Response: “Oral.”
So many things we say are subject to interpretation, and in a way, my conservative counterpart’s entire blog relies the most heavily on that: how PolitiFact (PF), interprets a statement it selects for fact-checking, compared to how he believes it should be interpreted. He even goes so far as to claim the statement they checked was never even made, as he does in this PolitiFact ruling on a statement Laura Ingraham made on the Bill O’Reilly Show, where she frequently appears and usually hosts on Friday evenings. Bryan White’s conclusion as to the misinterpretation:
PolitiFact assumed Ingraham was talking about the program's popularity in Massachusetts. But that doesn't fit the context. Romney's concern is RomneyCare's popularity with Republican primary voters. If Romney doesn't win the Republican nomination then he has no realistic shot at the presidency, period.
Not only did PolitiFact fail to figure that out from the context, PolitiFact has failed to respond to the call to revisit the issue.
It isn't a close[d] issue. Does the need to protect the brand from admissions of error so easily supersede the desire to tell the truth? Or is ideological bias the better explanation for the reluctance to correct or clarify?
(Incidentally, PolitiFact does make corrections to its rulings despite Bryan’s claims of “the need to protect the brand from admissions of error.”)
Here’s Bryan White’s letter to Bill Adair and Lou Jacobson, imploring them to consider his interpretation as the only correct one, and theirs as a “failure”:
Dear Misters Adair and Jacobson,
The story on Laura Ingraham published on May 16 contains a substantial hole and a likely error.
The hole comes from the story's failure to provide context or background material sufficient to judge the context of Ingraham's statement. In other words, there is absolutely nothing in the quotation of Ingraham that would indicate she was talking about RomneyCare's popularity in Massachusetts. As such the presentation of the story conflicts with PolitiFact's aim of providing readers the tools to determine whether to agree with the "Truth-O-Meter" rating or not…
I say “failure” because Bryan uses this word repeatedly. It communicates negligence, it is intended to humiliate. So, what exactly did Ingraham say? Here it is straight from Bryan White’s own blog:
INGRAHAM: Well, I was one of the pundits who told him to just nix the whole Romney care idea in Massachusetts. So I guess I'm one of the people he is talking about.
Look, I like Mitt Romney. I think he's a really smart guy and I think he would be a good president. I think a lot of the people who might be running would be a good president.
On this, I don't get it though Bill. I mean costs have gone up. It's wildly unpopular.
In terms of English usage, in terms of immediate context, in legal terms, “It’s” can only mean a reference to the first sentence. But Bryan wants us to disregard the rules of English and legal precedent, and accept his interpretation by means of the outlying context, another way of saying his explanation is a s-t-r-e-t-c-h at best.
(1) Ingraham said she was one of the pundits who told Romney to just nix the whole "Romney-care" idea in Massachusetts. In Massachusetts. In Massachusetts.
(2) Ingraham then said “costs have gone up” just prior to saying “it’s wildly unpopular.” They have not had a chance to “go up” in "Obama-care" yet, so she only could have been referring to "Romney-care" in Massachusetts. In Massachusetts. In Massachusetts.
(3) Ingraham is a fairly knowledgable speaker. Yes, everyone knows "Romney-care" is wildly unpopular with potential diehard Republican primary voters. Does she need to repeat the extremely obvious? It would seem to me her statement would be intended to show that the unpopularity extends beyond Republican primary voters, to those who actually use "Romney-care". Who are those who live in Massachusetts. In Massachusetts. In Massachusetts.
Bryan’s blog seems to be about finding seemingly plausible, reasonable, Republican-favorable alternative explanations for PolitiFact’s rulings, and then asserting that his explanation is the only acceptable one and as such is superior to whatever conclusion has been reached by PolitiFact.
It's important to note how subtle PolitiFact's tomfoolery is. In this case, simply adding two words ("in Massachusetts") changes the entire standard used to rate Ingraham's statement. (Actually PolitiFact used four-"in the Bay State"). Sleights-of-hand like this give PolitiFact an appearance of honest and authoritative fact checking when in reality they're creating a statement out of thin air. It's unlikely a casual reader would catch these additional words that incorrectly frame Ingraham's comment. They've created an amazingly lifelike straw man.
Amazingly lifelike, eh?
“Deff” slathers the feckless frosting on Bryan’s cupcakes of condescension. He also implies PolitiFact is guilty of misconduct by treachery, and that this ruling was a deliberate “sleight of hand” to put conservative Ingraham on PolitiFact’s Liar List. Bryan and “Deff” seem to have become projection run amok. Bryan and “Deff”, the Hans and Franz of PolitiFact Detractors, twist logic to their favor in their blogs, twist the letters of their first names (well, “Deff Jeff” does), therefore PolitiFact must be doing it too.
You’d also think that others might catch on to Bryan’s explanation. An examination of the commentary thread at PolitiFact’s Facebook site did not show anyone who had contested PolitiFact’s ruling with reasoning similar to Bryan’s; as usual, he was the ONLY one who could dream up something like this. And despite repeated Googling and research, I could not find any denunciation of PolitiFact’s ruling by Ingraham herself or any of her supporters. You’d think she’d be keen to clarify such an obvious error as pointed out by Bryan, that is, if there was one; but there’s nary a word.
Perhaps that’s why PolitiFact has ignored Bryan’s inquiries.
The best comment , “liked” by six people, which accurately sums up Bryan’s blog, was probably this one by J. Mark Barfield:
This is exactly why the purveyors of misinformation try to discredit PolitiFact and similar independent verification resources... annotated resources. It kinda gets in the way of their carefully calculated BS.
Thank you, Mark.
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