Truth Index: 2011 PolitiFact Writers

There’s been some suggestions to me for improvements to the PolitiFact (PF) Truth Index on writers, and so I’ve tried to incorporate them here. One was, that my previous method of presenting the writers, by degree of variance between the Democrat and Republican Truth Index, didn’t mean a whole lot , and was in and of itself not a sufficient indicator that the writer might be biased. So I’ve decided to relate it to the state Truth Indexes for now.

It is true that it’s really hard to tell much from doing it the way I did it before. When I hear about “selection bias” the question becomes, to me, who does the selection, and how do they select. If a writer is not part of selecting the claim, in other words, if the claim is an assignment, this would certainly affect their variance. Some of the writers have very true leaning ratings (like Eric Stirgus of PF Georgia) while others have very false leaning ratings (like James Nelson of PF Wisconsin). A future post might look more closely at why Eric Stirgus appears to have so many more True ratings for both parties as compared to his PF Georgia compatriot Willoughby Mariano, especially if the Truth Index holds for both in 2012.  It was surmised that part of the reason PF Wisconsin's averages dropped was because of the labor unrest and recall efforts (and statements made associated with them) which were highly publicized in February.

The Truth Index here reflects all PolitiFact rulings for the year 2011 because that’s when I started keeping track of the writers.

Click to enlarge: These include ALL 2011 work of the writer (some also wrote for PF National as well as their state.)
Jacob Geiger's Democrat Truth Index calculated to zero.

Tom Feran of PF Ohio had the largest variance between Democrats and Republicans the last time, and retained this “gap” for 2011, at almost 60 points. He did about 60% more Republican rulings. Half of his Democrat rulings were done on Dennis Kucinich and Senator Sherrod Brown, who score very high on the individual Truth Index (Steve at Quibbling Potatoes also noted the affect on the Truth Index of Sherrod Brown) and might explain why his Democrat Truth Index was so high.

The Truth Indexes by writer are in the same order as the PF states featuring the major writers (those who have written the most rulings) for that state. This can be compared to the Truth Index by state in my previous post. For an even closer look, here’s a chart on the two Republican-favorable states Virginia and Wisconsin, to get a look at which writers affected the averages.

Click to enlarge:  Geiger's looks slightly different than overall chart because it only includes his PF Virginia work.

A few personnel changes should be noted here as well. It appears Robert Farley is no longer writing for PF National. I often see him as a writer over at FactCheck.Org., so he may have “jumped ship.” One of PF Virginia’s writers, Jacob Geiger, has not authored a ruling since July, 2011, and it appears he’s been replaced by Warren Fiske along with a rev up by Sean Gorman.

Next, individual politician ratings.