Politifact F---s Up, Again

This pretty much says it all:

Pretty much. I would only add that PolitiFact has a history of faux journalism, characterized by sloppy work, specious analysis and selective fact-checking. Only once since the site first named its "lie of the year" has the label been bestowed on an actual lie (last year, when they appropriately dubbed the Democrats' talking point that congressional Republicans voted to "end Medicare" the lie of the year).

In 2009, "death panels" received the non-honor, but of course, that was not a statement, and therefore cannot technically be a lie. The following year, PolitiFact claimed that calling Obamacare a "government takeover of health care" was not only a lie but deserved the 2010 "Lie of the Year" aphorism. Their explanation relied heavily on a very narrow logical framework:  

 

"'Government takeover' conjures a European approach where the government owns the hospitals and the doctors are public employees," Politifact creator/editor Bill Adair and deputy editor Angie Drobnic Holan wrote. "But the law Congress passed, parts of which have already gone into effect, relies largely on the free market."

So, according to PolitiFact, because Obama and the Democrats weren't technically nationalizing the American health-care industry, calling Obamacare "a government takeover" was 100% false. (Throughout the year, the web site gave different versions of the claim a "Pants on Fire" rating, which means that the assertion is not only false but "ridiculous".)

Now, once again, PolitiFact has failed to help "find the truth in politics," its stated mission. Perhaps most disgraceful is that the statement it dubbed the 2012 "Lie of the Year" wasn't made, at least not the way PolitiFact analyzed it.

As Gutfeld mentioned, this year's dubious distinction went to Mitt Romney's statement that Barack Obama "sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China" at the cost of American jobs. Back in October, Politifact posted about the claim and ruled it a "Pants on Fire!" falsehood. The problem? The ad in which the claim was uttered didn't say that the Italian manufacturers who bought Chrysler were going to build Jeeps in China "at the cost of American jobs;" it didn't even imply as much. PolitiFact added that last part. Without it, the statement is not only accurate but true. As Bloomberg News reported, "Fiat SpA (F), majority owner of Chrysler Group LLC, plans to return Jeep output to China and may eventually make all of its models in that country, according to the head of both automakers’ operations in the region." (emphasis added)

So it sounds like, even if the Romney campaign had claimed that American jobs would be lost as a result of the production of Jeeps in China, it would have had some justification for doing so. Not according to PolitiFact, who called the ad "brazenly false."

Maybe they just don't know the meaning of the word "false". Or "brazenly". Or "fact". Somebody should get Angie Drobnic Holan a dictionary for Christmas

The Washington Post Needs Better Fact-Checkers

Following Paul Ryan’s address at the Republican National Convention last month, self-styled “fact-checkers” went nuts, seizing on what they perceived as false and misleading statements in the vice-presidential candidate’s speech. Their critical analyses provided much fodder for Ryan’s detractors, who tried to make him out to be a liar who couldn’t be trusted. Whether or not they were successful is hard to tell, but that’s not the focus of this article.

The Washington Post has had a mixed record this election cycle when it comes to fact-checking. A completely unbiased and disinterested observer with no dog in the fight might fairly conclude they’ve been overly harsh on both the Obama and Romney campaigns. I’ve noticed multiple mistakes in the paper’s sundry “fact checks” conducted this year, but they’ve also done a lot of good work. Of late, however, they seem to be getting sloppy...or lazy...or maybe they're just dropping the mask and letting their bias show. Whichever it is, I’ve decided the time has come to catalogue some of the most egregious malefactions I’ve seen.

Before I commence castigating individual fact-checkers, I should identify who’s who. Glenn Kessler writes the Post’s “Fact Checker” column (the one that uses the "Pinnochio" rating scale). He is assisted in this endeavor by a reporter named Josh Hicks. Post columnist Ezra Klein is the editor of Wonkblog, a blog under the newspaper’s aegis. Suzy Khimm, Sarah Kliff, Dylan Matthews and Brad Plumer are all contributors to Wonkblog.

Now then, a couple weeks ago, I challenged anyone who accused Paul Ryan of lying in his convention speech to identify one actual lie he told. To date, no one has brought such a lie to my attention. (Brief caveat: I don't consider a statement a "lie" if the person making the statement doesn't know/realize it's false at the time.) Somebody referred me to this post on Wonkblog, and while it didn't expose an actual lie in Ryan's speech, I did notice several errors the author, Dylan Matthews, made in his "fact check". For starters, he labelled the claim that "[a] GM plant in Ryan’s district shut down on Obama’s watch" FALSE and attributed the claim to Ryan. The problem is that Paul Ryan made no such claim. Surprisingly, Matthews actually admitted this--sort of--as he quoted what Ryan actually said: 

My home state voted for President Obama. When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory.

A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: “I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.” That’s what he said in 2008.

Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day.

Now, if you've done your research, then you should know that all of those statements are/were true. Matthews, however, didn't fact-check these statements. Instead, he wrote, "Ryan says that Janesville was 'about to' lose the factory at the time of the election, and Obama failed to prevent this." According to Matthews, this was "false," but Matthews is wrong; the plant was "about to close" when then-Senator Obama came to Janesville and made the remarks Ryan quoted. Notice also that Ryan never said "Obama failed to prevent" the plant's closing, though I suppose one could infer that from what he said, but even if he did, it's true; Obama didn't prevent the plant from shuttering. The issue is not whether he was in a position to save the plant; it's whether the plant closed or not. 

