At PolitiFact (PF), a ruling of Barely True means that “The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.” I do not like the words “Barely True” because the word True is somewhat misleading as it conveys the “True” or truth of the ruling more strongly than the False, even though it's more "False" than "True". To see how stressing the "False" is more in line with the ruling, here's a short review of four of PolitiFact's Barely True rulings done during the first quarter of 2011.
Promises, promises. Michele Bachmann, Republican, in her response to Obama’s state of the union address, said “The White House promised us that all the spending would keep unemployment under 8 percent."
Some of this was repeated verbatim for another PolitiFact fact-check in February by PF Virginia on George Allen, former Virginia Senator.
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My conservative counterpart, who broke from his usual harsh patterns and gave PF writer Robert Farley and Editor Martha Hamilton a grade of C on the Bachmann ruling, insisted that it was hypocritical that this was not included on the Obameter as a “promise”.
I think I agree with the sense of the final finding. Bachmann's statement had a basis in fact but tended to mislead without additional explanation. The final ruling surprised me a bit considering the content of the story. PolitiFact often labels statements with a foundation in the truth "False" rather than "Barely True."
PolitiFact deserves the most pointed criticism for its flirtation with hypocrisy in identifying campaign "promises" using methods akin to those that helped identify this "promise" from the White House.
As an example, while PF claims it could not find where Obama specifically stated he would reduce national unemployment to 8% through the stimulus, other politicians like Florida’s new governor Rick Scott actually repeatedly spoke of promising “700,000 jobs in 7 years” for Floridians. From a debate in July, 2010:
I've created jobs in the private sector. As governor, my 7-step plan will create 700,000 in 7 years.
And PolitiFact checked out his plan, giving him a Mostly True for being about 6% off the 700,000 number, which is in keeping with its “politi-math.” PF Florida now includes it as a promise “in the works” on the “Scott-o-meter.” Obama never said it this explicitly; Bryan White relies on the “implication” from a report from one of Obama’s economic advisors. PolitiFact National never included it as a promise on the Obameter because he never said it and it was not part of his statement of policy, which makes up a lot of the Obameter. In other words, this is a rather disingenuous attempt to fault PolitiFact for not including an implicit, imprecise promise not directly made by Obama on the Obameter. So yes, I’m agreeing with Bryan White here: Bachmann's statement had a basis in fact but tended to mislead without additional explanation. So….she’s mostly false.
School’s...out....of Money. Alan Grayson, Democrat and former congressman representing Florida, “Says Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s cuts to education are the same as his proposed corporate income tax rate reduction.”
Writer Alan Sharockman’s conclusion:
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It doesn’t take an Ivy League mathematics degree to figure out that the numbers don’t begin to line up the way Grayson suggests. The tax cuts represent $460 million, which is less than one third of the $1.7 billion education cut.
This seems to be a Democratic talking point as exemplified in the listing (at right) I've seen passed around Liberal circles these days. The give-aways to corporations or the wealthy by tax cuts is the equivalent in dollars to cutting a government program or other cuts to government assistance. While some of them may in fact be equivalencies, there are some, such as the one in this fact-check, that are not equivalent, upon (PolitiFact's) closer examination. So…Grayson’s mostly false on this.
Float My Boat. Republican John Thrasher, Florida state senator, was rated Barely True for his statement that “… taxpayer resources are being used ‘to facilitate private political agendas’ through automatic payroll deduction of union dues." Actually, PF was investigating the “government costs of processing union dues collection.” Now, I should have written this one up for Grading PolitiFact Liberal Style…because this is more of a definite False or even a Pants on Fire.
PF’s conclusion was “Whatever the state spends on processing payroll deductions, it is so small no one can quantify it” to arrive at the Barely True ruling. But there was something that was ignored, by both PolitiFact and by any Republican who is against this automated process, which very clearly shows the deceitfulness of this claim: FLOAT. “Float” is defined as “… is the time between when you authorize a bank to disperse funds from your bank account and when it actually leaves your account. “ The fact is, because of this float, most businesses love making payroll deductions when they can do so, because they have those funds available (instead of paying them out to employees) in their cash accounts, until the time they are required to deposit them in the union’s accounts. Say for example, the dues are deducted from payroll checks on the Friday before the upcoming Holiday, Memorial Day. So, from that Friday until at least the following Tuesday, they have those union dues in their account by virtue of the reduced payroll, and they can earn interest on that money. For large companies, that can add up to quite a bit.
If you’ve ever sold something on PayPal through eBay, you know you have to wait a few days before you can actually collect the funds for the item you sold. And you don’t think they can’t pay you immediately? Because they can, they not only make money by charging a fee for the service, but they make money while you wait from the “float.”
Whatever is earned on this float far surpasses the very minimal cost to initially set up the deduction, and it is a continual cash flow as well. Thrasher is more interested in busting the unions. The costs of setting up the deduction are irrelevant. More than Mostly False, this is the definition of disingenuous.
We built this City. According to PolitiFact Virginia in this ruling from February, Democrat “Richmond Mayor Dwight Jones says city has $981 million in active development projects.” Here’s one more that may deserve a down grade on my Grading PolitiFact Liberal Style meter. Writer Jacob Geiger arrives at his Barely True as follows:
When completed works are excluded, the number of current or planned development deals falls to $732.3 million, 25.4 percent less than what the mayor cited. And another project, the $26.6 million Manchester on the James, is dormant.
No doubt, Richmond has been developing in recent years and several major projects were successfully completed in 2010. But the mayor’s number is not right; it paints a better picture than what exists. Therefore we rate the Jones’ claim Barely True.
My review of Mostly True rulings found that in numerical terms a ruling could be as much as 15% off as compared to the computed 25.4% (even with completed works excluded). Jones’ underlying argument is “we have a lot of planned development in Richmond” so there is no intent to deceive. As far as “misleading” Geiger did not compare Richmond’s planned development with any other cities which might have proved useful for comparative purposes.
I find more similarities with this ruling to those rulings I looked at previously which qualified for “Mostly True” and “Half True”. I’m not sure how writer Geiger shoehorned it into the category of almost false or mostly false or “Barely True.” “The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context” seems much more congruous. The context was fairly accurate as was the underlying argument; the numbers could be ascertained (unlike some Half True statements) and Jones’ office did acknowledge that they used completed projects in his number.
Barely True rulings appear to be less of puzzlers than the Half Trues as to their inconsistencies, but they are still in that camp of other more ambiguous fact-checker categories, such as described with Snopes:
...the Snopes rating key…would have been more useful because it has an “Undetermined” rating (Yellow bullet: "available evidence is too contradictory or insufficient to establish either True or False") as well as “Multiple Truths" (Multiple red/green bullets: "a mixture of truth and falsehood").
…Or Minnesota Public Radio’s Polimeter, which might have rated these Barely True claims a more honest yet ambiguous “Inconclusive”—with the exception of John Thrasher’s statement about the cost of union deductions, which should be Misleading or False. IMHO.
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