When compiling the data for this Politi-Score analysis through PolitiFact, I found that the “national” rulings page did not include those of the states. Therefore I had to go through each of the states’ rulings as well (which took a while!). I decided to include state affiliation in the data compilation because I wondered what the “political leanings” (and its affect on the rulings) of these other newspapers were as compared to the St. Petersburg Times, which is often accused of liberal bias by its detractors on the Facebook page.
To get a feel on their political leanings, I looked at who they recently endorsed politically, particularly for president in the last two election cycles. The following table shows the results: some blue (Democrat), one red (Republican), and some mixed (purple).
| Location | Newpaper(s) | Endorsements |
| National | St. Petersburg Times | Obama (08); Kerry (04) |
| Florida | St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald | Obama (08); Kerry (04); Miami Herald endorsed Marco Rubio (R) for Senate & Sink (D) for Gov. (10) |
| Georgia | Atlanta Journal-Constitution | Obama (08); Kerry (04) |
| Ohio | Cleveland Plain Dealer | Obama (08); no one endorsed 2004; Kasich (R ) for Gov. (10) |
| Oregon | The Oregonian | Obama (08); Kerry (04) |
| Rhode Island | Providence Journal | Obama (08); Bush (04) |
| Texas | Austin American-Statesman | Obama (08); Bush (04) |
| Virginia | Richmond Times Dispatch | McCain (08); Bush (04) |
| Wisconsin | Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel | Obama (08); no one endorsed 2004; Walker (R ) for gov. and Feingold (D) for Senate (10) |
These colors will reflect in the final numbers (see below), and the results were very, very interesting when taken into account because it makes a perceptibly compelling case of bias, if not for the fact that further study is required, and that there needs to be more data in the form of the rulings. For example, PolitiFact Virginia appears to be decidedly "red", and its Politi-Score favored Republicans as well; but it only had 17 rulings for analysis. PolitiFact Texas, designated “purple” because of its mixed endorsements, also favored Republicans. The most “even-handed” state was “purple” Wisconsin with the Democrats slightly edging out the Republicans.
Items of note: I decided to go with the “wide measure” Politi-Score here in lieu of the grade-like system I began with, in order to accentuate the results. The number of rulings by party for each state were very even (as if by design?). While independent candidates or groups had rulings, these are not included in these results (in particular, Charlie Crist). There was a total of 22 rulings not classified Democrat or Republican.
What does this tell us? At first glance, it appears bias might exist, with a Republican-endorsing publication (PF Virginia) appearing to give “truthier” rulings to Republicans, while the Democratic-endorsing publications (PF’s National, Florida, Georgia and Oregon) appearing to give “truthier” rulings to Democrats; and the “mixed” publications having the smallest variation in Politi-Score between Democrats and Republicans. But these conclusions are entirely premature, as further data analysis needs to be done. There could be many other valid reasons for these ruling results. Since the election has ended the political rhetoric should be less adversarial and “normalized” (maybe that’s not quite the right word), another data test (sampling the period in total between November 1, 2010 and January 1, 2011) such as this one needs to be done for comparative purposes. Also, if time allows me, I am going to try to do a more complete list of rulings than I originally did in August, at year-end 2010. This would be the aggregate list of rulings that PolitiFact has on its “People” page.
In the mean time, I noticed a Facebook thread the other day with this post by another commenter, Vic Pilkington, who seems to be trying to crunch the numbers of these PolitiFact rulings as well:
Did you know that 90% of the Politifact Pants-on-Fire and False statements come from the Right. It’s true, count them!
I can answer that question quite specifically for Campaign 2010, for the period September 1 through November 1. Yes, I did count them....and that is not true, on both counts of individual politicians and of organizations, blogs and e-mails. For all rulings False or Pants on Fire during that period (attributed to Democrats or Republicans), it was 58% Republicans, 42% Democrats. For orgs, blogs and e-mails, it was 64% Republicans, 36% Democrats. Since it appears the “lying” gets less off-campaign (according to my other studies), this may be the worst it would get. So Vic gets a “False” on my Truthometer. Sorry.
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| Perhaps just barely, but the state partnerships may solve some of that. |
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