Matthews also distorted Ryan's claim about the stimulus. Here's what he wrote, exactly as it appears on Wonkblog:

The stimulus was the biggest expenditure in government history – The stimulus, Paul Ryan writes, “cost $831 billion – the largest one-time expenditure ever by our federal government.” This is false any way you cut it. By comparison, the Congressional Research Service estimates (pdf) that World War II cost $4.1 trillion in 2011 dollars. That was the biggest one-time expenditure ever, not the stimulus. Ryan is simply incorrect.

Notice that, again, the "claim" Matthews attributes to Ryan (in bold) differs substantially from what he quoted Ryan as saying. (This odd behavior is not unique to Matthews; see below.) Even aside from this glaring analytical error, however, is his premise that World War II "was the biggest one-time expenditure ever."' The stimulus was one bill that became one law, PL 111-5; it was a "one-time expenditure". By contrast, the $4.1 trillion "cost" of World War II was authorized through multiple appropriations bills, none of which reached anywhere close to $831 billion.

Matthews also cut out a couple of statements Ryan made--to wit, “The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare, and cronyism at their worst,” and ”We got a long, divisive, all-or-nothing attempt to put the federal government in charge of health care.”--that I would call fair characterizations of Obama's policies that others may disagree with and dubbed them "false". He then listed a few claims from Ryan's speech that he called "misleading," but only one of these (that “President Obama has added more debt than any other president before him.”) was truly misleading. (The National Debt has grown by $5.4 trillion under President Obama--a greater increase than other any one president in U.S. history--but Obama is not solely responsible for this.) The other two--about the Simpson-Bowles debt commission report and S & P's downgrade of our credit rating--were true and not even misleading. (Matthews strained credulity by asserting that these statements in Ryan's speech "impl[ied]" things that no reasonable person would have interpreted the congressman as saying.)

You would think a responsible editor would have caught at least one of these slights and rebuked Dylan Matthews for his sloppy work and lack of journalistic integrity, but Klein himself admitted that, before posting Matthews's piece, he re-read Paul Ryan's speech, "this time with the explicit purpose of finding claims we could add to the 'true' category. And I did find one." One?!? I wasn't sure how Ezra Klein defines the word "true," but then he told us:

I want to stop here and say that even the definition of “true” that we’re using is loose. “Legitimate” might be a better word. The search wasn’t for arguments that were ironclad. It was just for arguments — for claims about Obama’s record — that were based on a reasonable reading of the facts, and that weren’t missing obviously key context.

Yet, in spite of that supposedly lax standard, Klein would have us believe that, after reading Ryan’s speech in an advance text, watching it on television, then reading it over again twice more, he "simply couldn’t find any other major claims or criticisms that were true." (Perhaps he should have told us what he considered "major claims or criticisms," though as we can see from Matthews's post, Ezra seems to have no problem labelling as "false" claims that are plainly true.)

According to his profile on Wonkblog, Dylan Matthews has written for The New Republic, Salon, Slate and The American Prospect, all left-wing rags (except for Slate), so perhaps the blatant mistakes in his Wonkblog post weren't mistakes at all but deliberate attempts to deceive readers. I wanted to know, so I read his post entitled "Fact-checking Bill Clinton on the economy" the following week. I myself noticed no fewer than seven obvious lies Clinton told in his convention speech, as well as other statements I suspected were false but couldn’t be sure of at the time. Yet, Matthews branded only one of the statements he examined from Clinton’s speech “false,” and it wasn’t one of the seven I noted while watching the speech. (Four of those seven, however, had to do with Medicare, and Matthews did acknowledge that this particular post of his didn’t cover the former president’s statements about Medicare; those were dealt with in a separate post, which I also examined.) He actually did address two of the statements I recognized as lies as soon as I heard them, but his "fact check" of the statements left a lot to be desired:

1. “...the Senate Republican leader said, in a remarkable moment of candor, two full years before the election, their number-one priority was not to put America back to work. It was to put the president out of work!” Not only did I know this was false, but Matthews actually used the same thing that proves this statement false to explain why it's "TRUE". Here is the video--which Dylan Matthews embedded in his Wonkblog post--of what Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, said:

As you can see/hear, Senator McConnell clearly said that "our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term." Now, the difference beween "top" and "number-one" is de minimis, as is the difference between denying President Obama a second term and putting him out of work; I'll not fault the Big Dog for that, but there is a hugely significant difference between one's top priority and top political priority. (If you don't think the Democrats' top political priority this election cycle is to get President Obama re-elected, then you are in such a deep state of oblivion that I don't see any point in continuing.) Furthermore, there's a big difference between saying what something "is" and saying what it "should be". (We know President Clinton has been unsure of the definition of the word "is" in years past; it seems Dylan Matthews was as well.) Even if McConnell thought the GOP's top priority and top political priority were one and the same, that's not what he said. Clinton's statement was false.

2. “The Recovery Act ... cut taxes for 95% of the American people.” I interpreted this as a reference to the stimulus, and apparently Matthews did, too, so let's just go with that. This statement is also clearly false, as the percentage of Americans who pay federal taxes is far less than 95%, unless you take into account how the people who pay the taxes pass them on to others, but that's so tenuous and not supported by the context. Dylan labelled this statement "TRUE" and offered only this one sentence as support:

The “Make Work Pay” tax credit in the stimulus helped 94.3 percent of Americans.

I clicked on the link because I was willing to spot Slick Willie 0.7% if his claim otherwise held up. Matthews's source for the 94.3% claim was Politifact, which as I've demonstrated ad nauseum has some serious credibility issues. Nevertheless, even if you take them at their word in this instance, the piece Matthews linked to doesn't support his claim, nor does it entirely validate Clinton's. According to Politifact:  

The stimulus included tax cuts for many Americans, including a broad cut known as "Making Work Pay" intended to offset payroll taxes, which are automatically taken out of most workers’ paychecks and are not refundable.

