PolitiFact's Politi-Choice, Part 1

My only response on this blog so far to PolitiFact’s 2011 Lie of the Year was a “guest post” by my favorite vulgarian “Rude Pundit” Lee Papa, who over all the colorful expletives called it over-compensating and pandering by PolitiFact.

I should have listened to my original gut feeling back in July that the Democrat claim that "RyanCare" was ending Medicare was a choice by default for 2011 PolitiFact (PF) Lie of the Year because of its sort of inverse relationship to the 2010 Lie of the Year (that Obamacare was a government takeover). But the Republican claim that Obama’s Stimulus created zero jobs—in the year of Occupy Wall Street and what seemed to be the paramount issue with voters--unemployment--as the Republican primary candidates made their bids, appeared to overshadow the RyanCare claim. It won in PolitiFact’s voting canvass as well. But as I noted in my prediction, PolitiFact may surprise us all…and they did. Although I was hoping the liberal-bias-complainers would be ignored, they weren’t. While it was a good choice, the stimulus created zero jobs was a better one. It was just that this was more of a “politi-choice” decision, pure and simple.

Paul Ryan and Bill Adair in this cartoon version of an analogy by Steve Benen of theWashington Monthly

Making my case from PolitiFact’s own rulings for the year 2011, there were 33 PolitiFact rulings on the subject of “Medicare.” The total number of rulings under the subject “stimulus” was 21 and for “jobs” it was 85. In other words, there were three times as many fact-checks devoted to jobs and the stimulus than to Medicare. If you include similar major topics, for example, healthcare along with Medicare, and the economy along with jobs and stimulus, jobs, stim and economy (246 fact-checks) still outnumber Medicare and healthcare (166 fact-checks). So clearly, jobs was a hotter topic this year than Medicare and healthcare. The economy, in fact, was the number one most fact-checked topic at 140 rulings.

On the other hand, PolitiFact might make its case by virtue of the Truth Index: Medicare scored the lowest, a negative 43.06, of the 20 topics that comprised just over 75% of all 2011 PolitiFact rulings. The topic stimulus had 21 rulings with a very close negative 40.48; jobs, however, scored a negative 12.35, which aligns with the overall 2011 Truth Index average of negative 14.38.

PolitiFact also listed nine rulings about the same subject that had been published, along with the original one by the DCCC. While I don’t have nine to refute PF’s nine exactly, the “stimulus created zero jobs” message as a PF fact-check on the Republicans has been going on for almost two years now, starting with Scott Brown...then later with Rick Scott when he was running for governor of Florida, which was one of the nominees for PolitiFact’s 2010 Lie of the Year...then Eric Cantor in May said the Stimulus failed to get people back to work, which is pretty much the same thing...then Rick Perry on the campaign trail in September...before the National Republican Senatorial Committee used it in an ad, which was PF's official nomination of the fact-check for the 2011 Lie of the Year. Most recently New Jersey governor Chris Christie used it, but in a different tack, as if there never was a stimulus.  Or, there were just claims that not only were zero jobs created, but jobs were lost.

And then there was a blatant flip-flop in the respect that there were a couple claims about the “high” Stimulus cost per job: the number $278,000 is bandied about a lot by John Boehner and the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is a bit confusing since saying it cost that much per job means admitting that 2.4 million jobs were saved or created.  So, which is it?

My own review of this claim, called “RyanCare: Pay or Die” back in April, placed this claim firmly on the roll of “Grading PolitiFact Liberal Style”—because “the available evidence is insufficient to establish it as either true or false.” I wondered in my write-up what it would be when the last baby boomer died off; I also wondered about the “voluntary” aspect of the program. If years out, you have a lot of Medicare-eligible people without insurance, has it not ended for them?

Since that time, there’s been a bit of backlash toward "RyanCare" reflected at videos of congressional town halls as well as a few off-year elections that took place shortly thereafter in May where the Republicans took a beating. I’m under the distinct impression that the Republicans plan to make some changes to put the Medicare back in RyanCare, which means…PolitiFact is right, in a way, although if Republicans abandon the idea, this all becomes merely academic.

