Sidebar: PolitiFact's Light Bulb Mania

How Many PF Writers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Answer: Too many, but generally once a month by either Robert Farley or W. Gardner Selby.

While it can’t really be proven PolitiFact (PF) is liberally biased (although some people are convinced of it), there are some things they do which don’t help them. It may be easy to do the rulings on this subject because it is fairly straight forward, cut and dry, or that is to say, the light is on or it’s off. PolitiFact has done nine rulings (as far as I can determine) since November on the subject of light bulbs, about the phasing out of incandescents beginning in 2012 due to a law congress enacted in 2007.

What’s more is that all nine rulings were on Republicans/Conservatives, and if you scored them with the PolitiFact Truth Index, the result is a negative 83.33, which puts light bulbs well above the top-rated “least truthful” subject on the Truth Index, which is Republicans on healthcare/Medicare at a negative 47.22. Light bulbs did not make it to the list because they were classified under the subject Energy, which was actually in 11th place based on the number of rulings and so just missed my list as I only did the top ten subjects. A light bulb Truth Index would look like this:

No Trues or Mostly Trues puts light bulbs way down the dark side.

Two of the rulings were just too much alike, almost looking like duplicates, done the same day by the same writer (Robert Farley). One ruling was a chain e-mail from the conservative AmeriPAC: (emphasis added)

The letter, circulated by AmeriPAC, a political action committee that largely supports conservative Republican candidates, claims President Barack Obama is "banning" incandescent light bulbs in favor of compact fluorescent lighting.

The other was AmeriPAC itself: (emphasis added)

"The Democrats have already voted to BAN our conventional lights bulbs (that you and I use even today!) in favor of DANGEROUS fluorescent light bulbs," writes Alan Gottlieb, chairman of AmeriPAC, a political action committee that largely supports conservative Republican candidates.

If you ask me, there was no need to repeat the obvious: yes, the conservative AmeriPAC likes to use the light bulb analogy to illustrate government over reach. While Farley does make some distinctions, these two rulings are really too closely related to be separated.

Factcheck.org has done but one review with regard to light bulbs in response to a reader question. Although its listed sources include Robert Farley’s PolitiFact piece, it has not said this group or that person has made a statement in regard to incandescent light bulbs going to fluorescent which was false or otherwise misleading.  This was by far a more objective and less "biased" way to approach the subject instead of focusing on every other Republican that spoke about it.

No political affiliation for Mike Stenhouse.

Then there's the somewhat false impression it's not all Republicans just because of how PF has its "personalities" listings set up.  The most recent PolitiFact “light bulb ruling” was on Mike Stenhouse: his profile lists him as “Newsmaker from Rhode Island” as the Executive Director of OSPRI, the Ocean State Policy Research Institute, described in Wikipedia as “a Rhode Island-based think tank… dedicated to ‘crafting sound public policy based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, and traditional American values.’” Its founder is known as a Libertarian. So although PolitiFact lists him with no affiliation, I think it is safe to say that Mike Stenhouse is not a liberal or Democrat.  In addition, the chain e-mail mentioned earlier gets congregated with all other chain e-mails (instead of AmeriPAC itself) which have no given affiliation….so it gives the appearance that we have two of nine light bulb rulings which are actually by Conservatives labeled and classified without an affiliation.

Doing a light bulb ruling on average of once a month on a Republican/Conservative (which almost guarantees a negative ruling, as this appears to have become a talking point) is going a bit over board. I looked at this initially in 2010 on a Rick Perry ruling in my Lil White Lies, and don’t plan to do it again. From the “bias” aspect, a quick calculation just taking the seven rulings on light bulbs so far this year out of the Republican Truth Index gives them a gain of almost one point (negative 22.74 to negative 21.82), because every light bulb ruling has been Half True or less and so skews the index more out of proportion on the down side. So PolitiFact, please see the light on this one and turn it off.