Because of the stimulus, single workers collected a $400 tax credit, and working couples got $800. The credit didn’t come in the form of a check; it worked out so that most workers had about $400 less in federal income taxes withheld from their paychecks.

This raises the issue of what you consider a "tax cut"; most people think of tax cuts as cuts in tax rates, but I think it's fair to interpret Clinton's use of the term "cut taxes" to include reducing the tax burden or simply "reduced taxes". Still, that leaves the issue of the 95(or 94.3)% number. Whence did that come? Says Politifact:

Ahead of the 2008 election, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center analyzed the effects of Obama’s tax proposals for workers. The center determined about 95 percent -- more precisely, 94.3 percent -- of tax filers would receive a tax cut under Obama's plan based on the tax credit to offset payroll taxes.

That data certainly deserves consideration, but the problem is that neither Politifact nor Dylan Matthews pointed to an analysis of the actual stimulus, so we don't know how many people actually received a credit as a result of the "Make Work Pay" tax credit. Further, concluding that President Clinton's statement was true requires the additional assumption that, by "the American people," he meant "American tax filers" or "taxpayers" or some other term that's not synonymous with "people". (Indeed, Politifact said that "Clinton left out an important qualifier: It’s a tax cut for 95 percent of working families.")

Matthews didn't fact-check the other lie I noticed--that “This Republican narrative, this alternative universe, says that...every one of us in this room who amounts to anything, we’re all completely self-made.” Not only have I never seen/heard any Republican say any such thing; this statement goes way beyond a permissible paraphrasing or reasonable interpretation of anything Repbulicans have actually said. As for Wonkblog's "fact check" of Clinton's Medicare claims, I think that Sarah Kliff deserves some credit for a basically good job; she caught three of the four lies about Medicare I heard Clinton say and even exposed a couple more. I don't know why she didn't mention the other obvious lie Clinton told on this topic--that Republicans’ plan to block grant Medicaid will “end Medicare as we know it”--but I'll not fault her for that. If this one post is any indication, then Messers. Klein and Matthews can learn a lot from Ms. Kliff about how to do a proper fact check.

Now, then, on to "The Fact Checker" himself, Glenn Kessler. I've previously faulted Glenn for what I deemed an unfair analysis of Mitt Romney's claims about how many jobs he created through his work at Bain, but I've noticed that he also does some good work, too. Kessler assigns claims that are anything short of true anywhere from one to four pinnochios; four-pinnochio ratings are reserved for what he calls "whoppers". My one big riff on his "fact checking" is that he and Josh Hicks seem to apply their ratings indiscriminately and arbitrarily. I'll give you an example: Remember that awful Priorities USA ad featuring the "steelworker" whose wife "died of cancer"? Well, Kessler analyzed the claims (many of which were downright false) made by the man in the ad, a Mr. Joe Soptic, and appropriately gave the ad "four pinnochios", concluding, "Soptic is welcome to his opinion on possible reasons for his wife’s death, but that does not mean Obama supporters should exploit it. On just every level, this ad stretches the bounds of common sense and decency."

That's very charitable; I think a fairer and more honest reaction would be that this man, Joe Soptic, is a horrible person who was trying to deceive people. Regardless, the Priorities USA ad clearly deserved four pinnochios, but according to Kessler, so did the Romney campaign's ad attaking President Obama for his "plan to gut welfare reform." Kessler called this ad "over-the-top", but as Robert Rector, who helped draft the work requirements in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (a.k.a. Welfare Reform), has explained, "The law has indeed been gutted." The ad does bend the truth by saying that, under President Obama's plan, "you wouldn't have to work and wouldn't have to train for a job. They'd just send you your welfare check...." Reasonable people might interpret that as saying that unemployed people would receive welfare payments without having to work or look for a job, and that's not the case. This ad deserved one or two pinnochios, but none of the statements in it compare to the utter mendacity of the Priorities USA ad. Nevertheless, Kessler apparently thought the two spots were equally dishonest, writing that "the Romney campaign is asserting an extreme interpretation of what might happen under these rules, but it is certainly not based on any specific 'Obama plan.'"

Hmm...a campaign asserting an extreme interpretation of what might happen if their opponent's policy proposals are enacted? That sounds exactly like what the Obama campaign did with this ad: 

This ad is full of lies and deceptions. The voice-over says "chances are, you pay a higher tax rate than [Mitt Romney]," and "Mitt Romney made $20 million in 2010 but paid only 14% in taxes, probably less than you." I'm not sure who this ad is speaking to when it says "you", but "chances are" not good that you pay a lower tax rate than Mitt Romney. First, notice that they're only using one year to reference Romney's effective tax rate. (The candidate reportedly paid 15.4% of his income in federal taxes in 2011.) We don't have data from the I.R.S. for 2010 indicating what percentile a 13.9% tax burden would place Mitt Romney in, but even counting just the people who filed returns, 14% is higher than most Americans' federal tax rate in 2009. As Kessler himself has explained: 

For all the rhetoric about high taxes in the United States, most Americans pay a relatively small percentage of their income in taxes. Romney had an effective rate of 13.9 percent in 2010 and 15.4 percent in 2011. That gives him a higher rate than 80 percent of taxpayers if only taxes on a tax return are counted and puts him just about in the middle of all taxpayers if payroll taxes paid by employers are included.

