Gingrich/O'Malley: The Fix is In

With our previous post we took note of PolitiFact taking the unusual though not unprecedented step of unpublishing a story while preparing a revised version.

PolitiFact didn't take long to publish its update.  The new version was published the same day.  And, if readers will pardon the pun, the fix is in.

PolitiFact rated a battle of stats between one of the hosts of CNN's new "Crossfire" show, Newt Gingrich, and Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, focusing mostly on a statement from Gingrich.  In the original version of the fact check, PolitiFact rated Gingrich "False."  We find a relic of the original rating in the text of the new version:

One of the disputes focused on the two states’ population growth, with co-host Newt Gingrich suggesting that Texas was growing and Maryland shrinking because of their economic performance.

Originally, PolitiFact thought Gingrich was saying Texas' population had grown while Maryland's shrank.  Since both states grew, PolitiFact gave Gingrich the "False" rating.  Here's PolitiFact's telling of what Gingrich said:

Gingrich: "Let me ask you this. As an objective fact, in the five years you've been governor, Texas has gained 440,000 people. According to the U.S. Census, Maryland has lost 20,000. Now, if we're having all this upward trajectory, why is Texas doing 22 times better in population migration over the last five years than Maryland?"

In context, Gingrich makes clear he's talking about population migration, not population growth.  Granted, one might initially think he was talking about population growth since he doesn't specify population migration until the end.  That's a good excuse for O'Malley responding with stats that don't fit Gingrich's question, but it's a poor excuse for fact checkers having more time to consider context.

In the new version of its fact check PolitiFact upgraded Gingrich to "Half True."

Why "Half True"?  Supposedly because of this:

Essentially, they’re both right -- they just used different measurements. O’Malley is right if you use overall population figures, while Gingrich is right if you look at migration from other states. We’ll split the difference and call this one Half True.

They're both right, but Gingrich gets a "Half True" because O'Malley is right about a different figure.  PolitiFact apparently splits the difference between Gingrich's "True" and O'Malley's "True" and Gingrich gets a "Half True" as a result.

Does it make any sense at all to lower Gingrich's rating because O'Malley offered a competing statistic that was also true?  We're not seeing it.

This looks like nothing less than a post-hoc rationalization for not doing a full reversal and giving Gingrich a "True" rating.  To justify a lower rating PolitiFact should explain something about the missing context we need in order to understand what Gingrich was saying.

PolitiFact unpublishes its judgment of the Gingrich/O'Malley match on CNN

The title says it all.  PolitiFact's article, judging by PolitiFact's Twitter feed, lasted about an hour.  PolitiFact, so far as we can tell, only informed its Twitter audience about the status of the article:  

We got some new evidence on the O'Malley-Gingrich Crossfire exchange. We've taken down our report while we evaluate.
— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) September 20, 2013

Those trying to link to the article via PolitiFact's Facebook page get a "Page not found" message.

This has happened before.  It's past time for PolitiFact to come up with a better method for handling these situations.

We'll look forward to comparing the old and new versions of the article, of course.

PolitiMath at PolitiFact Florida

For some time we've been interested in how PolitiFact handles the magnitude of error for numbers claims.  We refer to ratings that apparently rely on some degree of numerical error as "PolitiMath," and it serves as one tool helping us assess PolitiFact's inconsistency.  It can also give us another sign that PolitiFact allows ideological bias to affect its rulings.

PolitiFact Florida provides us an excellent test case this year with a pair of fact checks that appear to betray inconsistency.

Charlie Crist and the Ineligible Voter List 

 

On Sept 12, PolitiFact did a fact check on former Republican and former Governor Charlie Crist of Florida.  Crist claimed that out of over 100,000 people the state of Florida thought were ineligible to vote, less than 10 were eventually found ineligible.

PolitiFact ignored Crist's deception in framing the state's list, which was a list of people it suspected might be ineligible to vote.  The lists, as PolitiFact noted, were pared down to 2,600 names and then turned over to local elections supervisors for investigation, precisely because those on the list were merely suspected of ineligibility.  And from that list of 2,600 names PolitiFact reported that "about 85 noncitizens" were removed from Florida's voter rolls.

