Sidebar: Bludgeoned by Essay

On Saturday, October 16, PolitiFact posted a TV video being shown by PolitiFact Rhode Island on its Facebook page. The video shows Tim Murphy, the Editor, who said:

“Campaign promises, political attacks—how many times have you heard a politician make a statement and wonder, is that really true? The Providence Journal’s PolitiFact Rhode Island Team will help you find the truth in politics: researching, going to the original sources of claims, and when we are finished, you will know if the political statement is True, Half True, or Positively Ridiculous Pants on Fire. On the record fact-checking from the Providence Journal’s PolitiFact Rhode Island team, see us on line at projo-politifact.com.”

The commentary which followed was some of the best I’ve seen, and of course, there was Bryan White dominating the thread. I put in a few “likes” in (as in the title of this post, from a comment by Cheryl Layos), but this post by him really caught my attention:

@ Joan Rutherford Plamp, who wrote:**I don't see a "liberal slant".** What would you expect to see if PolitiFact did have a liberal slant? What if instead of calling it totally objectively they called it totally objectively half the time and other than that 3 times they gave Dems a break on the facts and 2 times they gave Republicans a break on the facts. Would you notice? (Sat., Oct. 16, at 12:29 p.m.)

A few minutes later he followed up:

“To clarify, 5 times out of 10 objectively down the middle. 2 times favoring GOP. 3 times favoring DP. ...Would you see it?” (Sat., Oct. 16, at 12:31 p.m.)

My analysis (Politi-Score) of over 1,000 PolitiFact rulings shows an *8-point* (depending on the quantification) advantage to the Democrats on the PolitiFact Truthometer. Politi-Score is not the same as what Bryan is proposing; it just takes the rulings and applies a number to them. There's no further analysis than that.  Would any person prefer to hear that over what Bryan was compelled to “clarify” above? Bryan could average it out to say the Democrats have a 10-point advantage over the Republicans. But it means nothing, because one could easily argue that there is no advantage because most everyone would have to agree that the *calls* by PolitiFact are really favorable to the Democrats or not favorable to Republicans, and that it's a fair and truly objective comparison.

I’m sure he would be very clear about whatever objective measures he uses, but I’m not sure it would work. If what Bryan commented is what he is trying to do in a project, I say, this would be extremely difficult to accomplish, if not impossible. A post I just blogged of an analysis on comments made by Jeff Dyberg proves that: there is a massive amount of subjectivity to get past. If you go back and read the complete ruling, the problems with measuring objectivity become obvious. And Bryan’s own bias gets in the way as well, as did Jeff’s (and my own!) .

I can understand what Bryan may be trying to accomplish, but I have grave doubts it is workable.