So we can agree that, at the very least, the Obama ad contains some shading of the truth. That should earn it at least one Pinnochio, right? Not according to Kessler, who called the commercial "[a] tough new Obama ad that — surprise! — is accurate." That's quite an about-face from the man who less than a month earlier had given the president's campaign team three Pinnochios for tweeting, “FACT: In 2010 and 2011, Romney paid less than 15% in taxes on $42.5 million in income—much less than what many middle-class families pay.” Kessler alluded to that fact check in this analysis but distinguished the two claims, saying "the language in this ad is much more accurate." (More accurate, possibly, but still dishonest.) He also found ways to justify the ad's mendacious assertions that Romney "has a plan that would give millionaires another tax break and raises taxes on middle class families by up to $2,000 a year." (Notice the use of the qualifier "up to"; I could say that Obama has cheated on his wife Michelle up to 100 times, and even if the actual number of such adulterous trysts was zero, I'd technically be telling the truth.) This claim is based on a single study that exemplifies shoddy analysis, but aside from that, the ad misleads people by saying that Romney's plan "would give millionaires another tax break", even though Romney has been quite clear that his plan would not result in a net tax cut for people at the high end of the income spectrum. However, he has proposed lowering the top federal income tax rate to 28% and eliminating or reducing deductions and tax credits. The Tax Foundation piled assumption upon assumption and inference upon inference to reach the conclusion that "a revenue-neutral individual income tax change that incorporates the features Governor Romney has proposed ... would provide large tax cuts to high-income households, and increase the tax burdens on middle- and/or lower-income taxpayers." Also, the Tax Foundation qualified their "study" by acknowledging, "We do not score Governor Romney’s plan directly, as certain components of his plan are not specified in sufficient detail, nor do we make assumptions regarding what those components might be." (emphasis added) So, when the Obama campaign says Governor Romney "has a plan that would give millionaires another tax break and raises taxes on middle class families by up to $2,000 a year," they are simply lying.

Kessler didn't seem to think so. He wrote that "the Obama ad correctly describes the key findings of a study by a highly credible organization." (I don't disagree with the "key findings" part of that statement, but "highly credible" is his opinion of the Tax Foundation, not an established fact, and to say the ad "correctly" described the study's conclusions is just laughable.) In an untenable act of...I don't even know what to call it...Kessler gave the ad the Fact Checker's first "Geppetto Checkmark" of this election cycle. (According to Kessler, the Geppetto checkmark is reserved for “[s]tatements and claims that contain ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’.”)

This ad--entitled "Stretch"--may have contained some true statements (such as Barack Obama saying "I'm Barack Obama...."), but it certainly wasn't the whole truth, and it contained a lot more than the truth. Glenn Kessler should be ashamed of himself.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not rebuke Josh Hicks for this atrocious piece he did on some comments Rudy Giuliani made while campaigning for Mitt Romney in Florida. The post actually combined two "fact checks" in one, focusing on two series of statements America's mayor made in the Sunshine State in July. My beef is with Hicks's analysis of the first series, to-wit:  

“Remember Joe the Plumber? Joe the Plumber asked [then-Sen. Barack Obama]: ‘Would you raise taxes even if it didn’t bring any more money to the government? Like the capital gains tax. If you raise the capital gains tax — the government did this once 20 years ago — if you raise the capital gains tax, you actually make less money for the government, because people stop doing investments, or they’ll do investments overseas.’ He [Obama] said, ‘Well I would do it anyway because it’s only fair.’ ”

— Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani during a pro-Mitt Romney speech at the Florida GOP headquarters in Tampa, July 26, 2012

Hicks quoted an excerpt from then-Senator Obama’s exchange with Joe the Plumber and declared, “This shows that Obama did indeed talk about tax fairness with Wurzelbacher. But Giuliani suggested that the president was talking about fairness at the expense of greater revenue, which is not the case.” Nowhere in his “Fact Checker” piece did he mention Obama’s statements in a debate with Hillary Clinton in April 2008, in which the candidate said he "would look at raising the capital-gains tax"--even if it resulted in the government taking in less revenue—“for purposes of fairness.” Giuliani said that Obama claimed he was willing to raise the tax even if it cost the government revenue “because it’s only fair.” A permissible paraphrasing? You bet. A propos? Absolutely, but conspicuously absent from an analysis by what purported to be an objective fact-checker.

These are just some of the many, many "fact checks" conducted and published by these individuals on the Washington Post's web site. I've seen other analyses that contained no obvious errors or misstatements, but as you can see, there have been multiple instances--just in the past couple months--of these so-called fact-checkers getting their facts wrong and making overt analytical errors that any competent journalist interested in discerning what's true and what's false should have caught. I suppose it would be crass of me to castigate these men without suggesting I could do a better job, so I'll close with this: if the Washington Post decides to bring in some more diligent fact-checkers, then my services stand at the ready to help them. Until then, we'll just have to see if any of these "fact-checkers" get their act together.

