Sidebar: Liberal Proof of PolitiFact (Liberal) Bias

This started out as a “Lil White Lies” follow-up post, but actually, I’m not picking on Grading PolitiFact here. I may even be giving the "enemy" some ammunition, but in this case, PolitiFact kind of deserves it.

When I spotted these two rulings, the question occurred to me why Tom Feran at PolitiFact Ohio AND Angie Drobnic-Holan at PolitiFact Florida would basically cover the same statement. Above are the banners at Pat Boone’s page on PolitiFact, and the "difference" is highlighted. They were published four days apart.

I also thought I may have confused the two because I recall mentioning PolitiFact Ohio’s Tom Feran in my Lil White Lies post—but I had removed the reference in my final review. Of course, my conservative counterpart at Sublime Bloviations wouldn’t have made that mistake because his critique preceded the publishing of PolitiFact Ohio’s ruling by a few days. If he had known, I think he might have done a review covering both.

If you read them, the emphasis in both is on the so-called rationing of the IPAB, while the “wasteful spending” is secondary. Writer Feran leads into his article on how the Pat Boone video via the anti-AARP 60 Plus Association has been advertised in the state of Ohio. But the pieces are pretty redundant; I’ve noted before where this has happened, sometimes very obvious, and sometimes with an easy topic.

But there’s one other interesting aspect of this, besides the perhaps unnecessary repeat of a Pants on Fire claim perpetuated by Republicans (to refute one of their known talking points); it’s the fact that I’ve noticed that Angie Drobnic Holan and Tom Feran have both had the distinction of being the most Democrat-favorable PolitiFact journalists (through computing and comparing the Republican versus Democrat Truth Index by PF writer). When I noticed Angie last year I called it “Angie’s List Left” although she has gotten more upright in that comparison. Tom Feran’s left list, however, tilts way over to port since the data I used encompassed a full year; Angie’s was three months’ worth.

But what makes matters worse as a matter of comparison is a PolitiFact ruling from earlier this year (above) done by Eric Stirgus of Georgia, which looks like a definite conflict with the two Pat Boone rulings:

Price gets it partially right. The IPAB can push for changes that impact some areas of health care, and that could have an indirect result on care for seniors. The board, however, cannot propose changes that impact the most widely used forms of care -- such as inpatient hospital services, long-term care and hospice -- for Medicare beneficiaries.

The IPAB can impact changes to some programs, but not specific care to specific seniors as Price’s statement implies.

Price’s concerns have merit, but his statement about the IPAB having the power "to deny care to seniors" needs much more context to be completely accurate.

We rate his statement Half True.

He even cross references an earlier ruling from PolitiFact Ohio done by Sabrina Eaton, rated Pants on Fire, on the original Pat Boone ads. It looks like just “denying care” merits a Half True, while “rationing care and denying treatments” and “rationing care and denying treatments and using it for wasteful spending” takes it down to Pants on Fire. It just seems a little too close for comfort; it seems PolitiFact has parsed “denying care” and “rationing” which should be considered one in the same.

To me this is the kind of thing that my conservative counterpart should be looking at, not just writing opinion pieces about what he thinks is wrong with PolitiFact’s reporting methods injected with his own right-wing bias, constantly whining about selection bias (without proper proof) and gathering anti-PolitiFact articles written by conservatives. That isn’t going to do it. (By the way, as of today it’s been 75 days since PolitiFact Bias said it was going to publish objective proof. The research page is still empty.)

I’m considering doing a little service for the PolitiFact Bias blog, which will be called, as in the title, “Liberal Proof of PolitiFact (Liberal) Bias” where I present things I’ve found in the course of writing and comparing pieces and analyzing the Truth Index. Because as noted about Angie Drobnic Holan and Tom Feran above, no matter that it may be alleged that it’s the “results of a fundamentally flawed process” it certainly can be incorporated as a matter of readers' interest.  And since those evidences are starting to mount a bit, they should be categorized.

The posts I’ve done so far will be labeled under the “Liberal Proof” title. It’s doubtful that “PolitiFact Bias” will do anything similar on the “conservative bias” side. As I recall, they said they would include evidence of PolitiFact conservative bias if they found anything worthy; which means there will never be anything worthy enough.