Crist's "under 10" figure, charitably interpreted as nine, represents a 87.1 percent error compared to the PolitiFact estimate.  The calculation takes the difference between the correct number and the incorrect number and divides the difference by the correct number ((85-9)/85).  If that's not clear, go here or here.

PolitiFact ruled Crist's claim "Mostly False."

Will Weatherford and the College-ready Florida High School Graduate

On Sept. 11, PolitiFact did a fact check on Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford.  Weatherford, during a speech, said only one out of three Florida high school graduates qualify as "college-ready."  Weatherford repeated the claim twice during the speech.

PolitiFact said it heard from Weatherford spokesman Ryan Duffy, who said Weatherford misspoke.  Duffy also tweeted:

@KatieLSanders Re: college readiness, according to @EducationFL, 64.7% of high school grads are college ready. http://t.co/AGNvRdKuxh
— Ryan Duffy (@ryanpduffy) September 10, 2013

Weatherford's "one in three" number, read strictly, represents a 48.6 percent error compared to the number PolitiFact presented as accurate ((65.7-33.3)/65.7).

PolitiFact ruled Weatherford's claim "False."

Explaining the discrepancy?

 

We can think of one mitigating factor that could help justify giving Crist a better "Truth-O-Meter" rating than Weatherford:  Out of 180,000 names (or 2,600), the difference between "less than 10" and 85 doesn't make a great deal of difference.

On the other hand, where Crist received some credit for his underlying point, Weatherford received no credit at all for his underlying point, that the number of Florida high school graduates unprepared for college is way too high.  Add to that a very plausible case, despite Weatherford repeating himself, that he simply misspoke.

We don't see a plausible justification for giving Weatherford a lower rating than Crist.




Afters

Is it just me or do the Miami Herald's Marc Caputo and PolitiFact's Katie Sanders seem a tad snarky in their Twitter communications with Weatherford's spokesperson?

Bill Clinton enthralls PolitiFact with the magic of ObamaCare

Former President Bill Clinton was a great liar.

He hasn't lost it.

What made the former president from Arkansas such a fine liar?  Part of it was his sincerity.  He seemed so sincere that people wanted to believe him.  Apart from that, Clinton had a gift for saying things that were true but seriously misleading.

This week Clinton showed that he can bamboozle fact checkers with little effort.  Whether PolitiFact bought his act because of his sincerity or perhaps it was just their admiration for President Barack Obama's signature legislation, also known as ObamaCare, we don't know.  But it's pretty amusing how the fact checkers missed the obvious.

Let's pick up PolitiFact's story, already in progress:

Clinton went on to cite data from recent polling by the Commonwealth Fund showing that "large numbers of young people aged 26 and younger have already enrolled in their parents' plans. And interestingly enough -- if I were you guys, I'd promote this, (saying) these Republicans are the personal responsibility party -- there are more young Republicans enrolled in their parents' plans than young Democrats."

The irony that young supporters of the GOP -- the party that has repeatedly tried to repeal or defund Obama’s law -- are actually using this part of the law more than young Democrats are led to chuckles in the audience.

Those GOP hypocrites!  Right?

PolitiFact researches the Commonwealth Fund poll data Clinton cited, and sure enough he was exactly right.  And just to make sure we understand the depth of the Republican hypocrisy, PolitiFact helps Clinton out a bit by clarifying his point (bold emphasis added):

So, Clinton was right -- 63 percent of young Republicans, compared to only 45 percent of young Democrats had signed on to their parents’ plan, something they couldn’t have done without passage of Obama’s law.

Based on this evidence, along with statements from the study's lead author and Obama donor Sara R. Collins, PolitiFact gave Clinton's statement a "True" rating.

But there's a reason Clinton carries the nickname "Slick Willy," and there's also a reason why people often ridicule PolitiFact's rulings.  There's a catch that PolitiFact failed to catch.