Jon Stewart, PolitiFact & FOX News (Part II)

Last week, I blogged about Jon Stewart's misuse of PolitiFact to try and point out various "false statements" FOX News had made. If you haven't read that post, then you really should. Today, I hope to finish the job I started and never blog about this again.
One highly dubious analysis on PolitiFact's part fact-checked FOX News Alpha Male Bill O'Reilly's claim that "Attorney General Eric Holder is involved in the dismissal of the criminal charges" against the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation. PolitiFact rated O'Reilly's statement "False." Trouble is, nowhere in the analysis did PolitiFact provide any evidence that Holder was not involved. Instead, its analysis focused on the distinction between the civil lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice in 2009 (before Eric Holder became AG) and the decision by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division not to pursue criminal charges. Whoever wrote the PolitiFact piece stated that "O'Reilly and other Fox commentators have confused the issue by suggesting Holder and the Obama administration made the call not to pursue more serious charges against the New Black Panther Party members. [Assistant Attorney General Thomas] Perez stated that the Civil Rights Division decided pre-Obama not to pursue more serious, criminal charges. So when O'Reilly brings on legal analysts who paint it as an outrage that the Justice Department did not pursue a criminal case, and the only person condemned by O'Reilly is Holder for not 'representing the United States in a fair and balanced way,' that's misleading and misplaced. We think it's fair to hold Holder accountable for the decision to limit the civil case, but not the criminal one."
Frankly, I think PolitiFact is splitting hairs with this one. At any rate, it's hardly comparable to Stewart's blatantly false assertion that "FOX viewers" are "the most consistently misinformed media viewers," according to "every poll."
Sometimes PolitiFact's fact-checking hinges not on the interpretation of the statement being checked but on the speaker's interpretation of one or more sources. Here's an example: two years ago, PolitiFact analyzed this allegation by Glenn Beck:

John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, "has proposed forcing abortions and putting sterilants in the drinking water to control population."

PolitiFact offerred a lengthy analysis of Beck's claim and ultimately rated it "Pants on Fire!" It acknowledged that "Beck's allegation has its roots in a book Holdren co-authored with Paul and Annie Ehrlich more than three decades ago called Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment." The analysis provided several excerpts from the book that explained Beck's damning accusation but concluded, "We think it's irresponsible to pluck a few lines from a 1,000-page, 30-year-old textbook, and then present them out of context to dismiss Holdren's long and distinguished career." Trouble is, as I read Holdren's writings, Beck's interpretation seems reasonable. Even if Holdren has since changed his views, what's at issue is whether he had ever proposed forcing abortions and putting sterilants in drinking water to control population, not whether he currently supports such measures.
As I pointed out in my last column, PolitiFact often runs the risk of making someone sound like a liar by ruling a statement false or "Pants on Fire!" even though the person(s) making the statement relied in good faith on a reliable source. Many of the "false statements" Jon Stewart said PolitiFact "checked" FOX News for were just such claims. I like to call these "WMD statements," where the speaker says something that he/she has every reason to believe is true but turns out to be false. Yesterday I offerred the examples of Kimberly Guilfoyle's remarks about the Cars.gov web site and the oft-repeated claim about White House Political Director Patrick Gaspard once being Bertha Lewis's "right-hand man" at ACORN. Here's another example:
In a Dec. 3, 2009, broadcast of his FOX News show, Glenn Beck said that Andy Stern, then head of the Service Employees International Union, was "the most frequent visitor of the White House." Said PolitiFact:

We found the source of Beck's claim. When the White House released its first batch of visitor logs on Oct. 30, 2009, as part of a pledge to bring more transparency to the White House, Stern's name did indeed appear 22 times, more than anyone else listed, including [Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton, who was listed three times.

Yet, PolitiFact again slapped Beck with a "False" ruling because, it said, "that's not the whole story."
It seems Beck's data was out-of-date. PolitiFact explained:

Stern led the pack for the first data release, which covered visits from Jan. 20, 2009 to July 31, 2009. But he was surpassed by several other individuals in the second release, which updates the data through Aug. 31, 2009 (and which was made public more than a week before Beck aired his comment).

Also, PolitiFact says, "the first batch of data -- covering the period from Jan. 20, 2009, to July 31, 2009, which found Stern in the lead -- is not a complete accounting of White House visits during that period. It only includes data for visitors whose names were first requested by the public. If no one requested a specific name, then that name wouldn't appear in the database. So there's no way of knowing whether Stern actually had the most visits for that period; he simply had the most of anyone whose name was requested by the public." So, in that particular instance, PolitiFact was right to rate Beck's claim false. But then Stewart took PolitiFact's work and again made it sound like somebody at FOX News had intentionally misled the public.
In a couple of instances, PolitiFact fact-checked statements that nobody at FOX News had even made. I gave one such example yesterday (PolitiFact twisted Laura Ingraham's words about Mitt Romney to make it sound like she said the health care plan he signed into law as governor is "wildly unpopular" among state residents.). Here's another: opinion After Dr. George Tiller, the well-known Kansas abortionist, was shot to death while attending church in Wichita on May 31, 2009, Bill O'Reilly became the target of more vicious attacks from left-wing hatemongers. In a widely published article, O'Reilly asserted that he "reported on the doctor honestly," but "the loons asserted that my analysis of him was 'hateful.'" He continued:

Chief of among the complaints was the doctor's nickname, "Tiller the baby killer." Some prolifers branded him with that, and I reported it. So did hundreds of other news sources.

PolitiFact seized on those statements, which its staff apparently interpreted as O'Reilly claiming "he didn't call Dr. George Tiller a baby killer, as liberal groups charge, but was merely reporting what 'some prolifers branded him.'"
Now, if you read O'Reilly's article - or just the excerpts (which, by the way, PolitiFact's Angie Drobnic Holan included in her piece) - then you'll notice that O'Reilly didn't claim that he never called Dr. Tiller a baby killer. Had he said that, PolitiFact could have justifiably rated his comments false.
The rest of the statements on Stewart's list that had received a false or "Pants on Fire!" rating were demonstrably false, and PolitiFact provided the relevant context. It's worth pointing out, though, that in several cases, the claims attributed to FOX News were not just made by FOX News personalities; Stewart declined to mention that as well.
Hopefully, that's the last we'll hear about the unpleasant three-way between Jon Stewart, FOX News and PolitiFact. Good night, all!

