PFB Smackdown: Rachel Maddow (again) and White House baby screening

It does seem that MSNBC host Rachel Maddow has gone a tad unhinged over PolitiFact.

Maddow's latest complaint about PolitiFact stems from a "Mostly False" rating PolitiFact gave to a pro-life/anti-abortion group over its claim that the White House recognizes the existence of unborn babies for security purposes.

Maddow's problem seems to come from the fact that she doesn't recognize that PolitiFact's rating system weights toward the middle ratings because of compound statements and underlying arguments. 

Watch:



Maddow seems inches from screaming (3:05) "It's got to be either true or false!"

Clearly Maddow believed the "Mostly False" rating from PolitiFact was inflated.  But she made her case with cherry-picked information.  And her choices weren't so surprising when PolitiFact did much the same thing, though not quite to the extreme Maddow took it.

This is the key line from the White House e-mail, which neither Maddow nor PolitiFact saw fit to mention (from the National Right to Life press release):

"We have received a number of calls regarding how to enter security information for a baby that has not yet been born," Shafer wrote.

The PolitiFact telling picks up with Shafer's next sentence (bold emphasis added):

The release was a response to an early-morning email from the White House Visitors Office detailing how to record the personal information of babies still in utero.

"Crazy as it may sound, you MUST include the baby in the overall count of guests in the tour. It’s an easy process," Visitors Office director Ellie Schafer wrote to congressional staffers, specifying that nine zeros should be filled in for the infant’s Social Security Number.

Using just the second sentence, it's very easy to charge National Right to Life with distorting the meaning of the email newsletter.  But with the addition of the preceding sentence it is plain that Shafer is giving instructions on entering security information for a baby that has not yet been born.  The first sentence helps illuminate why Shafer says it sounds crazy to include the (unborn) baby in the overall count.  The PolitiFact version at least introduces the quotation with a helpful paraphrase ("detailing how to record the personal information of babies still in utero").

The White House instruction to provide security information for the unborn baby, clear in the White House email, was the fulcrum on which the NRTL built its implication of White House hypocrisy.

But we need to clarify which fact PolitiFact chose to check.

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The top portion of the PolitiFact image is a suitably accurate representation of the NRTL newsletter, and in light of the information already discussed, it can't be entirely false that the White House recognizes unborn babies in terms of its security procedures.  It sent out instructions to help expectant mothers fill out security information for babies not yet born.

The bottom portion of the PolitiFact image tends to mislead.  Saying the White House "screens" unborn babies conveys the impression that the babies have enough history to warrant some type of security threat, and implies that some unborn babies may not make the cut.  The NRTL newsletter doesn't mention anything about that type of screening and does not imply it.  On the contrary, the newsletter appears to take for granted that the White House asks for the information for the purpose of providing security for the visitors, including babies born or otherwise.

I'll go out on a limb and assume that if the White House security team has information about a pregnant woman visiting the White House on a day the White House is attacked, rescue efforts will take into account the fetus and take special action to help ensure its survival.  That's in line with the purpose of the NLRB press release.  There's a touch of hypocrisy in the policy and the NLRB newsletter doesn't overplay that angle.  If "Mostly False" isn't the correct rating then it should be higher than that.  Indeed, the NLRB's newsletter handled the truth more carefully than either Maddow or PolitiFact in this case.

Maddow's rant fits with a pattern of low-quality criticism of PolitiFact from the Left.

PFB Smackdown: Lawrence O'Donnell, Rachel Maddow and Tommy Christopher

Uh-oh!  Liberals are once again scandalized by a PolitiFact fact check!

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell appeared in the following political ad:




PolitiFact looked into O'Donnell's claim about critics calling the GI Bill "welfare" and ruled it "Mostly False."   The fact check does have some problems.

PolitiFact went easy on O'Donnell

The fact check contains a huge error.  PolitiFact overlooks the fact that O'Donnell is making an equivocal argument.  O'Donnell stresses that the GI Bill was an education program.  But when PolitiFact pressed MSNBC to support O'Donnell's claim, the latter responded by providing criticisms that almost exclusively aimed at unemployment benefits that were part of the bill.  O'Donnell's argument is a bait-and-switch.

PolitiFact claims to take such abuse of context into account.  Some of the "Truth-O-Meter" grades, in fact, carry clear signs of the perils of making a claim with limited context.

Rachel Maddow

PFB Smackdown: Rachel Maddow (Updated)

We agree with Rachel Maddow up through about the 55 second mark.  Yes, PolitiFact is bad, and PolitiFact is so bad at fact checking that it doesn't deserve frequent citations as a trustworthy source. 

After that, our level of agreement starts to drop.

Sen. Rubio (R-Fla.) stated that most Americans are conservative and went on to argue the point based on attitudes toward the labels "conservative" and "liberal."

Maddow ignores the context of Rubio's remarks and attacks it using survey data about the way Americans self-identify politically.

Maddow is supposed to be ultra smart.  So how come she can't figure out that Rubio's statement isn't properly measured against self-identification numbers?

It appears that Maddow uncritically followed PolitiFact's approach to judging Rubio's accuracy.  The self-identification numbers serve as interesting context, but it's perfectly possible for 100 percent of Americans to self-identify as "liberal" yet reasonably classify as majority conservative.  That's because people can have inaccurate perceptions of their location on the political spectrum.

So, was Rubio correct that the majority of Americans are conservative?  That depends on his argument.  Rubio didn't cite surveys about self-identification.  He used a method concerned with attitudes toward the respective labels.  One can argue with the method or the application of the method, but using an inappropriate benchmark doesn't cut it.

When you ask people which party they lean toward, the independents split up so that the country is almost evenly divided. For the year of 2011, Gallup reported that 45 percent of Americans identified as Republicans or leaned that way, while 45 percent identified as Democrats or leaned that way.

