PolitiFact's Bill Adair dismisses charges of bias

USA Today's semi-fawning review of the world of fact checking gives PolitiFact editor Bill Adair another opportunity to address the issue of journalistic bias at PolitiFact:

PolitiFact editor Bill Adair dimisses [sic] the bias charges. "Which charge of political bias? That we're biased in favor of the liberals or biased in favor of the conservatives? Because we've heard both charges in the past three months," Adair says. "When you're a loyal fan of a team, you're going to think the referee is biased against your team."

This is a redux of Adair's self-defense of PolitiFact's "Lie of the Year" for 2011.  To all you biased people in your echo chambers of course (objective) PolitiFact appears biased.  The problem is you.

Funny thing about referees, though.  Research indicates that referees are biased*.

Adair's defense is no defense at all.  In fact, it is an evasion of an important issue--an issue that should be of acute interest to a fact checker.

Do we want to trust our fact checking to a person who can't address the issue of media bias any better than the "we get criticism from both sides" blather?



*It's unlikely I would have thought to reference scientific studies of referee bias prior to reading Tim Groseclose's book "Left Turn."