I also noted in my April review that my conservative counterpart had said next to nothing about it….fast forward to December, and he’s suddenly "Mr. PLoTY," properly anal with the small “o” since prepositions should be in lower case. And a nice holiday present for himself, of a good reason to slam Bill Adair with all his might, considering these gems from his post:  (link added)

Adair seems blissfully unaware that he's inside the echo chamber. …

Adair just told us that he's positioned within an echo chamber oriented left. He hears opinions from the right when he's out reporting. But to hear what the left is saying he can just hang out with his friends. A truly centrist Bill Adair may be expected to have discussions with a conservative friend to draw from in writing his story. …

Bear in mind Adair just finished hinting that his list of friends is predominantly (if not exclusively) liberal.…

Is it that hard for Adair to see the writing on the wall from within his echo chamber? …

On the whole, Adair's defense is elitist and defensive. …

It seems Adair doesn't know his audience.

Bryan White sure can read a lot into what people say. Most of his blog post was centered around what Adair wrote in a December 23 PF article called “Fact-checking inside the Echo Chamber Nation”: 

At a Republican campaign rally a few years ago, I asked one of the attendees how he got his news. "I listen to Rush and read NewsMax," he said. "And to make sure I'm getting a balanced view, I watch Fox." My liberal friends get their information from distinctly different sources — Huffington Post, Daily Kos and Rachel Maddow. To make sure they get a balanced view, they click Facebook links — from their liberal friends.

Bryan gleans that Adair must only have liberal friends because he has to go out reporting to find out what conservatives do, and from this concludes Adair must be a liberal, and is therefore inside the echo chamber himself. I guess one can surmise that Bryan does the same thing—his reasoning is basically that birds of a feather flock together.

But that’s only how Adair said he got the information. Just because he says he got the information this way doesn’t mean that he’s that way. I think Bryan is using a fallacy: it may be a version of the fallacy of composition, where “All of the parts of the object O have the property P. Therefore, O has the property P.” Adair asked a Republican “non-friend” where he got his news, but asked a liberal “friend” where he got his news, therefore Adair must be a liberal.

(Note to self: I guess I better get rid of my conservative friends so I can be more like Bryan. Nah….)

His other argument is that Adair needs to provide evidence to readers that he has support to contrast to his statement that “We've received about 1,500 e-mails about our choice and only a few agreed with us” by publishing some of the e-mails of the “few” who “agreed.”

When I originally posted my Grading PF Liberal Style review in April, I noted that Bryan had “nary a peep” to say about it at the time. As was his practice he attacked a fairly innocuous Facebook PolitiFact page comment that I had made under this ruling, but his attack didn’t really relate to the ruling, and he never responded to my answer to his attack. In other words, those who agree don’t tend to offer their concurrence in the same way as those who disagree. It’s like “if I don’t hear from you, I know you’re okay.”

So in view of that, let’s take a look at the PolitiFact Facebook page fan count. While there was a myriad of comments under the ruling which said things along the line of “I’m ‘unliking’ you for good” or “Buh-bye PolitiFact” the fan count barely nudged, and if it decreased, it sure looks like it’s now headed back up to the 50,000 milestone. So I’d say, if it dropped by 1,500 (the number of e-mails Adair cites above), what about those other 45,500? When are they hitting the “unlike” button? Isn’t that enough proof of support? I suppose, however, Bryan would rather satisfy his rhetorical excesses than look at numbers.

Bryan White concluded that Bill Adair didn’t mount much of a defense except to say he stood by his story and that the “end of Medicare” claim had made it to the “biggest falsehoods of the year” list of the two other major fact-checkers, FactCheck.org and the Washington Post, which Bryan termed insufficient “non-specific” support. I guess he didn’t read Glenn Kessler’s piece which began “Fact-checkers are under assault!” and specifically addressed the criticisms of PolitiFact. Of course, there will never be enough support for Adair in Bryan White’s echo chamber.

To be continued…..

There's that Great White shark again!