

Companies, celebrities and even local and state governments have come out in opposition to Indiana's controversial "religious freedom" bill. Several have even cancelled plans to do business in the state, citing the potential for discrimination against gays and lesbians.

PolitiFact's story contains mention of only one boycott: the one PolitiFact says Erickson said was coming from Apple. Tweezers.

PolitiFact claimed Erickson was making the point that Cook was acting hypocritically by boycotting Indiana while continuing to do business with nations like Iran. But if that was really Erickson's point then why did he dedicate only one line in his entire column to that point? Tweezers.

Erickson was making a broader point about the reaction by some on the left. He accurately characterized reaction of some on the left in threatening Indiana with economic sanctions. And in the process he made it sound like Apple had committed to a concrete set of such sanctions against Indiana. That's where PolitiFact's tweezers came in, for Cook had simply written a column criticizing Indiana's RFRA law.

But here's the hole in PolitiFact's fact check: Did Apple have any sponsored events occurring in Indiana that it might have cancelled, like some other companies had done? If not, is it safe to assume Apple would not have joined some other companies in canceling such events?

The Apple convention "MacWorld/iWorld" took place in the middle of March earlier this year. In San Francisco. A lost opportunity to teach Indiana a lesson?

What did PolitiFact do wrong, if anything?

As we pointed out, if Erickson was making a point about a real Apple boycott of Indiana, he had plenty of opportunity to mention Apple specifically. But he did not. He lumped Cook in with the boycott, which was somewhat misleading, but Erickson was setting the stage for a general criticism of the left's intolerance to resistance of its mainstreaming of homosexuality. And Cook's a fair example to match with the point of Erickson's column. PolitiFact missed the point of the column and the reference to Cook, using its tweezers to ding Erickson while not even acknowledging the reality of the boycott threatened by companies aside from Apple.

Tweezers.

Impartial tweezers?

Nah. PolitiFact's trick is to often treat parallel statements from liberals or Democrats with tongs. Sure, part of the statement is false, but part of it is true! So, "Half True" or something!



Footnote:

The Erickson response: Erickson defended his column by saying sometimes a tweet is just a tweet. PolitiFact gleefully made light of that excuse, noting that Erickson's column was not a tweet. Note to Erickson: What PolitiFact did was ridiculous, but you need to do better than that.

Correction: Struck "Florida" from the title, as PolitiFact National was responsible for the Red State fact check, not PolitiFact Florida.

Tweezers or tongs?

We've noted before PolitiFact's inconsistency in its treatment of compound statements.  It's time to focus on a specific way that inconsistency can influence PolitiFact's "Truth-O-Meter.

We'll call this problem "tweezers or tongs" and illustrate it with a recent PolitiFact fact check of Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.):

"As a physician for over 30 years, I am well aware of the dangers infectious diseases pose. In fact, infectious diseases remain in the top 10 causes of death in the United States. … Reports of illegal migrants carrying deadly diseases such as swine flu, dengue fever, Ebola virus and tuberculosis are particularly concerning."

[...]

The reality is that Ebola has only been found in Africa -- and experts agree that, given how the disease develops, the likelihood of children from Central America bringing it to the U.S. border is almost nonexistent. But most importantly for our fact-check, Gingrey’s office was unable to point to solid evidence that that Ebola has arrived in Western Hemisphere, much less the U.S. border. To the contrary, the CDC and independent epidemiologists say there is zero evidence that these migrants are carrying the virus to the border.

We rate the claim Pants on Fire.

It's tweezers this time.

Gingrey states that disease crossing the border via migration creates a concern.  He mentions reports of swine flu, dengue fever, Ebola virus and tuberculosis crossing the border as examples of concern.  PolitiFact takes its tweezers and picks out "Ebola virus," and drops from consideration the other diseases in Gingrey's compound statement.

Let's review again PolitiFact's guidelines statement of principles:

We sometimes rate compound statements that contain two or more factual assertions. In these cases, we rate the overall accuracy after looking at the individual pieces.

Or sometimes PolitiFact will just settle on rating one piece of the compound statement.  It's up to PolitiFact, based on the whim of the editors.

Burying Gingrey's underlying point

Though we're focused mainly on PolitiFact's inconsistent handling of compound statements, it's hard to ignore another PolitiShenanigan in the Gingrey fact check.  PolitiFact sometimes takes a subject's underlying point into account when making a ruling.  And sometimes not.  In Gingrey's case, PolitiFact buried Gingrey's underlying point:

As a surge of unaccompanied children from Central America was arriving on the United States’ southern border this month, Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., expressed concern about the impact they could have on public health.

PolitiFact left out part of the story.  Yes, Gingrey was expressing concern about the potential spread of disease from human migration.  But he wasn't simply airing his concerns to the Centers for Disease Control, to whom he addressed the letter PolitiFact fact checked.  He was asking the CDC to assess the risk:

I request that the CDC take immediate action to assess the public risk posed by the influx of unaccompanied children and their subsequent transfer to different parts of the country.

PolitiFact claims "words matter."  Yet, contrary to PolitiFact's claim, Gingrey did not say migrants may be bringing Ebola virus through the U.S.-Mexico border.  Rather, he said it was troubling to hear reports of diseases, including Ebola virus, coming across the border.

Words matter to PolitiFact, we suppose, since one needs to know exactly how much twisting is needed to arrive at the desired "Truth-O-Meter" rating.