Is "Republican" the same label as "conservative"?  No, of course not.

PolitiFact came close to addressing Rubio's point by looking at the political leanings of moderates, but fell short by relying on the wrong label along with the self-identification standard.  Maddow's approach was even worse, as she took Rubio's comment out of context and apparently expected PolitiFact to do the same thing.

Meanwhile, PolitiFact defends itself with the usual banalities:

“Our goal at PolitiFact is to use the Truth-O-Meter to show the relative accuracy of a political claim,” Adair explained. “In this case, we rated it Mostly True because we felt that while the number was short of a majority, it was still a plurality. Forty percent of Americans consider themselves conservative, 35 percent moderate and 21 percent liberal. It wasn’t quite a majority, but was close.”

“We don’t expect our readers to agree with every ruling we make,” he continued.

Pretty weak, isn't it?


Update 2/19/2012:

With a hat tip to Kevin Drum of Mother Jones (liberal mag), we have survey data that help lend support to Marco Rubio (as well as to my argument in his defense):

(click image to enlarge)

1)  The survey, from Politico and George Washington University, is limited to likely voters.
2)  The poll essentially forces likely voters to choose between "liberal" and "conservative."
3)  A plurality of those surveyed (43 percent) lean Democrat or self-identify as Democrat.
4)  Despite the plurality of Democrats in the survey sample, 61 percent identify as conservative ("Very conservative" or "Somewhat conservative").

Left Jab: Rachel Maddow and the presidential salute

MSNBC television host Rachel Maddow is probably the highest-profile critic of PolitiFact from the left. We've panned a number of her criticisms of PolitiFact as weak, but her Sept. 25 blog scores a palpable hit:

So, what I wrote is true. Punditfact found it to be true. They published an amusing presidential speechmaking anecdote that not only shows that it’s true, but makes you feel all warm-hearted about its being true.  And then gave their rating:  “Mostly False”.  Ta-daa!

Usually, I ignore these guys.  Yesterday, I made the mistake of responding to their letter, which I regret. Don’t feed the trolls.  They included a line from my response to them in their rating, which I realize now may create the impression that I participated in this enterprise as if it was a real thing.  It’s not a real thing: it’s Politifact.  It’s terrible.

We appreciate the absence in Maddow's post of any partisan whining. She just makes the justifiable assertion that PolitiFact does fact checking badly, and supports it with a pretty good anecdote. PolitiFact uses some sort of Associative Property of Quotations to blame Maddow for the questionable claim of a blogger who cited her book.

We'll repeat our position there's nothing inconsistent between PolitiFact treating liberals or Democrats unfairly and our position that PolitiFact displays an anti-conservative and anti-Republican bias. Maddow has a legitimate example of PolitiFact treating her unfairly.

PFB Smackdown: Tommy Christopher and Maddow's abortion critique of Romney

We use the PFB Smackdown feature to critique the worst of the left's best critiques of PolitiFact.


Perhaps inspired by my assertion earlier this week that the criticism of PolitiFact from the political Left lack punch, Mediaite's Tommy Christopher jumps in the ring again, trying to float like Rachel Maddow and punch like, well, Rachel Maddow.

Christopher:

On Monday night’s The Rachel Maddow Show, host Rachel Maddow accused Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney of supporting a law that would outlaw abortions, even in cases of rape and incest, while also tying freshly-crowned VP nominee Rep. Paul  Ryan to extreme measures related to reproductive freedom. What’s curious is that Pulitzer Prize-winning Politifact just got done incinerating President Obama‘s trousers over the same claim. Who’s right?

Good question.  Which one is right?

Politifact rated the claim “Pants on Fire,” based on the “logic” that some personhood amendments contain exceptions for rape and incest, and the life of the mother, and since Romney didn’t mention such exceptions when he expressed support for personhood, that must mean he supports such exceptions. It’s an idiotic bit of logic, like concluding that if I say I like Pepsi, I must really be saying I like Diet Pepsi.

Christopher is wrong about PolitiFact's logic.  Rather than using Romney's ambiguity to insist that Romney was specific about allowing for exceptions, PolitiFact criticized the Obama ad for assuming that Romney's ambiguity meant that he specifically favored no exceptions in his opposition to abortion.

PolitiFact:

(T)he Obama campaign has a problem in extrapolating Romney's position from that comment. Support for the amendment does not necessarily equate to opposing abortion when pregnancy is due to rape or incest.

So the Obama campaign, to use Christopher's illustration, was saying that if Romney says he likes Pepsi then he's really saying he likes Diet Pepsi.  PolitiFact and Christopher criticize forms of the same error, but PolitiFact does so accurately in this case.

Was the "Pants on Fire" rating harsh?  Sure.  As we argue, all of PolitiFact's "Pants on Fire" ratings are ultimately subjective and amount to an opinion.  But the basic criticism of the Obama campaign ad was on target.

Weak attacks like Christopher's Maddowesque flailing don't amount to much, however.  If Christopher was interested in the truth of the matter we could expect to see him refrain from blatantly misrepresenting PolitiFact's logic.  Complaints like Christopher's tend to look like attempts to work the referee.

Politico: "PolitiFact without the 'Truth-O-Meter'"

Politico's media guy Dylan Byers hits and misses with his "PolitiFact without the 'Truth-O-Meter'" column.

First the miss, occurring in Byers' set up based on last week's dust-up between PolitiFact and Rachel Maddow over a rating of Florida senator Marco Rubio:

PolitiFact, the Tampa Bay Times fact-checking project, has come under fire this week for a ruling that seems to contradict common sense. Yesterday, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow -- PolitiFact's most vocal critic -- went to town on the group for claiming that an assertion made by Florida Senator Marco Rubio was "mostly true" when it was, in fact, false.