Jon Stewart, PolitiFact & FOX News (Part I)

Earlier in the week, I promised a critical analysis of PoltiFact's so called "fact-checking" of FOX News items, specifically the stuff that Jon Stewart mentioned on his show last week as part of a "21-Lie Salute" to FOX News. Before I get to that, I feel I should explain the mindset with which I approached this.

Any truly credible fact-checker should take care to distinguish between facts (statements that can be declared "true" or "false") and opinions (subjective expressions of how someone feels). The distinciton is key in defamation cases. Genuine statements of opinion are not actionable (meaning someone can't sue another for defamation based on the latter's expression of his/her opinions). However, one cannot escape liability simply by disguising a factual statement as an opinion. Perhaps then-Justice William H. Rehnquist put it best:

Thus, unlike the statement, “In my opinion Mayor Jones is a liar,” the statement, “In my opinion Mayor Jones shows his abysmal ignorance by accepting the teachings of Marx and Lenin,” would not be actionable. Hepps ensures that a statement of opinion relating to matters of public concern which does not contain a provably false factual connotation will receive full constitutional protection.

Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., 497 U.S. 1, 20 (1990). Now then, on to the matter at hand. As I mentioned in my earlier column, PolitiFact rates the accuracy of selected statements with its registered "Truth-O-Meter" rulings. Says PolitiFact, "The goal of the Truth-O-Meter is to reflect the relative accuracy of a statement."

Of the 21 claims Stewart referenced in his comedy bit, fourteen were rated False, which according to PolitiFact means "The statement is not accurate." Five received a "Pants on Fire" rating, which PolitiFact says means "The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim." The other two were each dubbed "Lie of the Year" by PolitiFact.

The first flaw I want to point out in Stewart's use of PolitiFact to assail FOX News's credibility (or whatever he was trying to do) has less to do with PolitiFact's credibility and more to do with Stewart's deceptive use of their analyses. Many of the "lies" Stewart attributed to FOX News were actually not made by FOX, or at least not just by FOX, according to PolitiFact. Let's start with one of those two "Lie of the Year" awardees.

In a December 16th, 2010, announcement, PolitiFact Editor Bill Adair and reporter/researcher Angie Drobnic Holan published the following:

PolitiFact editors and reporters have chosen "government takeover of health
care" as the 2010 Lie of the Year. Uttered by dozens of politicians and pundits,
it played an important role in shaping public opinion about the health care plan
and was a significant factor in the Democrats' shellacking in the November
elections.

Jon Stewart not only listed as one of the "false statements" made by FOX, he said, "That one was all over FOX. They were runnin' wild on that one!"

Sure they were, Jon, sure they were. However, nowhere in the extensive "Lie of the Year" analysis (which you can read in full here) did PolitiFact mention FOX News or even the FOX Network. Adair and Holan did, however, take care to point out specific instances in which the "lie" was uttered elsewhere in the press:

The phrase proliferated in the media even after Democrats dropped the public option. In 2010 alone, "government takeover” was mentioned 28 times in the Washington Post, 77 times in Politico and 79 times on CNN. A review of TV transcripts showed "government takeover" was primarily used as a catchy sound
bite, not for discussions of policy details.

In most transcripts we examined, Republican leaders used the phrase without being challenged by interviewers. For example, during Boehner's Jan. 31 appearance on Meet the Press, Boehner said it five times. But not once was he challenged about it.

PolitiFact also published items attributing the "government takeover” claim to Rep. Robert Hurt (R-Va.), Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch (R), the Republican Party of Florida and Rep. C.W. "Bill" Young (R-Fla.), but I couldn't find a single thing on the web site attributing such a statement to FOX News.

That's just one example. Others require an even more complicated explanation. Consider FOX News contributor and occassioal O'Reilly Factor guest host Laura Ingraham’s remarks on the May 12, 2011, edition of the Factor. Discussing a speech given earlier that day by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, in which he discussed the historic reform of his state's health care system that has caused him so much grief on the campaign trail, Ingraham said, "Look, I like Mitt Romney. I think he's a really smart guy, and I think he would be a good president. ... On this, I don't get it, though, Bill. I mean, costs have gone up. It's wildly unpopular."

PolitiFact rated Ingraham’s statement False. Actually, the statement it rated "false" was actually not uttered by Laura Ingraham. It was what the site's editors/writers interpreted Ingraham as saying. The item Jon referenced on his program is published on the site under the heading, "Laura Ingraham says Massachusetts health plan is 'wildly unpopular'". On that page, you'll also find that the "claim" PolitiFact actually fact-checked was "The Massachusetts health care plan is 'wildly unpopular' among state residents."

So, before doing its analysis, PolitiFact made two assumptions about Ingraham's statement: (1) that she was referring specifically to the "Massachusetts health care plan," and (2) that she was saying it is (not was) is "wildly unpopular" among state residents. (So, I guess that's actually three assumptions.) The first may be fairly inferred, given context and the subject matter of their conversation, but I personally think it's a bridge too far to declare that Ingraham was only referring to Romneycare's popularity among Bay Staters. Even if that is what she meant, though, PolitiFact had no way of knowing what she was thinking. The entire analysis should have been disregarded.

That brings me to PolitiFact's 2009 Lie of the Year: "Death panels."

