Media Trackers: "Cleveland Plain Dealer Announces Death of PolitiFact Ohio"

Jason Hart and Media Trackers takes note of the Cleveland Plain Dealer shuttering its PolitiFact Ohio franchise:

Cleveland Plain Dealer parent Northeast Ohio Media Group (NEOMG) announced in a January 24 story that the Plain Dealer and Cleveland.com are ending their partnership with farcical “fact-checking” outlet PolitiFact.com.

Hart goes on to summarize PolitiFact's ignominious history.  It's recommended reading for those who missed Hart's (and PolitiFact Bias') earlier reporting on PolitiFact Ohio.

Writing on the same subject, former Plain Dealer editor John Kroll points up one of the problems that dogs PolitiFact nationally:

Even if one could parse out the differences, the Truth-O-Meter mixed apples and oranges. Its ratings are a combination of both whether a statement is true and whether it was misleading. Where the balance between those two values was struck in picking a rating was crucial. And as far as I could tell, looking at PolitiFact ratings from the national site as well as local ones, the final choices were coin flips. Much-debated coin flips conducted by honest journalists trying to be fair — but coin flips, nonetheless.

Kroll's piece is also worth a read.


Note, Feb 7, 2014:
Our thanks to William A. Jacobson and Legal Insurrection for making this the "Post of the Day" for Feb. 7, 2014.

PolitiFact makes its set of gender wage gap stories even less coherent

In a 2013 article, "PolitiFact and the 77-cent solution," we pointed out PolitiFact's inconsistency on gender gap claims.  There's a wage gap between men and women, primarily created by different job choices, and that gap is acceptably represented by the $.77 figure.  The Department of Justice estimates that about 40 percent of the $.23 shortfall, about $.09, occurs as a result of discrimination.

For claims about a gender wage gap in the range of $.77 on the dollar, PolitiFact's seven ratings at the time ranged  from "Half True" to "True."  In addition, Mitt Romney accurately claimed men make more than women in Obama's White House and received a "Half True" rating.

For claims where that gap was said to apply to the same work, PolitiFact gave two "Mostly False" ratings, including one to President Obama.

President Obama used the 77-cent figure during his State of the Union address.  And PolitiFact was on it, giving the president a "Mostly True" rating.

What did Obama say?  PolitiFact reports:

During his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama made a claim about pay for women in today’s economy.

"You know, today, women make up about half our workforce, but they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns," Obama said. "That is wrong, and in 2014, it's an embarrassment. Women deserve equal pay for equal work."

We think when Obama says the 23-cent gap is "wrong" and "an embarrassment" leading to a call for equal pay for equal work, it strongly implies the president is claiming the 23-cent gap occurs as a result of gender discrimination.

We don't see any other reasonable way to interpret the statement.

PolitiFact doesn't see it that way:

We struggled a bit with how to classify the claim Obama made in the State of the Union, since his phrasing was somewhat ambiguous. He used the more accurate formulation, but he then followed up two sentences later by saying, "Women deserve equal pay for equal work." Did Obama’s "equal pay for equal work" line suggest that he believes the 77-cent pay differential refers to statistical comparisons of "equal work"? Or was this sentence simply a philosophical statement that was distinct from the statistical claim?

Ultimately, we decided that Obama’s statement that "women deserve equal pay for equal work" was aspirational rather than a part of his statistical claim, so we’re judging him on his claim that women "make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns."

What purpose does the 77-cent figure serve in the president's speech other than to show the relevance of his call for equal pay for equal work?

Why would a 23-cent gap be wrong if it occurs on the basis of the free-market choices of employees and not gender discrimination?

It's obvious President Obama was making a sly version of the claim he made that PolitiFact rated "Mostly False":  He implied that the gap exists based on gender discrimination.

PolitiFact didn't want to see it.

PolitiFact: half mostly false, therefore false

It's PolitiFact potpourri!

We've had something like this happen at least once before, with Mitt Romney the focus of the fact check.  This time, PolitiFact was testing a viral claim making the rounds on Facebook:

The post has an element of truth but takes information out of context and requires a good deal of clarification. We rate this claim False.

