The new PolitiFact (PF) app for mobile devices supposedly has a feature which shows the Truth Index by subject or topic. I started keeping track of the subject or topic in the first quarter of 2011, and published the overall Politi-scores, just to see what subject was being misrepresented the most. I’m assuming that PolitiFact is doing it this way as well; so now I’m going to take it one step further here.
To begin as in my previous post from April, here is the updated breakdown of subjects in a pie chart for the first half of 2011. I decided to do the Top 15, in order to make the chart less confusing.
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Instead of showing “The Most Lied-About Subjects by Politicians” as I did before, I’m going to make another division: “The Most Lied-About Subjects by Political Party.” I decided to do the Top Ten subjects, since making this division would make it the Top Twenty since I’m reporting by party. Here they are top "lies" to the most truthful: Healthcare makes it to the top again, only this time it’s when Republicans are talking about it. The Democrats made Labor/Unions the second biggest lie, even topping out the Republicans.
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| The Truth Index base value is zero for Half True, as is No. 16 Education by Democrats. |
PolitiFact’s Truth Index by subject on its mobile app may have one important superior feature to mine in that (I’m assuming) the index is calculated as a percent of ALL PolitiFact rulings since they began doing them, which would be 3,774. Mine is only based on 986, the number of rulings so far in 2011. In addition, many of the rulings had multiple subjects (as tags) so it’s possible their numbers are based on the total number of subjects assigned rather than rulings…which would create some overlap if you’re doing a Truth Index, I’d think. It seems to me doing it this way would disconnect it from the rulings.
Next up is an update on individual rulings using the Truth Index.
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