Rubio was probably correct, so if Byers intends to say that the statement was false then he needs to do better fact checking himself.  The construction of the sentence allows him to blame it on Maddow, I suppose.

Now the hit:

So, here's a thought. Get rid of the 'Truth-O-Meter.'

Okay, so I was peddling that idea back in 2008, but it's nice to see others picking up on the notion.

Byers scores another hit in supporting his suggestion:

I asked Adair today if PolitiFact would ever consider getting rid of its rulings and just present the facts on their own.

"The Truth-O-Meter is a key part of PolitiFact's work," he said. "We independently research political claims, analyze their overall accuracy and rate them from True to Pants on Fire. The rating allows readers our assessment to see the overall accuracy at a glance; they can read our analysis for more details."

Here is a less generous interpretation of that claim: The "Truth-O-Meter" allows PolitiFact to market its research -- which is painstaking and time-consuming -- to a political discourse that doesn't have time to read its analysis. The "Truth-O-Meter" is what enables pundits to put politicians on the spot by saying, "Ok, but PolitiFact found that that statement was "'mostly false.'" It is what enables political opposition to sound the siren whenever something is ruled "Pants on Fire." And without these convenient rulings, people might stop paying attention.

The "Truth-O-Meter" is a marketing gimmick.  And despite the fact that the meter's design by nature degrades PolitiFact's journalism, PolitiFact is so wedded to it that no divorce is possible.

There's a sense in which PolitiFact's marketing approach is a "savior" to print journalists.  That perception probably helped PolitiFact capture its 2008 Pulitzer Prize.  Hard news reporting was made popular while newspaper circulation numbers steadily declined.

But the false prophecies are getting more difficult to overlook.



Jeff adds: Since when is Rachel Maddow "PolitiFact's most vocal critic"? Perhaps the voices of James Taranto or Mark Hemingway aren't able to break through the echo echo chamber chamber?

Bryan adds:  Maybe she's the "most vocal" critic because her televised messages are audible while most others just write?

Got 29 States but a Fact Ain't One

On Tuesday PolitiFact published a rating on Martina Navratilova that caught the ire of liberal bloggers:

PolitiFact gave Navratilova the dreaded Half-True rating, and this upset Wonkette writer "DOKTOR ZOOM," who complained:

Politifact, which now apparently is fact-checking retired pro athletes, to contribute to serious political discourse, checked into Navratilova’s claim, determined that employers in 29 states can indeed fire people for being gay, and rated Navratilova’s statement as “half true,” because it turns out that there are a few exceptions.

It doesn't happen often, but we're inclined to agree with ZOOM on this one.  We think it's a legitimate gripe. Of course, that's probably because it's a gripe we've been making for years, but we won't hold it against the suddenly enlightened left for (probably temporarily) noticing how arbitrary PolitiFact's ratings system really is.

The Wonkette article highlights PolitiFact's lame logic:

But what are these exceptions? First off, the Politifrackers acknowledge that 21 states and the District of Columbia “explicitly prohibit employment discrimination based on sexual orientation,” and that in the 29 states that do not have such laws,

“employees in these states who believe they are discriminated against would not have grounds to win a lawsuit alleging discrimination.”

OK, so Navratilova was right, and her statement is true, right? Well, no, you see, because what she said took a single sentence, and there are paragraph-length exceptions

The gist of it is that Navratilova is correct that in 29 states there is no statewide protection for gay and lesbian employees from being fired for their sexuality. PolitiFact knocks the tennis star down a few notches because, gee golly, some companies have policies against discrimination, and some employees are protected by federal statutes. That's a bogus argument, and it's not fact checking. The fact that some people in specific employment situations are protected does not negate the fact that other people are not protected.

Navratilova is right, and PolitiFact is playing its usual word games.  

Our regular readers might wonder why we chose to highlight this as an example of PolitiFact's liberal bias. Since we started this site we've acknowledged that PolitiFact's arbitrary standards will eventually harm both the left and the right. This rating doesn't change that. PolitiFact simply doesn't offer quality fact checking, and it will inevitably flub ratings both ways. As we've documented, PolitiFact's inadequacy overwhelmingly harms those on the right more often than those on the left. This rating provides an example of how flawed their system is.

Any reputation PolitiFact has as a dispassionate arbiter of facts is completely undeserved. For all the bluster, they're a run-of-the-mill commentary site. Wonkette is correct to point out the subjective nature of this rating, but it's nothing out of the ordinary for PolitiFact. Navratilova is simply collateral damage in PolitiFact's inept carpet bombing of reality.

Our purpose is to highlight PolitiFact's liberal bent. But PolitiFact puts out shoddy work and opinionated claptrap that often distorts the truth instead of clarifying it. Eventually both sides of the aisle will take a hit.

The reality is no one should trust them.


Bryan adds:

It's worth emphasizing just how normal it is for PolitiFact to rule "Half True" for a claim that is true.  As Rachel Maddow notes, facts are either true or false.  One look at PolitiFact's list of "Half-True" rulings shows a great set of recent examples like the one Maddow complained of, including specific ratings of Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Jeff Sessions.

Rubio said the Gang of Eight immigration bill isn't amnesty.  PolitiFact said that it depends on how one defines "amnesty."  Yet Rubio used the normal, commonly understood definition.  "Half True," said PolitiFact.  Maddow went ballistic.  Just kidding.  She was able to contain herself until the Navratilova rating served as the last straw.

Sessions said prosecutions for failing gun background checks were down every year under Obama.  It's true for every year for which records have been published, and PolitiFact claims to rule according to information available when a claim is made.  "Half True," said PolitiFact, reasoning that Sessions kind of implied a trend that continued through the current year, and we can't confirm that yet.  PolitiFact also reasoned (!) that since prosecutions were also low under Bush therefore prosecutions under Obama "didn't nosedive."  The left wing blogosphere yawned if it noticed at all, as if "Half True" is the best we should expect from those lyin' Republicans.


