A handful of baloney from PolitiFact

"At PolitiFact, we wrote "Principles of the Truth-O-Meter" to help guide our work. Words matter was the first principle."

--Neil Brown, Poynter Institute President 

"PolitiFact, thy name is Hypocrisy."

--PolitiFact Bias, longtime PolitiFact critics

What is a "handful"?

What is a "handful"? We could go to a dictionary for a definition. Or we could go to a higher source, such as the fact checkers at PolitiFact.

PolitiFact does the Youngkin handful

"Vaxxed and Relaxed" (@PorterPints) on March 1, 2022 highlighted a PolitiFact fact check of a "handful" claim made by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-Va.). Youngkin said Virginia is one of "a handful" of states that taxes veterans' retirement benefits.

In the text of the fact check, PolitiFact informs us that 12 out of 50 states is certainly more than a handful:

Virginia is one of three states that fully tax military pensions. Twelve more states tax the pensions at reduced rates, which is what Youngkin wants to do in Virginia.

All told, 15 states tax military pensions. That’s a minority, but certainly more than the "handful" Youngkin describes.

We rate Youngkin's claim Half True.

So, thanks to PolitiFact we know that the upper boundary for a "handful" is 12 or less, or perhaps 24% or less of a total if we use percentages.

PolitiFact does the Summers handful

Not long after "Vaxxed and Relaxxed" tweeted about the Youngkin "handful," we found another PolitiFact fact check of a "handful" claim, with this claim coming from Democrat Paul Summers.

In this fact check, PolitiFact taught us that 34 out of 66, or perhaps a 51 percent majority, clearly falls below the upper boundary for a "handful" (bold emphasis added):

Early in that year, two of the five incumbent Supreme Court justices stepped aside, reportedly after failing to gather enough political support among party activists on the Democratic Executive Committee. The Democratic nominees wound up being the only candidates on the ballot and were elected to full eight-year terms.

That was clearly a case where, as Summers states, a majority of the committee – 34 of the 66 members, or a "handful of party officials" if you will – was able to choose Supreme Court justices.

PolitiFact, then, has determined that a "handful" has an upper boundary of 14 or less and also an upper boundary no less than 34. Or, by percentage, an upper boundary of 24% and an upper boundary of no less than 51%.

In short, PolitiFact hilariously contradicted itself regarding the matter of the word "handful."

But just out of idle curiosity, what does the dictionary say?

Huh.

Moral of the story

It's folly for a fact checker to try to place definite numerical boundaries around indefinite terms. Claims that include such terms serve as poor fact check fodder.

Pre-publication update:

We note that Matt Palumbo somewhat pre-empted us on this story with a March 2, 2022 item. We will publish our version anyway, as the research locating the Simpson "handful" fact check was original with us. We're entitled to publish on the website the same comparison we made on Twitter on March 1, 2022.

Nothing To See Here: Sanders blasts health insurance "profiteering"

While researching PolitiFact's false accusation that Democratic presidential candidate used "bad math" to criticize the budget gap created by fellow candidate Bernie Sanders' spending proposals, we stumbled over a claim from Sen. Sanders that was ripe for fact-checking.

Sanders said his proposed health care plan would end profiteering practices from insurance and drug companies that result in $100 billion or so in annual profits (bold emphasis added):

Just the other day, a major study came out from Yale epidemiologist in Lancet, one of the leading medical publications in the world. What they said, my friends, is Medicare for all will save $450 billion a year, because we are eliminating the absurdity of thousands of separate plans that require hundreds of billions of dollars of administration and, by the way, ending the $100 billion a year in profiteering from the drug companies and the insurance companies.

PolitiFact claims to use an "Is that true?" standard as one of its main criteria for choosing which claims to check.

We have to wonder if that's true, or else how could a fact checker pass over the claim that profiteering netted $100 billion in profits for those companies? Do fact checkers think "profit" and "profiteering" are the same thing?

Is a fact checker who thinks that worthy of the name?

Sanders' claim directly implies that the Affordable Care Act passed by Democrats in 2010 was ineffective with its efforts to circumscribe insurance company profits. The ACA set limits on profits and overhead ("medical loss ratios"). Excess profits, by law, get refunded to the insured.

Sanders said it's not working. And the fact checkers don't care enough to do a fact check?

Of course PolitiFact went through the motions of checking a similar claim, as we pointed out. But using "profiteering" in the claim changes things.

Or should.

Ultimately, it depends on whether PolitiFact has the same interest in finding falsehoods from Democrats as it does for Republicans.

PolitiFact's "many" problems

On Nov. 3, 2016 we brought some focus to the "Mostly False" rating PolitiFact gave Donald Trump for saying many Americans were paying more for health care than for their mortgage or rent.

PFB co-editor Jeff D. today reminded me about an "Afters" section I added to a post from Sept. 1, 2016:

PolitiFact exaggerated the survey evidence supposedly supporting Clinton by claiming "many" teachers blamed Trump for increasing bullying and harassment:

Many of these teachers, unsolicited, cited Trump’s campaign rhetoric and the accompanying discourse as the likely reason for this behavior.

The Zebra Fact Check investigation suggests PolitiFact was misled about the number of teachers saying Trump was responsible for increasing bullying or harassment. Out of almost 2,000 teachers participating in the survey, 849 answered the question about bullying or biased language and of those 123 mentioned Trump. A fraction of those placed any kind of blame on Trump for anything. We would generously estimate that 25 teachers blamed Trump for something (not necessarily bullying or harassment) in answering that question. This implies that, to PolitiFact, "many" can be less than 1.25 percent of 2,000.