As Obvious as the Nose on Clinton's Face

 

Clinton was right to a point about the findings of the survey.  More young Republicans than Democrats signed up or renewed under their parents' insurance policies.  But PolitiFact was exactly wrong to claim that the survey found 63 percent of the Republicans in the survey couldn't sign up under their parents' plans without the ACA.  The study makes that clear (bold emphasis added):

In March 2013, the survey finds that an estimated 15 million young adults ages 19 to 25 had enrolled in a parent’s insurance policy in the prior 12 months—more than half (51%) of that age group—up from the 13.7 million young adults estimated in November 2011 to have enrolled in the prior 12-month period (Exhibit 3, Table 1). Of these 15 million young adults, we estimate that roughly 7.8 million likely would not have been eligible for coverage under their parents’ employer plans prior to the Affordable Care Act, an increase of 1.1 million from November 2011.

So of the Democrats, Independents and Republicans who make up the percentages Clinton and PolitiFact cited, about half were eligible for inclusion under their parents' policies without the ACA.  PolitiFact's reporting is wrong on this point, and the error has obvious implications for Clinton's underlying point.

How Many Hypocrites?

 

What part of the 63 percent of young Republicans signed up for insurance under their parents' policies were eligible thanks to the ACA?

We don't know.  The survey doesn't inform us on that point.

We don't know how many young Republicans are hypocrites.  And we don't know whether the Republican hypocrites outnumber the ideologically pure Democrats who signed up under their parents' insurance thanks to the ACA.

In Clinton's Defense

 

Though we don't know that Clinton got his information on the survey directly from the Commonwealth Fund report, it's appropriate to note that the report encourages the conclusion he suggested even if it lacks the data to back the conclusion:

While public opinion polls have consistently shown a partisan divide in views of the health reform law, the survey finds that young adults who identified themselves as Republicans enrolled in their parents’ policies in greater numbers than young adults who identified themselves as Democrats. In March 2013, 63 percent of Republican young adults had enrolled in a parent’s policy in the past 12 months, compared with 45 percent of Democrats.

If the study has the numbers to back up the contrast between Republican opposition to the ACA and Republican embrace of its benefits, then the study should feature those supporting numbers.  Or maybe Commonwealth Fund is just confirming its reputation for a leftward lean.

How Did PolitiFact Miss It?

 

The meat of the Commonwealth Fund's survey leads with "Exhibit 1," which explains that half of the young Americans signed up for insurance under their parents' policies did not need the ACA to obtain the opportunity.  How does a fact checker miss it?

This is another case where the error is so astonishing that it seems difficult to explain without PolitiFact's predisposition (that is, bias) in favor of the health care law and/or Clinton.

PolitiFact and Obama's red line on Syria

PolitiFact published one of its hilariously non-committal "In Context" items in honor of President Obama's waffled messaging on the chemical weapons "red line" in Syria.

Hot Air's Ed Morrissey addresses the fact checking on Obama's "red line," mostly in terms of the fact checks from the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler and FactCheck.org.

We recommend Morrissey's article and agree with his take on PolitiFact.

I disagree with the decision not to assign Pinocchios, but the column is an interesting read, and he’s miles ahead of Politifact.

Read all about it at Hot Air.


Jeff adds (Sept. 10, 2013):

It's worth noting that Sean Davis of Media Trackers preemptively debunked PolitiFact's cowardly evasion when he posted a collection of "red line" references the day prior to PolitiFact's rating op-ed. Davis' piece included this nugget from an unnamed White House official:

“We go on to reaffirm that the President has set a clear red line as it relates to the United States that the use of chemical weapons or the transfer of chemical weapons to terrorist groups is a red line that is not acceptable to us,” the official said according to a White House transcript of the call. “[N]or should it be to the international community."

As Davis notes;  "The final phrase of that statement and its use of the word “should” suggests that the White House was well aware that its red line had not yet been accepted by the international community." This explicit acknowledgment of Obama's ownership of the "red line" somehow escaped PolitiFact's scholarly investigation.

Read Davis' short piece here. 

"The Most Notable Example" of PolitiFact's Bumbling Bias

Could the most notable example of PolitiFact Ohio's fact checking prowess be a claim they never actually rated?

We'll get to that, but first we'll point out that we're big fans of Jason Hart, the indefatigable PolitiFact Ohio critic. Hart's latest piece at Media Trackers doesn't disappoint. Hart takes aim at vocal Barack Obama supporter, conservative "wingnut" hater, and unbiased PolitiFact Ohio editor Tom Feran.