The problem's so obvious that one would think layers of editors would be all over it.

Here's how PolitiFact defines "False":

FALSE – The statement is not accurate.

Here's how PolitiFact defines "Mostly False"(bold emphasis added):

MOSTLY FALSE – The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.

This is how PolitiFact defines "Half True" (bold emphasis added):

HALF TRUE – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.

And here's how PolitiFact defines "Mostly True" (bold emphasis added):

MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.

PolitiFact rates a statement "False" because it matches parts of PolitiFact's definitions of "Mostly True," "Half True" and "Mostly False."  And that kind of sums up the problem with PolitiFact.

Rocket science it's not.  Subjective it is.

Nothing To See Here: the Wendy Davis biography

Over the years, PolitiFact looked into what it said were biographical inconsistencies by Marco Rubio, Ken Lanci and President Obama (among others).

Democratic candidate for governor of Texas, Wendy Davis, the media-annointed darling of the filubuster, has run into some controversy now that it has come out some of the details of her biographical self-description were less than accurate.

Here's how Davis put it for Generation TX:

“I was raised by a single mom. There were four children in our family, and my mother only had a sixth-grade education. And it was really a struggle for us. I went to a very large high school. We had one college counselor, and I was one of those kids who just sort of fell through the cracks.”

What's more, PolitiFact Texas fact checked Texas Governor Rick Perry when he made a statement about Davis being a teen-aged mother "born into difficult circumstances."  PolitiFact Texas' "Half True" rating of Perry included the following:

But in 2012, Davis gave sworn testimony about her life in a lawsuit brought before a panel of federal judges in Washington, D.C. "When I was only 18 I got married," Davis said, according to a transcript of her Jan. 20, 2012, testimony. "I had a baby, I got divorced by the time I was 19 years old. And I had started working, I actually started working when I was 14. I was raised by a single mother. My mother only had a 6th grade education. My parents divorced when I was 11 years old."

Breitbart.com's John Sexton duly noted that PolitiFact was blaming Perry for Davis' half-truth.

We're curious to see if PolitiFact, particularly PolitiFact Texas, will revisit the Davis biography and eventually hold her responsible for Perry's inaccuracy.

Nothing to see here?


Hat tip to PolitiFact Texas' parent paper, the Austin American-Statesman, for making the Generation TX material easy to find.

Research update: The "Pants on Fire" bias in 2013, plus analysis of the PolitiFact states

With 2013 completely in the rear-view mirror, it's time again to update our research study of the bias in PolitiFact's use of its "Pants on Fire" rating.

We've spent considerable time making the explanation of the study clear and providing plenty of easy-to-read graphs and tables.  Feel free to post questions to us in the comments section or contact us by email (email address link at the bottom of the page).

We used Google's presentation format to produce something like a short e-book.  Read it as an embed below or click on this link to read it full screen and/or download it as a .pdf file.

Volokh Conspiracy: "Politifact’s “Lie of the Year” – Part Deux"

Jonathan H. Adler, writing at the Volokh Conspiracy blog, highlights an overlooked aspect of PolitiFact's 2013 "Lie of the Year" snafu:

Avik Roy writes on how Politifact’s assessment of the “if you like your plan, you can keep it” promise went from 100% true to half-true to a “pants on fire” lie to the “lie of the year.”  The column is fairly devastating by itself, but then Politifact’s Angie Holan, who authored some of the relevant evaluations, tried to defend Politifact with a tweet:

@avik The ’08 rating was for a campaign proposal with NO mandate. Very different set of facts than later ruling.
— Angie Drobnic Holan (@AngieHolan) December 27, 2013

The mind reels.  Then-Senator Obama’s 2008 health care plan had numerous elements that were sure to disrupt health insurance markets, as Roy noted in the column.

Drobnic Holan's right that the campaign proposal was different from the eventual law.  But Roy and Adler are obviously correct that the campaign proposal was, on its face, even more disruptive than the Affordable Care Act with its individual mandate.

With Drobnic Holan's response we can count her as a worthy successor to former PolitiFact editor Bill Adair, who was also notably inept at dealing with criticism.