That's right. The hypocritical liberal bloggers at PolitiFact said "many" teachers cited Trump's rhetoric as the likely reason for bullying and/or harassing behavior. PolitiFact shoveled that to its readers as a fact, though the data showed a small fraction of the surveyed teachers offered that opinion. Then. about a month later, PolitiFact said Trump's statement about health care costs was "Mostly False."

Could PolitiFact be right in both cases?

That seems like a stretch.

Wrong in both cases?

That's more likely.

Demolition=construction? Yup, says PolitiFact

Bless PolitiFact's heart. Those fact-checking journalists just don't seem to realize that they're having trouble setting aside their biases. Unless they do realize it and wantonly lie in their fact checks.

This is actually the third in our series on PolitiFact's debate-night blogging. We broke with the tradition of mentioning that in the title to bring attention to PolitiFact's fundamental error in the case we will examine.

During the third debate, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, used undocumented workers to construct the Trump Tower in Manhattan.

Let's let PolitiFact's Linda Qiu tell it:

Clinton: "He used undocumented labor to build the Trump Tower."

This is True. Between 1979 and 1980, Trump hired a contractor to demolish a Manhattan building to make way for the eventual Trump Tower. That contractor in turn hired local union workers as well as 200 undocumented Polish workers to meet the tight deadlines.

According to Qiu and PolitiFact, demolishing a building is constructing a building. Or at least not different enough to make a difference in the rating. We assume that if Clinton had said Trump used undocumented workers to demolish the building that once stood where Trump Tower now stands that the claim could rate no higher than "True" on PolitiFact's "Truth-O-Meter." One version of the claim is no more accurate than the other by "Truth-O-Meter" standards.

We can't pass up the opportunity to remind our readers that PolitiFact prides itself on paying careful attention to the way politicians use words:

Words matter – We pay close attention to the specific wording of a claim. Is it a precise statement? Does it contain mitigating words or phrases?

That's a joke, right?

Contrary to PolitiFact, "demolition" and "construction" do not carry the same meaning. The construction of a new building will typically not start until after the complete demolition of the building occupying the site of the proposed new construction. If undocumented workers demolished the building the Trump Tower replaced, then they finished their work before construction of the Trump Tower began. If they finished their work before construction began, then it is misleading at best to say they helped construct the Trump Tower.

How can a fact checker botch something that obvious?

PolitiFact California: Surprise, our gun-related fact check leans left

We carry little respect for PolitiFact in part because PolitiFact falls into bias traps that professional journalists ought to easily avoid.

One classic example of that genre comes from PolitiFact's treatment of illustrated numbers comparisons. It makes sense to PolitiFact to compare the frequency of voter fraud to shark attack. But comparing the frequency of gun crimes by concealed-carry permit holders to the frequency of alligator attacks doesn't make sense because gun crimes and alligator attacks are so different from each other.

Got it?

Predictably, PolitiFact's treatment of the former case proved a benefit to liberalism. PolitiFact's treatment of the latter case unfairly harmed conservatism.

On July 19, 2016, PolitiFact California approved the comparison of the number of licensed gun dealers to the number of McDonald's restaurants.

Of course the fact check contains no discussion at all whether McDonald's restaurants are similar enough to gun dealers to justify the comparison. And we're okay with that, aside from the inconsistency it shows from PolitiFact, because sometimes a numbers comparison is just that. One may compare the number of ants at a picnic to the number of stars in the galaxy without needing to show another similarity between ants and stars.

PolitiFact California went the extra mile for liberalism on this fact check, however.

PolitiFact Georgia rated a similar claim in 2013 as Mostly True. A civil rights activist said: "There are twice as many gun shops as McDonald’s in the United States." Our California claim deals with licenses in this state only, and not necessarily brick-and-mortar gun shops.

Above, PolitiFact California starts to make a mockery of PolitiFact's principled assurance that "words matter."

The claim was that licensed gun dealers more than double the number of McDonald's restaurants. Counting those who have licenses to deal guns but who do not sell guns is like adding closed or re-purposed McDonald's locations to the total number of McDonald's restaurants. And the distinction matters in this case:

The ATF keeps a monthly log on its website of how many dealers and pawnbrokers are licensed to sell guns in each state.

This month’s tally shows 2,315 dealers and pawnbrokers licensed to sell guns in California. That’s a shade less, 15 in fact, than twice as many McDonald’s.

PolitiFact's fact-finding found the claim from the gun control group "Safety For All" was not quite true using those numbers. So Safety for All pointed out that adding in the number of licenses not necessarily connected to a gun seller would provide the numbers needed to make the claim true.

PolitiFact California was fine with that approach and rated the claim "True."

The problem? That approach fails to jibe with the spirit of the comparison. Safety For All was trying to emphasize that licensed vendors from whom one might buy a gun more than double the number of McDonald's restaurants. Would the comparison work if half the licensed gun dealers did not sell guns? Of course not. Having a license to sell a gun does not necessarily make one a "gun seller" in the sense implied by the Safety For All claim.

It is not appropriate to shoehorn in persons licensed to sell guns who do not ordinarily act as gun sellers.

One could go further and nitpick the comparison to death (example here). We will stick with the point that a competent and neutral fact-checker does not illegitimately maximize a number to the benefit a political point of view. We expect that type of behavior from biased fact checkers.

Update: Afters

PolitiFact California went the extra-extra mile by working up a meme-worthy graphic to promote Safety For All's not-quite-true factoid:

Update July 22, 2016: Added link to PolitiFact California fact check