Feran recently wrote a piece celebrating three years of PolitiFact Ohio that showed a comical lack of self-awareness. Feran openly admits PolitiFact's selection bias (though he describes their political prejudice as the harmless sounding "curiosity bias"). Hart was there to point it out:

Feran’s curiosity bias, like that of his liberal peers at the Plain Dealer, skews in a predictable direction.

Hart's biggest get was his interview with Society of Professional Journalists ethics committee chairman, Kevin Smith. When presented with Feran's past remarks, Smith responded:

"That Mr. Feran can take ANY political stance and is then allowed to share his ‘objective assessment’ of news on the Politifact website where he passes judgment on the accuracy of news stories, is, at best, irresponsible and unethical journalism.”

We couldn't agree more, and kudos to Hart for interviewing someone with Smith's credibility.

Ultimately, our take on Feran's piece mirrors Hart's, and we consider it recommended reading. But we were surprised to see Hart miss Feran's glaring admission of PolitiFact's dishonesty. See if you can find it (we'll even add some emphasis to make it easier to spot):

Because we can't possibly check all claims, we give priority to the most newsworthy and significant.

The most notable example of the past year came in the closing days of the presidential campaign, when Mitt Romney told a crowd in Defiance that plans were afoot to shift the Jeep jobs in Ohio to China. "I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep — now owned by the Italians — is thinking of moving all production to China," he said.

With our partners at PolitiFact National, we rated the statement Pants on Fire.

It's beyond dispute that Mitt Romney said that exact quote to a crowd in Defiance, Ohio. Also beyond dispute is that PolitiFact claimed it was rating the Romney ad, not the speech in Defiance. How can "the most notable example" of PolitiFact selecting "the most newsworthy" item to check be an item PolitiFact never selected in the first place?

Our longtime readers probably recall that Mitt Romney's Jeep to China claim won PolitiFact's Lie of the Year in 2012, but as we pointed out at the time, PolitiFact rated Romney's campaign ad, not the statement he made in Defiance. It's true that in the Defiance speech, Mitt Romney cited a story, originating with Bloomberg News, that implied Jeep was moving production to facilities in China. That story was later clarified, and by the time Romney ran the commercial that earned the award the claim had been corrected.

Bottom line: The Romney ad that won the Lie of the Year for claiming Jeep was shipping production to China at the cost of American jobs never actually made that claim. PolitiFact acknowledged as much with their bogus headline (notice the carefully placed quotation marks):

You see, there's nothing really "newsworthy" about Mitt Romney accurately quoting a usually reliable media outlet, and then correcting an inaccurate claim as more information becomes available. Furthermore, it's difficult to give the Lie of the Year award to a claim that is unarguably true.

But don't tell that to Tom Feran.

Mark Twain once wrote: "If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything." If PolitiFact had told the truth about which claim they were rating, Feran might have avoided outing their deceit. Instead, Feran forgot that PolitiFact dishonestly morphed two stories into one and conjured up an entirely fictional claim to rate. Feran laid open an ugly reality that PolitiFact refuses to admit: Romney's Lie of the Year was entirely undeserved because they awarded it to him for something he didn't claim.

Make sure to check out Hart's piece at Media Trackers. There's plenty of good points we didn't mention here.



Bryan adds:

In a more general (and brief) treatment of the Romney ad controversy at Zebra Fact Check, I pointed out that Annenberg Fact Check and the Washington Post Fact Checker also allowed Romney's speech at Defiance to steer the direction of the fact check.

PolitiFact fact checkers misled in their judgments of the ad just as surely as the ad misled viewers in the first place–if not more so.  Romney’s ad, after all, did not make the explicit claim that fact checkers used as their pretext for condemning it.  In comparison, fact checkers deliberately conflated the ad with a speech in which Romney mischaracterized a news article he had seen.   Annenberg Fact Check did it.  The Washington Post Fact Checker did it.  PolitiFact did it.

This does nothing to excuse PolitiFact, of course.  It simply helps show how the mainstream fact checkers approached the story independently(?) with a groupthink streak.

