Recently NPR did a call-in segment on the fact-checkers, which you can listen to at the link below (or here).
Here is the article called "Lies, Damned Lies, and Fact-Checkers" by Mark Hemingway in the Weekly Standard, and here is the link to read the transcript. My conservative counterpart is pretty adept at keeping up to date with the latest PolitiFact (PF) related posts and pieces published. This one is extremely interesting in that Glenn Kessler speaks directly about how he selects statements: that he is more interested in verifying those in prepared speeches and written pieces and such because the person saying them should have "vetted" them before coming out with them, which should make them more prone to fact-checking. He does not sound like he is "deliberately" making biased selections, and as I have noted, more often than not, the same statement will be checked by FactCheck.Org and PolitiFact.
Here is the article called "Lies, Damned Lies, and Fact-Checkers" by Mark Hemingway in the Weekly Standard, and here is the link to read the transcript. My conservative counterpart is pretty adept at keeping up to date with the latest PolitiFact (PF) related posts and pieces published. This one is extremely interesting in that Glenn Kessler speaks directly about how he selects statements: that he is more interested in verifying those in prepared speeches and written pieces and such because the person saying them should have "vetted" them before coming out with them, which should make them more prone to fact-checking. He does not sound like he is "deliberately" making biased selections, and as I have noted, more often than not, the same statement will be checked by FactCheck.Org and PolitiFact.
The other item of note is that Kessler does not rate pundits, and for the most part, neither does FactCheck. This seems to be a niche at PolitiFact. And I do agree that PF's Truth-o-Meter ratings can easily be deemed (as Hemingway called them) pseudo-scientific, and even a "marketing gimmick". By virtue of their quantity accumulated (as we approach 5,000 PF rulings), however, it seems the Truth Index averages can soften the "hard edges" of those rulings in the trends revealed. The study by Eric Ostermeier of 522 rulings was referred to several times, which I examined in detail and compared with my database of 1,330 rulings from the same time period. While he had 76% of Republican rulings either False or Pants on Fire on the 522 rulings, I had calculated 64% (on the 1,330). On the Democrats, while he had 22%, I had calculated 34%. So his database was somewhat skewed against the Republicans, and Hemingway was basically using it as a weapon to claim it raised suspicions that PolitiFact was liberally biased because it appeared to be targeting False statements by Republicans.
Postscript Caveat: I'm going to have to do a more up to date re-calculation (to include all of 2011 and New Hampshire) to see how these numbers are holding.
Postscript Caveat: I'm going to have to do a more up to date re-calculation (to include all of 2011 and New Hampshire) to see how these numbers are holding.
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