Some of you gramatically astute folks probably seized on the obvious: "Death panels" is not a statement. Actually, the original "statement" that PolitiFact rated was, like the thing about Romneycare being "wildly unpopular" among state residents, a mutation of what someone actually said. Back in August of 2009, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin posted the following on her Facebook page:

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's ‘death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care.

The statement that PolitiFact rated "Pants on Fire!" read as follows:

Seniors and the disabled "will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care."

Now, it's plainly obvious that Palin was not making a definitive accusation about any part of the Democrats' health care reform bill, but the use of the phrase "death panel" - something ostinsibly absent from the American lexicon prior to Palin's notorious post - became commonplace in the health care debate that continued through the end of the year. HOWEVER, attributing the origin of the phrase to FOX News was way out of line. Palin was not hired by FOX News until January of 2010, according to the network, so even if she did unequivocally assert that "death panels" were part of the Democrats' "nationalized health care plan," the claim still would not have originated with FOX. Again, this is not an error on PolitiFact's part; it's Stewart's misuse of PolitiFact's analysis.

I'll do one more for now, just because I'm getting tired. PolitiFact rated this statement, which it attributed to FOX News legal vixen Kimberly Guilfoyle, false:

If you log into the government's Cash for Clunkers web site (cars.gov) from your home computer, [then] the government can "seize all of your personal and private" information, and track your computer activity.

As PolitiFact acknowledges, what Guilfoyle actually said was: "They are jumping right inside you, seizing all of your personal and private information, (crosstalk) and it's absolutely legal. . . ." Guilfoyle was talking to Glenn Beck on his FOX News show. When Beck pulled up the Cars.gov web site on his computer, he told his viewers, "I go in and I say, 'I want to turn in my clunker.' The dealer goes to Cars.gov, and then they hit 'submit transaction.' Here it says 'Privacy Act and Security Statement,' and it's like, oh, it's the Privacy Act of 1974. Whatever. I agree." Beck then read the warning statement that appeared out loud. PolitiFact verified the language that appeared and included it in the post dubbing Guilfoyle's statement a falsehood:

"This application provides access to the DOT CARS system. When logged on to the
CARS system, your computer is considered a federal computer system and it is
property of the United States Government. Any or all uses of this system and all
files on this system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited,
inspected, and disclosed to authorized CARS, DOT, and law enforcement personnel, as well as authorized officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign."

Despite acknowledging the context of Guilfoyle's words and her clear reliance on the language that appeared on the Cash for Clunkers web site, PolitiFact rated her "claim" false because, they say, "we think anyone who saw the July 31 program — in which she claimed 'seriously, they can get all your information' — would be left with the clear impression that anyone who logged into the cars.gov site was opening their computer to Big Brother. And that's False." (BTW, Jon Stewart got the mangled version of Guilfoyle's claim that PolitiFact fact-checked wrong. On his program, he listed the statement as "Cash for Clunkers will give government complete access to your home computer." Now that claim would be false, but Jon Stewart's allegation that such a statement was ever made by anyone at FOX News deserves a "Pants on Fire" rating.)

So, it seems Jon Stewart owes FOX News another apology. He may also want to apologize to PolitiFact for trying to use their work in an attempt to ridicule/discredit one of the few reputable news organizations left in this world.

I'll have more to say on this later, but tomorrow is July 4th, and I've got some big plans. Also, some idiot just set off a bunch of fireworks somewhere near my house, and now my dogs won't leave me alone, which makes it hard for me to get any work done.