PFB Smackdown: Paul Krugman on PolitiFact and Eric Cantor

On August 4 this past week, PolitiFact rated "Half True" Rep. Eric Cantor's (R-Va.) statement that the nation faced an "ultimate problem" of a "growing deficit."  Liberals apparently think this is the latest evidence that PolitiFact is overcompensating for the dishonesty of Republicans.  As usual, the evidence can't bear the weight of claims like this one from noted partisan hack and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman of The New York Times:

News organizations in general, and PolitiFact in particular, are set up to deal with a world in which both parties generally respect reality, and in which dishonesty and delusion are roughly equally distributed between the parties. Faced with the highly asymmetric reality, they choke — treating mild Democratic exaggerations as if they were equivalent to outright falsehoods on the other side, treating wild misrepresentations on the GOP side as if they were slight misstatements.

Why did PolitiFact rate Cantor's statement "Half True"?  PolitiFact noted that Cantor referred to a growing deficit.  Yet right now the deficit is shrinking, and is expected to continue shrinking for a few more years before it starts heading back up.  Cantor received a "Half True" because the ultimate projected trend is a rising deficit.

Krugman erupted:

[H]ere we have a senior GOP official talking as if we lived in an alternative universe in which deficits are rising, not falling. And PolitiFact declares his statement half true.

Krugman, unsurprisingly, objects to PolitiFact's ruling because, perceived from his Keynesian soapbox, Cantor's rhetoric risks keeping the U.S. from keeping its deficits high enough to keep our economy healthy.

The Keynesian soapbox serves as a poor vantage point for judging either Cantor or PolitiFact.

In context, Cantor obviously was talking about the long view.  It's no secret that over the long term, entitlement spending figures to dominate federal government outlays.

The Congressional Budget Office puts it like this:

The explosive path of federal debt under the extended alternative fiscal scenario underscores the need for major changes in current policies to put the nation on a sustainable fiscal course.

Even Paul Krugman knows that running a deficit adds to the debt.  So there should be no problem at all understanding Cantor's point:

CANTOR: Here is the problem. What we need to have happen is leadership on the part of this president and White House to come to the table finally and say, we're going to fix the underlying problem that's driving our deficit. We know that is the entitlement programs and unfunded liability that they are leaving on this generation and the next.

Got that?  "This generation and the next."  Cantor's talking about the long term budget implications of entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security.  The recent decrease in the deficit has approximately zero to do with that structural deficit problem.  Krugman completely misses it.  PolitiFact mostly misses it.

This case provides no evidence of PolitiFact going easy on a Republican in an effort to appear fair.  It's a case of PolitiFact failing to pay attention to context and treating a Republican too harshly.  PolitiFact's recent ruling on President Obama's claim that the minimum wage is lower today than when President Reagan took office serves as an instructive comparison.  The minimum wage is obviously higher today than in Reagan's time. Do Krugman and Rachel Maddow complain?  Not publicly, so far as we can tell.

Even though Mr. Obama did not suggest adjusting the figure for inflation, we think one rightly interprets his statement taking an inflation adjustment into account.  And Cantor ought to receive similar consideration in the form of paying attention to the context of his statement.

This is not a case of PolitiFact overcompensating to appear fair.  It's another case of PolitiFact allowing its liberal bias to put a thumb on the scale.

Have we mentioned that Paul Krugman is a partisan hack?

John Sexton: "Politifact Faults Perry for Believing Wendy Davis' Misleading Statements"

Via Breitbart.com, writer John Sexton notes that a claim PolitiFact rated "Half True" from Texas governor Rick Perry about state senator Wendy Davis carries substantial similarity to claims Davis made about herself:

Where might Gov. Perry have gotten the misleading impression that Wendy Davis was born into "difficult circumstances?" Politifact points out that Davis' own website says "She began working after school at 14 to help support her single mother and three siblings." The same line appears on this Wendy Davis website as well. What these sites do not say is that her mother had only recently become single, having divorced when Davis was 11 years old. The impression is given that Davis grew up in a single parent home.

Sexton's pointing to a problem of ambiguity.  Perry's statement was ambiguous, for we need not understand "born into" as the specific time one was born.  Davis was born into a family destined for divorce, leaving her mother as the "single mother" Davis highlighted on her website.

Ambiguous statements help bring out the partisan in fact checkers because it's easy to make the favorable interpretation for those one favors and a lot tougher to do it for those less liked.