Drobnic Holan wants to forget about the "True" rating Obama received for the "If you like your plan" pledge based on his campaign proposal.  The campaign proposal was different from the ACA, she says.  But at the same time, Drobnic Holan wants everyone to accept without question that PolitiFact can combine Obama's ACA version of the "If you like your plan" pledge with his later "What we said was" hedge.

PolitiFact combined those two statements to produce a Frankenstein's monster candidate for its 2013 "Lie of the Year" candidate.

Dr. Holanstein doesn't want the 2008 "True" rating connected to her monster.

PolitiFact can't handle the truth about its "Lie of the Year"

Yesterday PolitiFact published an article called "The most interesting reactions to the 2013 Lie of the Year."*

It leads with a half-truth:

Last week, we unveiled our 2013 Lie of the Year, President Barack Obama’s statement, "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it," making the announcement live on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper and simultaneously publishing an in-depth story on our website.

Either it's a half-truth or else Angie Drobnic Holan lied to CBS' Jake Tapper when she said "They're both the lie of the year," referring to a different claim from President Obama that PolitiFact rated "Pants on Fire" in 2013.

Half true, as PolitiFact describes it, means "the statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context."  Forgetting to mention the co-winner of the award would appear to count as an important detail.

It's delicious hypocrisy from fact-checking's weakest link.  This year's "Lie of the Year" was all about covering PolitiFact's arse as it failed to adequately cover President Obama's inaccurate speech about the Affordable Care Act.

And we can't resist pointing out how PolitiFact tries to keep the bloodsucking vampires of criticism at bay with a garlicky cliche:

We had defenders on Twitter, too, like David Podhaskie, a legal editor. "Maybe people are getting mad at @Politifact because they haven't actually read their entries on Obamacare?" He linked to a few. "If a fact-checking site is making both sides mad, it's doing its job."

Kind of like John Beale was doing his job if both Democrats and Republicans are outraged at the way he defrauded the EPA and the American people.  Isn't it past time to retire that lamest of defenses?

Conservatives and liberals have the same legitimate complaint about PolitiFact:  It's inconsistent with its past practices to name a "Half True" statement as its "Lie of the Year."  Beyond that, conservatives think the "Half True" rating was too kind while liberals think a "Half True" statement shouldn't be eligible for the award.

The criticism from both sides means PolitiFact isn't doing its job.  The unusual way a "Half True" statement qualified as a "Lie of the Year" deserved a full and complete explanation from PolitiFact.  We're not getting one because PolitiFact is succeeding with the deception it intended for this year's "Lie of the Year."



*The fact that we warranted no mention in that article shows clearly we should have worked a cabal of fascist cannibalistic lesbian spies into our PolitiFact Lie-of-the-Year conspiracy article.

Hot Air: "Congratulations, Barack Obama, on winning PolitiFact’s 'Lie of the Year'!"

We're not much for using PolitiFact as evidence for much of anything, but Allahpundit's "Lie of the Year" article for Hot Air avoids some of the missteps we're seeing from other conservative voices.

Rather than simply trusting that the LOTY award hits President Obama where he lives, Allahpundit notes some of the fishy circumstances surrounding the selection and echos some of the good questions Jake Tapper posed to PolitiFact editor Angie Drobnic Holan when the award was announced on Tapper's CNN program, "The Lead":

And yet, as Sean Higgins noted last month, the hacks at PolitiFact backed Obama up on it in whole or in part no fewer than six times between 2008 and 2012. Last year, in the thick of the presidential campaign, O actually had the balls to say, “If you’re one of the more than 250 million Americans who already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.” That’s even more categorical than his infamous phrasing at the AMA conference in 2009. PolitiFact’s rating: Half-true.

We do wish commentators like Allahpundit were more clear on the point that PolitiFact is not budging from its "Half True" rating of  "If you like it" despite the LOTY award.  PolitiFact is using a different and later claim from Obama as a shoehorn to help squeeze "If you like it" in as the winner.

As PolitiFact editor Angie Drobnic Holan explained, "They're both the Lie of the Year."