Edit 5/8/13: Originally this post inadvertently included a draft paragraph at the end that was not intended for publication. It has been removed-Jeff

Edit: 5/9/13: Added "We think" to third paragraph-Jeff

The Washington Post: "Report: Republicans to hammer PolitiFact units on alleged bias"

Eric Wemple's Washington Post blog brings news via the Washington Examiner of a new GOP effort to engage in an aggressive pushback against PolitiFact in various states:

Via the Washington Examiner comes word that Republican operatives across the land will be targeting state PolitiFact operations. The move draws inspiration from the massive document that the Republican Party of Virginia compiled against PolitiFact Virginia earlier this month, a document covered extensively in this space.

Wemple goes on to give helpful hints to the GOP for the sake of its effort, and the hints double as criticisms of the Republican Party of Virginia's attack on PolitiFact Virginia.  Wemple's key points generally agree with what I published here before taking up this post.  Wemple says the claim that the timing of publication for PolitiFact's ratings harms the GOP is weak.  Wemple also tries to downplay the effect of the study's anecdotes by claiming they need to appear in the company of stories PolitiFact skipped that might have proved damaging to Democrats.  Though we think the latter is a good idea, we don't rate its importance as highly as Wemple does.

We disagree strongly with Wemple's conclusion featuring a quotation from PolitiFact's chief windbag, editor Bill Adair:

The Examiner story furnishes a Champagne-popping pretext for PolitiFact. After all, the brand name has now been attacked furiously from the left — see Rachel Maddow — and furiously from the right. Now they can lay claim to centrism. “This is testament to the fact that we have disrupted the status quo,” says PolitiFact Editor Bill Adair. “We’re holding people accountable for their words and they don’t like it.”

PolitiFact can pop all the Champagne it likes and keep right on chanting the claim that criticism from both sides allows it to lay claim to centrism, but that wouldn't make it true.  Shame on Wemple for not vigorously sticking a pin in that radically overblown idea.

The content of the criticism, as Wemple pointed out earlier, makes all the difference.  The criticism from the Left is weaker than that from the Right.  PolitiFact has always done a shoddy job of fact checking.  Rachel Maddow only started noticing when her ox was gored a few times too often.

As for Adair's claim that PolitiFact has "disrupted the status quo," he's finally right about something: Nobody was expecting PolitiFact do this bad a job of fact checking.  It has truly disrupted the status quo, and the politicians don't like it.  They were okay with reasonably competent fact checking from Annenberg, The Washington Post and the Associated Press.

And therein lies Wemple's apparently unasked follow up question for Adair:  "If you have disrupted the status quo, why do you think Annenberg Fact Check and The Washington Post fact checker did not disrupt the status quo?"

C'mon, Wemple.  Let's see you ask it.

PFB Smackdown: The Providence Phoenix rises to aid Politifact--sort of

The Providence Phoenix provided a would-be defense of PolitiFact Rhode Island--but in the end the defense hurts the mainstream media's version of Media Matters.

The story, by David Scharfenberg, opens with the misleading title "PolititFact Faces Its Conservative Critics."  Scharfenberg's story included, I have yet to see PolitiFact meaningfully engage its conservative critics.  The closest we get to that is stuff like Bill Adair waving off criticisms from the right by pointing out that PolitiFact is also criticized from the left.  No doubt the critics from the left are eligible for the same meaningless defense--except that PolitiFact seems concerned enough about offending its left-tilted base to the point of defending itself from the criticisms of Arianna Huffington and Rachel Maddow.  For contrast, a major Wall Street Journal editorial had its existence noted without addressing its content.

Scharfenberg moves on to a critique of PolitiFact written by Willam A. Jacobson (and linked at PolitiFact Bias).

Scharfenberg's conclusion is curious:

Any of the ratings from half-true to mostly true to true would have been in order. For the ProJo to find "pants on fire" itself deserves a "pants on fire" rating.

PolitiFact, you have a problem.

I find Jacobson's critique less than persuasive. The ProJo may be guilty of examining McKay's statement a bit too literally. But for McKay to claim that Whitehouse labeled any Rhode Islander who didn't agree with him on health care reform a "white supremacist" is a pretty serious distortion.

While Scharfenberg apparently disagrees with Jacobson that McKay may have warranted a "Half True" or higher on the "Truth-O-Meter," he apparently concurs with Jacobson that the "Pants On Fire" rating was unjustified.

Scharfenberg subsequently sharpens the point:

Still, when I read the PolitiFact entry, I couldn't help but wonder: is parsing this sort of political theater, this sort of obvious hyperbole, the best use of PolitiFact's time?

PolitiFact claims it grants license for hyperbole:

In deciding which statements to check, we ask ourselves these questions:

• Is the statement rooted in a fact that is verifiable? We don’t check opinions, and we recognize that in the world of speechmaking and political rhetoric, there is license for hyperbole.

Fact check that?

Slate: "PolitiFact Weirdly Unable to Discuss Facts"

PolitiFact's recent spat with its liberal readership base has led to the publication of quite a few stories that echo criticisms recurrent in the posts we publish and link at PolitiFact Bias.

Slate's Dave Weigel, famously/formerly of the Journolist, has another such:

After this week, plenty of pundits are well and done with the national version of PolitiFact. The local versions? They're great. I was actually pretty fond of how one of them debunked an ad that misued [sic] one of my quotes, attributing it to a candidate, in 2010. Alas, PolitiFact Editor Bill Adair has committed the main site to a factually dubious "Lie of the Year" claim. PolitiFact claims that it's a "lie" to say that the Path to Prosperity ends Medicare. ActualFacts tell us that this is not a lie.

Adair responds to the critics in the worst possible way.

At a Republican campaign rally a few years ago, I asked one of the attendees how he got his news.