The Jon Stewart/FOX News Tit-for-Tat That Just Won't End

It's been nine days since diminuitive Jewish comedian Jon Stewart appeared on FOX News Sunday w/ Chris Wallace. If you haven't seen the whole interview, then I highly recommend you watch it here.
As much as FOX News hyped this interview, the pre-interview hype was nothing compared to the flurry of analysis that permeated the blogoshpere and TV airwaves, especially on cable, in the immediate aftermath. I would very much like to do a play-by-play breakdown of every pertinent segment on FOX News and The Daily Show since the interview, but that would be far too time-consuming to hold most people's attention. Instead, suffice it to say that, on the day after the interview aired, Stewart led his program with it. Apparently, he felt that the lead take-away from the interview was Chris Wallace's "admission" of FOX News's "bias." Stewart played a clip from the interview in which he asked Wallace if he thought "that FOX News is exactly the ideological equivalent of NBC News," and Chris responded that he thought FOX News was "the counterweight," saying, "I think that they have a liberal agenda, and I think we tell the other side of the story, but, since this is my show, I'm asking the questions."
In a hypertechnical and not-at-all funny critique of Wallace, Stewart tried to argue that by saying that FOX News tells "the other side of the story," C.W. had implicitly confessed that FOX News tells only one side of the story. According to Jon, "FOX News isn't fair and balanced. It's balancing the system, man!"
I should pause for a moment here and reveal a little bit about where I'm coming from. I started watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report at almost exactly the same time that I started watching FOX News regularly (late 2006). When I want to get the left-wing viewpoint, I prefer Stewart and Colbert to MSNBC (because they're not as visceral and vitriolic) and CNN (because they're more interesting). Frankly, I think Stewart is really funny when he wants to be, but like a lot of comedians, he falls flat when he lets his ideology infect his humor. He has a very creative staff of writers; the only cheap shot I'll take at him is that I think he's more dependent on his writers than Colbert, but I could be wrong. (He did all right during the writers' strike of '07-'08.)
As for FOX, I personally do not believe that FOX News has a right-wing bias, and no sane person can believe that it's a propaganda outfit (like MSNBC). However, I do think it would be good if FOX News had one hour-long opinion/news analysis program hosted by a left-winger. (Juan Williams occasionally hosting The O'Reilly Factor doesn't count.) I must also admit that I don't mind MSNBC operating as a propaganda network; I don't even mind its anchors' stubborn and at times laughable insistence that they work for a serious news organization. I watch MSNBC periodically for much the same reason(s) that people like to go to the zoo and watch lesser-evolved primates hurl their feces at one another.
Now, then, back to Stewart's latest pique with FNC. After the interview and Stewart's subsequent send-up, PolitiFact got involved. For those of you who aren't familiar with this organization, it's a non-partisan web site known for its "Truth-O-Meter"®, which it uses to rate the accuracy of political claims. PolitiFact National is run by editors and reporters from the St. Petersburg Times, a newspaper I read whenever I'm in St. Petersburg. The PolitiFact state sites are run by news organizations that have partnered with the Times. Their purported mission is "sorting out the truth in politics." I'm not prepared to assert that the site has a political bias, but several of its ratings have given me reason to doubt its credibility. (For example, on the June 26, 2011, edition of ABC’s This Week with Christiane Amanpour, Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) said that Democrats "do not want to raise anybody's tax rates. That's never been on the table." PolitiFact rated Clyburn's blatantly false claim "Barely True," which, according to the Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter, means "an element of truth mixed with a lot of misinformation." Yet, this is the same rating it gave Congresswoman Michele Bachmann's demonstrably true claim that, "under Barack Obama, the last two years, the number of federal limousines for bureaucrats has increased 73 percent.") See, in his interview on FOX News Sunday, Jon stated emphatically that "FOX viewers" are "the most consistently misinformed media viewers," according to "every poll." PolitiFact rated Stewart's claim "False." Then, on last Tuesday's Daily Show, Jon Stewart accepted PolitiFact's "False" verdict and said, "I defer to their judgment, and I apologize for my mistake. To not do so would be irresponsible, and if I were to continue to [bla bla bla]." But alas, he just couldn't let it go. Stewart needed some sour grapes to wash the taste of crow out of his mouth, so he proceeded to fire off what he dubbed a "21-Lie Salute" to FOX News, rattling off a long list of claims seen/made on/by FOX News that received a "False" rating or worse. I spotted several issues with the items Stewart featured on his show, so I went to the PolitiFact web site to see how they explained their various classifications of what seemed to me to be either at least partially true statements or opinions that can't technically be assigned a truth value. There's a lot of material to go over, so I'll publish my criticism in a separate piece.
Anywho, Chris Wallace closed out his show this past Sunday by calling attention to Stewart's specious spin on his remark about telling "the other side of the story." Predictably, he told his viewers that "I wish I had said, 'the full story.'" (Stewart interpreted this as Wallace saying, "I accidentally told the truth and wish I could take it back.") He then proceeded to give a specific example of how FOX News tells both sides of the story when other networks don't, citing FOX News's coverage of the astonishingly poor response of the federal, state and local governments to the devastated Mississippi River Delta region in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. While the mainstream media was busy highlighting how FEMA dropped the ball (in what I'm sure was a bona fide attempt at hard-hitting journalism and not at all a cynical hit job on the Bush Administration), FOX News made sure its viewers were informed about who all bore responsibility for the abysmal response, including the bumbling mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin (D), and the administration of Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Stewart did not seem to care for that. The following night on The Daily Show, he played a few short clips of Wallace's comments and supplemented them with his own brand of derisive mockery. He tried to somehow bolster his by now thoroughly discredited claims that FOX News is not "fair & balanced" by playing a clip of William LaJeunesse reporting on the "Operation Fast and Furious" fiasco. Apparently, Jon took issue with LaJeunesse's remark that some say the operation was an innocent mistake. "Others believe it was allowed to happen to justify tougher gun laws in the U.S." Jon cut the clip off right after that last syllable. He was very excited. "Did you see that?" he exclaimed with childish delight. "He just threw it right in there. President Obama is either incompetent, making an innocent mistake, or the architect of an evil conspiracy to wreak violent carnage in Mexico as a way to take away Americans' guns." Flashing a cheesy grin, he added, "You know, both sides of the story." Then, feigning exasperation, he said, "Who said that America was involved in the type of conspiracy that, if true, could ultimately lead to the impeachment of a president? Who said it? [dumb voice] Others."
Yes, Jon, “others,” like NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre. (Seriously, who told you to use that as an example? Do you know how easy it was for me to find someone who suggested that this could be part of an sinister plot by the Obama Administration to push a political agenda? I just typed "ATF agent fired" into a search engine. I wasn't even looking for someone who made that claim; I was just trying to get the name of the operation right. This was one of the first videos that popped up!)
Stewart took some more shots at Wallace and FOX News in general, but at this point, I'm actually feeling sorry for the little guy (despite him having nearly everything I want out of life but haven't attained yet, viz. a great job, his own TV show, an adoring fan base, a wife & kids). So, I'll close this out with his parting shot at the man he actually called "a friend of mine" as he insulted the man's employer. Said Stewart, "you know what this whole victim thing makes FOX? Well, perhaps this term a friend of mine used once to describe our current presidential administration is most apt."
Cut to: clip of Wallace telling Bill O'Reilly, "They are the biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with in my 30 years in Washington."
Tomorrow: the back-and-forth continues as Bernie Goldberg calls Jon Stewart a racist, and Stewart ... well, he does something to himself "with his own mouth." That's all I'll tell you for now. I'll also have some boring commentary on economics or some crap.