It’s been proven in my blog to some degree that any sort of bias by PolitiFact (PF) in its rulings can’t be proven through “a preponderance of anecdotal evidence.” Because (1) some of that preponderance is clearly arguable, as I have shown in Lil White Lies, and (2) the evidence of bias can go both ways, as I have shown in Grading PF Liberal Style, as well as in my Guide to PF Detractors, which lists those alleging PF of bias on both sides of the aisle.
In my many searches for items to add to my Guide to PF Detractors, I occasionally look at comments, to see if someone has anything original to say (generally it’s run of the mill). Here were two, however, that really offer some different approaches to determine bias by PolitiFact.
They come from an article by David Brauer at MinnPost.com who was critiquing Bill Adair’s response to Eric Ostermeier’s study in which he suggests that PolitiFact writers may be using “selection bias” in choosing statements for review. (I reviewed Ostermeier’s numbers, comparing them to mine, and found that his Republican “negatives” were somewhat higher in his database of 512 rulings as compared to my database of 1,330 rulings on current and former office-holders.)
Here’s the first one written by Mark Gisleson: (emphasis added)
Politifact isn't biased by party, they're biased in an establishment way. That's why Bachmann does badly by them, but so do people like Alan Grayson who they often parsed to death.
They also cannot differentiate between politicians who skillfully dissemble, as opposed to politicians who equivocate themselves into gray areas.
They would do much better if they placed every politician's statements in the context of their party's political agenda. If a misstatement serves their agenda, it should be graded more harshly because it's fair to assume that lies that benefit the cause are deliberate.
I’ve already noticed that my conservative counterpart might be aware of this, because, in his Grading PolitiFact critiques, he often seems to deliberately and assiduously avoid placing the argument in the context of the (Republican) party’s political agenda. An excellent case in point is a PF ruling on Ann Coulter reviewed earlier this year where, following the tsunami-nuclear reactor incident in Japan, she claimed to Bill O’Reilly that radiation was good for you. Bryan’s argument that she didn’t deserve a “False” from PF was that the context of Coulter’s argument was the media’s over-reaction to it, when the fact was, as I showed, they seemed to be under-reacting, if anything, and the real context was the Republican party’s promotion of nuclear energy, ergo, Coulter’s claims about radiation. Bryan didn’t say anything about the Republican advocacy of nuclear energy.
I’ve also realized this is often the key to taking apart the Sublime Bloviation screeds…that is, replacing whatever argument he has with that of the Republican political agenda and seeing if he's (willfully) ignoring it. So, this will be something I will be trying to perfect in future Lil White Lies as well as Grading PolitiFact Liberal Style.
The other comment is from a Paul Udstrand: (emphasis added)
After reading Ostermeier's article I have to say I can't figure out what if anything he's really pointing out or criticizing. The examination of Dem and Rep statements is about 50-50. I would assume the statements being investigated would be the most controversial or heavily covered stories, and those judged to be significant given whatever debate is taking place at the time. Obviously Republicans are going fair poorly since they have tight noise machine echo chamber high school debate approach to facts and information. This is well documented, from Fox to Clear Channel. The problem with Ostermeier's complaint is that it assumes Politifact could be checking other facts that Republicans are getting right or that would score higher. Well, if he Ostermeier wants to make that claim he needs to do more than compare numbers, he needs to compare actual rating, and make his own comparative selection that demonstrate parity of inaccurate statements instead of a Republican dominance.
If you want to detect a bias, you'd have to establish that both parties are equally fact challenged but one party is getting the majority of high inaccuracy ratings. Ostermeier doesn't even try to do that, he's making a mundane observation and selling it as analysis.
As the new “mother lode” of fact-checking tools, the Politi-Score tries to use all items being checked by other fact-checking websites. In my recent series on Michele Bachmann, we’ve looked at the “most heavily covered”—those statements checked out by two or more of the fact-checkers. Removing these “heavily covered” statements improves Bachmann’s Politi-Score to a still poor negative 28. So her controversial, oft-repeated statements make it worse, but it isn’t like everything else she says is 100% truthful either…not even close. What I really need to do at this point is to do the same type of series done on Bachmann on a Democrat, which is exactly my intention. I’d like to do Obama but gathering together all his statements would take too much time and make a very long-winded series, so I think my eyes are on Joe Biden.
When a nameless blog (actually, many of the real libertarian and right-wing websites do the same) complained about statements by Democrats not covered by PolitiFact, it was easy to refute and point out there are as many (false) statements by Republicans not covered as well, or that there were other fact-check sites covering statements not covered by PolitiFact. So it seems to me it would not be fruitful to establish that both parties are equally fact challenged (although it’s probably possible, but very difficult, to do so).
Clearly these two commenters have made some strong, valid points. There are better ways to prove bias beyond a “preponderance of anecdotal evidence.” At least ways which could withstand any validation attempts.
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