"I listen to Rush and read NewsMax," he said. "And to make sure I'm getting a balanced view, I watch Fox."

We're starting with an anoymous [sic] quote from a straw man that Adair met once?

Weigel continues to expand on Adair's defense, noting that it does nothing to address substantive criticisms.

Adair's response matches the customary pattern at PolitiFact, with the possible exception of the explanation PolitiFact offered after one of its criticisms of Rachel Maddow likewise offended liberal sensibilities.  The sad thing is that it took so long for so many liberals to see it.  Apparently it's easy to overlook the problem so long as conservatives have to deal with the bulk of the harm.

Though we hardly agree with Weigel about the quality of PolitiFact's state franchises (the jury's still out on most of them), his main point is well taken and the post is worth reading.

PolitiFact would gain credibility if it answered substantive criticisms with well-reasoned rebuttals. 

Claiming the critics suffer from some type of echo-chamber syndrome that prevents them from understanding PolitiFact's greatness is not a well reasoned rebuttal.  Rather, it is an ad hominem fallacy.  Readers are not well served with that type of response.

Jeff adds: Weigel continues with a curious new pattern we've noticed with liberal writers describing PolitiFact. What used to be a ubiquitary reference to PolitiFact's Pulitzer (which served to inform the reader of their unquestionable credibility and authority) is no longer worth the extra space to mention. 

Bill Adair: You who criticize us are in an echo chamber chamber chamber chamber

PolitiFact editor Bill Adair served up some delicious irony with his recent defense of PolitiFact's 2011 "Lie of the Year" selection.

That selection was Democrats' claim that Republicans voted to end Medicare.  Liberals and progressives far and wide have condemned the selection, and we at PolitiFact Bias share a degree of sympathy with offended liberals since there is some (not much) truth in the claim.

The deluge of port side criticism has prompted yet another one of PolitiFact's nearly content-free rebuttals under the headline "Fact-checking in the Echo Chamber Nation."

Adair seems blissfully unaware that he's inside the echo chamber.

Adair:

At a Republican campaign rally a few years ago, I asked one of the attendees how he got his news.

"I listen to Rush and read NewsMax," he said. "And to make sure I'm getting a balanced view, I watch Fox."

My liberal friends get their information from distinctly different sources — Huffington Post, Daily Kos and Rachel Maddow. To make sure they get a balanced view, they click Facebook links — from their liberal friends.

Adair just told us that he's positioned within an echo chamber oriented left.  He hears opinions from the right when he's out reporting. But to hear what the left is saying he can just hang out with his friends.  A truly centrist Bill Adair may be expected to have discussions with a conservative friend to draw from in writing his story.

Adair:

This is life in our echo chamber nation. We protect ourselves from opinions we don't like and seek reinforcement from like-minded allies.

Bear in mind Adair just finished hinting that his list of friends is predominantly (if not exclusively) liberal.

If Adair isn't in the echo chamber shoulder-to-shoulder with those he criticizes, then it's more akin to a liberal echo chamber duplex with one common living area.

Adair:

The paradox of the Internet age is that never before have we had access to more ideas and different thoughts. And yet, many of us retreat into comfy parlors where everyone agrees and the other side is always wrong. Each side can manufacture its truths and get the chorus to sing along.

PolitiFact had its latest brush with the Echo Chamber Nation this week. We gave our Lie of the Year to the Democrats' claim that the Republicans "voted to end Medicare." That set off a firestorm in the liberal blogosphere, with many saying that claim was not actually wrong. We've received about 1,500 e-mails about our choice and only a few agreed with us.

Adair borrows a page from President Obama's book of rhetorical tricks.  Sure, "many of us" insist on surrounding ourselves with like-minded opinions.  But Adair's problematic audience response probably comes more from those who expose themselves to contrary opinion yet do not have the ability and/or inclination to sift through the clash of ideas to figure out what's wrong or right from either side.

And blame falls on PolitiFact on this point.  PolitiFact often fails to make a clear case in favor of its decisions, and its 2011 "Lie of the Year" is another good example. Observe Adair's method of treating substantial criticisms in response to the "Lie of the Year" selection:

Some of the response has been substantive and thoughtful. The critics said we ignored the long-term effects of Rep. Paul Ryan's plan and that we were wrong to consider his privatized approach to be Medicare. In their view, that is an end to Medicare.

We've read the critiques and see nothing that changes our findings. We stand by our story and our conclusion that the claim was the most significant falsehood of 2011. We made no judgments on the merits of the Ryan plan; we just said that the characterization by the Democrats was false.

You just can't blame the outraged liberals for finding this type of response unsatisfactory.  Adair appears to admit that they have a point.  And then tells them with no reason why--unless it's sufficient to claim non-specific support from Annenberg Fact Check or the Washington Post fact checker--that there's no reason to change the ruling.  .

Adair:

We got other silly comments from readers who declared we were "a tool" of the Republicans, Fox News and the Koch brothers. Their reaction is typical these days. To paraphrase George W. Bush, you're either with us, or against us.

In reality, fact-checking is growing and thriving because people who live outside the partisan bubbles want help sorting out the truth. PolitiFact now has nine state sites run by news organizations around the country that employ more than 30 full-time journalists for fact-checking. We've inspired many copycat sites around the nation and roughly a dozen in other countries.

Adair says the extremist reactions are "typical."  And in almost the next breath he claims that fact checking is thriving because of the people living outside the partisan bubbles.  The atypical ones account for PolitiFact's success?   Why, if that's the case, did PolitiFact not receive greater email support for its "Lie of the Year" selection?  Is it that hard for Adair to see the writing on the wall from within his echo chamber?

On the whole, Adair's defense is elitist and defensive. The PolitiFact staff is enlightened, thank you very much.  If you don't like their "Lie of the Year" selection then there are plenty of potential readers who live outside the echo chamber.  And it would be nice if a few of those readers would send in some supportive emails (hint, hint).

It seems Adair doesn't know his audience.


Addendum:

One more area where PolitiFact needs to clean up its act:

Adair:

Some of our critics wrongly attributed our choice to our readers' poll and said we were swayed by a lobbying campaign by Ryan. But our editors made the choice and the poll was not a factor.

Um--how do we know the poll was not a factor?  Because Adair says so?

Free advice for Adair:  If you want to be able to claim with confidence that the poll plays no role in the editors' selection then keep the editors ignorant of the poll numbers until they're finished making their choice.  And if you do it that way then you can write your defense like this:

Some of our critics wrongly attributed our choice to our readers' poll and said we were swayed by a lobbying campaign by Ryan. But we shield the editors from the poll data to ensure that it will not affect our decision.

Doesn't that sound a lot better?  More convincing?


Jeff adds: For us PolitiFoes, Adair's airing of grievances was a Festivus Miracle. Adair implies (as does the entire premise of the PolitiFact operation) that he is somehow immune from the echo chamber, and if you don't trust him, it's because you're in too deep to notice. You're not objective enough to see the emperor's non-partisan clothes. I also have issues with his you-a-culpa over the examples he provides. His GOP rally attendees and liberal friends are straw men all day long. Whatever the political inclinations of his acquaintances may be they are irrelevant to whether or not PolitiFact gives it to us straight.

It's also interesting to note the tone of the article when compared to the dispassionate text of Adair's response to 2010's Lie of the Year criticism. We've noticed PolitiFact responds much more aggressively to anger from the left than from the right and this article adheres to that theme.

Perhaps the injuries inflicted by friendly fire were deep, but it's doubtful Adair corralled any sheep back into the flock with this ill-advised tantrum.

The circus inside PolitiFact's "Star Chamber"

I suspect that many people think, as I originally did, that PolitiFact selects its "Truth-O-Meter" ratings through something like an objective process.

Andrew Phelps of the Nieman Journalism Lab recently sat in on PolitiFact's formerly private deliberations and produces much the picture I have come to expect (pun not intended) during my years of increasing skepticism.

Adair doesn't reveal his politics.  Who put that Obama cutout back there?

Phelps:

WASHINGTON — PolitiFact’s “Star Chamber” is like Air Force One: It’s not an actual room, just the name of wherever Bill Adair happens to be sitting when it’s time to break out the Truth-O-Meter and pass judgment on the words of politicians. Today it’s his office.

Three judges preside, usually the same three: Adair, Washington bureau chief of the Tampa Bay (née St. Petersburg) Times; Angie Drobnic Holan, his deputy; and Amy Hollyfield, his boss.

"Star Chamber" aptly describes the secretive nature of the judges' meeting. PolitiFact staffers sometimes talk about what goes on in the meetings, but PolitiFact readers get no "report card" on the voting records of the fact check judges.

Jeff and I have repeatedly criticized PolitiFact's process for its institutionalization of PolitiFact's group ideology. Phelps' descriptions and transcripts bring our worst nightmares to life as the judges make their decisions with no apparent grounding in objective data. Phelps featured the following transcript early in his story:

Hollyfield: Is there any movement for a Pants on Fire?

Adair: I thought about it, but I didn’t feel like it was far enough off to be a Pants on Fire. What did you think, Lou?

Jacobson: I would agree. Basically it was a case I think of his staff blindly taking basically what was in Drudge and Daily Caller. Should they have been more diligent about checking the fine print of the poll? Yes, they should have. Were they being really reckless in what they did? No. It was pretty garden-variety sloppiness, I would say. I don’t think it rises to the level of flagrancy that I would think of a Pants on Fire.

Adair: It’s just not quite ridiculous. It’s definitely false, but I don’t think it’s ridiculous.

1. Hollyfield tests for support of the "Pants on Fire" rating she apparently wishes to promote.
2. Adair didn't "feel" the claim went that far. How far is too far?
3. Writer Jacobson (not one of the judges) also offers his vote in terms of opinion: He doesn't "think" it's flagrantly false. What's the objective measure for "flagrant"?

Perhaps editor Angie Drobnic Holan, whose opinion was missing from this exchange, carried the torch for objective standards during the meeting. But don't bet on it. The portion of the conversation Phelps provides smacks of exactly the type of subjectivity hypothesized in PolitiFact Bias' initial research study into PolitiFact's bias.

Phelps:

Like the original Court of Star Chamber, PolitiFact’s Truth-O-Meter rulings have always been secret. The Star Chamber was a symbol of Tudor power, a 15th-century invention of Henry VII to try people he didn’t much care for.

...The site’s basic idea — rate the veracity of political statements on a six-point scale — has modernized and mainstreamed the old art of fact-checking.

Granted, I put together statements from Phelps a few sentences apart, but regardless of that one is still struck by the segue from PolitiFact's parallel to the 15th century "Star Chamber" to the praising of PolitiFact for modernizing fact checking. Indeed, the abandonment of transparency occurs as one of PolitiFact's most distinctive innovations in the fact checking business.

The secret voting serves the same purpose as the secrecy about staff members' voting history. PolitiFact does not want its readers taking the fact checkers' biases into account. The fact checkers doubtless assure themselves of their neutrality as nearby two-dimensional cardboard Obamas smile approvingly at their work.

Phelps:

The truth is that fact-checking, and fact checkers, are kinda boring. What I witnessed was fair and fastidious; methodical, not mercurial. (That includes the other three (uneventful) rulings I watched.) I could uncover no evidence of PolitiFact’s evil scheme to slander either Republicans or Democrats. Adair says he’s a registered independent. He won’t tell me which candidate he voted for last election, and he protects his staff members’ privacy in the voting booth. In Virginia, where he lives, Adair abstains from open primary elections. Revealing his own politics would “suggest a bias that I don’t think is there,” Adair says.

It's nice that Phelps didn't see any obvious bias, but who is he kidding? The PolitiFact staff knew he was observing them, didn't they? I think probably PolitiFact doesn't deliberately slant its fact checks, but Phelps offers the thinnest of reassurances on that count, particularly since the tone of his story suggests he shares the port side slant so common in modern journalism.

We could probably mine Phelps' story for a week's worth of material.  Maybe we will.

All credit to Jeff for spotting the President Obama cardboard figure in Adair's office that turns the statement about staffers' voting history into an absolute howler.

But don't get the idea that Adair is biased or anything. We wouldn't want that.


Jeff adds:

This ode to the majesty of PolitiFact's Echo Star Chamber is jaw-droppingly awful. Phelps' inability to untangle the contradictions in front of his own eyes was painful to read. For example, he describes the Truth-O-Meter as "simple, fixed, unambiguous." Unfortunately, Phelps never reconciles these concrete terms with the subjective nomenclature of the actual ratings. He writes:

“Pants on Fire,” a PolitiFact trademark reserved for claims it considers not only false but absurd.

Phelps never shares PolitiFact's unequivocal, dispassionate standard for "absurd." And the ratings process Phelps describes as "fair and fastidious; methodical", ultimately boils down to "What did you think, Lou?"

But fear not PolitiFans. PolitiPhelps assures us that he "could uncover no evidence of PolitiFact’s evil scheme to slander either Republicans or Democrats." This is the same Andrew Phelps who once asked "[W]hy is George Bush such a flaming moron?" The man who described Maureen Dowd as "The person who best captures my feelings about our miraculously awful [Bush] administration" is confident Bill Adair gives it to us straight.

It's worth noting that Phelps, despite mentioning the left's outrage over the recent LOTY rating, as well as Rachel Maddow's outbursts, was unable to link to the any of the persistent, and numerous PolitiFact rebukes from the right. It's been our experience that PolitiFact's attacks from the left are very often lame, but they get the links in Phelps' piece.

If there are actual scientific, objective standards applied to PolitiFact's ratings, Phelps failed to report them. Phelps' flattering prose aside, the article shows that PolitiFact's system is really just a bunch of coworkers asking each other if they are having a "movement."

I Need A Facts 'Cuz I'm Goin' Down

You tell lies thinking I can't see, You can't cry 'cuz you're laughing at me
I'm down (I'm really down)

-The Beatles

It's been more than a decade since Bill Clinton put a face on the concept of obfuscation when he uttered the now infamous words "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Thankfully, PolitiFact has resurrected the is defense in their ongoing protection of ObamaCare.

Image from PolitiFact.com

PolitiFact put their Pulitzer-winning skills to the test while grappling with the difficult question of Nancy Pelosi's confusing, ambiguous statement. Is the ACA bringing the cost of health care down? Heroically, PolitiFact pores through the numbers and sorts out the truth:

It depends partly on what you mean by "down."

Ah, yes, that most complicated and mysterious of all adverbs; "down." What does it mean?

Apparently to the Fact Mongers at PolitiFact, it means up, but not as up as before. Or something:

Pelosi said "the Affordable Care Act is bringing the cost of health care in our country down." But it’s the rate of growth that’s dropped, not the actual cost of care — which is still rising.

Something going up is generally considered to be the exact opposite of something going down.

This Half True rating is pure editorial spin. Pelosi is flatly wrong. PolitiFact acknowledges that costs are rising. And even if we accept at face value their argument that costs are rising slower than they were before, there's hardly an objective way to determine the ACA's influence on that.

When your fact check stumbles over what the definition of the word "down" is, you have to wonder if you're in the right line of work.


Bryan adds:

A "Half True" is almost defensible if Pelosi truly meant to refer to health care costs rising more slowly than they would have in the absence of the ACA.

The context of her statement, however, makes that interpretation implausible (bold emphasis added):

"Many of the initiatives that he passed are what are coming to bear now, including the Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act is bringing the cost of health care in our country down in both the public and private sector.

"And that is what is largely responsible for the deficit coming down."

Slowing the growth of health care spending cannot bear responsibility for "the deficit coming down." PolitiFact's evaluation of Pelosi's statement involves giving her the benefit of the doubt twice:  When she says health care costs are going down she means growing more slowly, and when she says the deficit is coming down she means it's growing more slowly.

The deficit is coming down in 2013, not growing more slowly.  The CBO released statements to that effect in February and May of this year.  It therefore makes no sense to think Pelosi was saying the deficit is growing more slowly.

It's another Olympian flub by PolitiFact. Rachel Maddow's going to explode over this incompetence.  Any day now...

The Washington Post: "Virginia Republican Party publishes huge attack paper on PolitiFact"

Erik Wemple and the Washington Post stand as the first mainstream media entities, not counting PolitiFact Virginia itself, to weigh in on the massive pushback PolitiFact Virginia received yesterday from the Republican Party of Virginia:

The Virginia Republican Party has compiled an attack on PolitiFact’s Virginia operation that is virtually unbloggable. An 86-page document with a cover page stating, “TO THE COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA: A COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS OF POLITIFACT VIRGINIA’S QUESTIONABLE OBJECTIVITY,” it starts with a two-page memorandum and a three-page table of contents. Even Rachel Maddow has never produced a PolitiFact critique as exquisitely formatted.

Exquisite formatting makes less gratuitous use of capitalization according to our tastes, but we credit Wemple for zeroing in on one of the most intriguing aspects of the ponderous critique:

To narrow the scope of its inquiry, the Erik Wemple Blog will start out by exploring only the most fascinating of the Republican Party’s allegations — namely, that PolitiFact Virginia attempts to bury good ratings about Republicans and tout bad ones.

The Virginia GOP may qualify as the first to notice a bias in the timing of the stories, so that makes it a good angle for Wemple's initial approach.

Journalists are still missing the big story:  No mainstream fact checker receives anywhere near the criticism that PolitiFact receives.  There's a story in there.  And it's an important one.

Breitbart News and Eric Wemple on fact checkers

The April 17 installment of Breitbart News' interview with the Washington Post's Eric Wemple features a section on fact checking. John Nolte, the Breitbart News interviewer, let Wemple turn the tables on which was conducting the interview, but on the bright side Nolte brings makes points Wemple probably wouldn't touch.

No. 1 highlight :

EW: Here are my thoughts on that specifically, and I told Glenn the same thing: You are saying that the Washington Post disproportionately targeted Republicans, and that’s fine. My only point is that I don’t think anyone can expect politicians from any party to lie at an even rate.

BNN: That wasn’t my approach with the Washington Post, though. My argument wasn’t that Kessler was calling more Republicans liars, my issue was that, by 2-to-1, Republican statements were chosen for the fact check treatment.

Credit Nolte with correcting Wemple's straw man. But the problem with the Fact Checker and PolitiFact comes at the point story selection and truth ratings intersect. Neither one tells the whole story by itself.

Nolte follows up by emphasizing the subjectivity of the ratings. Wemple offers a counter of sorts: That criticism also comes from the left.

From this point in the interview, Wemple stops giving his take and the rest of the fact checking section has Wemple prompting Nolte for his take. There's no admission from Wemple that the ratings are subjective. Wemple's abandonment of the issue leaves an implicit "the fact checkers are criticized from both sides so they must be doing something right" argument.

BNN: When PolitiFact fact checks a quip from Ted Cruz about Iran celebrating “Hate America Day” — everyone knows what he means, but they still call him a liar. It just goes too far. A subjective decision is made to get literal so Cruz can be called a liar. Kessler did this one once where Romney said Obama had never gone to Israel — and that was a fact. But Romney got Pinocchios because Kessler made a subjective decision to make certain context relevant. That’s an opinion column, not a fact check.

EW: PolitiFact is big on context too. Like the time Rachel Maddow went crazy on them. In a State of the Union speech, Obama took credit for creating so many jobs and PolitiFact said that wasn’t entirely true because those jobs were not created as a result of his policies.

BNN: Exactly!

EW: You think she’s right about that.

BNN: I think she’s dead right about that. That’s a subjective decision to bring in subjective context. Put it on the opinion pages.

EW: And you think that cudgel is used more often against Republicans.

BNN: Much more often.

Do you agree that the ratings are subjective, Eric Wemple? If so, then what does that say about claims that harsher ratings of Republicans show that Republicans simply lie more?

The meat of this issue comes from the fact checkers' framing of political truth-telling: Republicans lie more. But the fact checkers' methods remove the foundation for the frame.

More PolitiPundit

We've written before about (former PolitiFact editor) Bill Adair's desire to have it both ways with regard to PolitiFact's ratings. When cornered by skeptics, Adair usually defended himself by saying "PolitiFact rates the factual accuracy of specific claims; we do not seek to measure which party tells more falsehoods." However, when preaching to his flock he would proclaim PolitiFact's ratings create "report cards for each candidate that reveal patterns and trends about their truth-telling." and the tallies of those ratings "provide interesting insights into a candidate's overall record for accuracy."

Either the ratings are scientific measurements or they're not, and they're either revealing patterns or they're not. PolitiFact cannot promote the cumulative results of its ratings as indicative of a person's honesty while simultaneously hiding behind a mask of random curiosity.

Apparently new editor Holan has bought into this contradiction with her eyes wide shut. It also appears Holan has convinced herself and her staff that they can don a magical cloak of objectivity when checking pundits as well as they do with politicians. PolitiFact's selection bias is only poised to be more evident when checking pundits than it is with public servants. Pundits, by definition, deal in nuance and opinion.

But the real howler with this PolitiPundit announcement was the apparent lack of self-awareness in this line (emphasis added):

Although PolitiFact has done occasional fact-checks of pundits and talk show hosts, the new venture will mark the first time that staffers have been dedicated to checking media figures.

I bet the best part of being the Unquestionable Arbiter of Facts is you get to decide what words like "occasional" mean. Are Rush Limbaugh's 17 ratings an occasional event? What about Glenn Beck's 23 ratings, or Rachel Maddow's 16? I suppose Sean Hannity's eight ratings or Bill O'Reilly's 10 count as rare?

It's been common practice for PolitiFact to rate pundits and commentators since its inception. The only thing new here is the devotion of additional resources to its fact checking farce.  I'll go out on a limb and predict PolitiPundit will be an even bigger embarrassment than their flagship site.


Bryan adds: 

Some new readers might wonder:  What's the big deal with PolitiFact being a bit imprecise?  "Occasional" covers a good bit of ground, so what's the big deal?

PolitiFact has often downgraded political figures and pundits for rhetorical imprecision.  It's hypocritical.  To mimic PolitiFact's typical judgmental tone:

PolitiFact left a misleading impression by saying it "occasionally" rates pundits.  The facts show otherwise, so the statement tells a partial truth but leaves out important details.  That meets our definition of "Half True."

Facebook comments show the dire need for the PolitiFact Bias website

Over the past few days, we received a number of comments on our Facebook page that help show the dire need for our work.

We are not identifying the person by name, though we expect it's easy to find on our page. It's a public page and the comments were posted in response to our public posts on our page. In short, it's public.

We discourage any attempt to harass this person or make contact with them against their wishes.

Beyond that, we offer thanks for the comments because we can use them to help educate others. We're using quotation marks but correcting errors without making them obvious. So the quotations are not always verbatim.

We're spotlighting these comments because they are so typical of our critics.

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?