Truth Index: Friday is Fact-Check Day!

In my last review of PolitiFact Detractors, I published a response to a very one-sided, gigantic opus of talking points put together by the Virginia Republican Party, about the various ways they thought PolitiFact (PF) Virginia was biased in the way it did its Truth-o-Meter rulings. One of their complaints was called the “Weekend Dump” where they wrote that “PolitiFact [was] More Likely To Dump Positive Republican Rulings Late On A Friday, Or Over The Course Of The Weekend, As Well As Save Negative Republican Rulings For Publication During The Week (Monday Through Thursday).” (Don’t Know Why They Have To Start Every Sentence With A Capital Letter But That's How I Copied It!)

All that was needed  was to add a new field for the day of the week in my data. I already had the publish date so it was a easy task. I found that yes, using PolitiFact's Truth Index as a measure, for PF Virginia, there were more positive rulings for Republicans on weekends, and they were more negative during the week, but it was essentially a similar theme for the Democrats, contrary to the anecdotal rulings the Virginia Republican Party pointed out, at least for the first six months of 2012.

Then I thought I’d take a look at PolitiFact National, because it occurred to me when the Virginia Republican Party said there were rulings "buried" in the Saturday Richmond Times-Dispatch, I thought they could be those of PolitiFact National, since very few rulings are ever published on Saturday (most are by PF Oregon).

It should be mentioned that when I did the final filter, I found that PolitiFact National did not publish rulings on Saturday or Sunday (at least thus far in 2012). So I had to assume everything “over the weekend” as what was published on Friday.

Click to enlarge:  Certainly looks like more negative Republican rulings during the week at PF National.

PolitiFact National did 191 rulings in the first half of 2012, 130 Republican and 61 Democrat. From Monday through Thursday it published 154 rulings, 105 on Republicans and 49 on Democrats, and the rest (37) on Friday (25 Republican and 12 Democrat). During the week the Democrats had rulings which averaged a positive Truth Index of 1.02, whereas the Republicans were much lower, at a Truth Index average NEGATIVE 47.6, with 17 Pants on Fire rulings (the Democrats had only 2). With the Friday rulings over the weekend, however, the Democrats dipped to a Truth Index of negative 8.3 and suddenly got very close to the Republicans Truth Index, which made a marked improvement from negative 47.6 to negative 10.

Comparatively speaking, the first 1,016 rulings in 2012 (first six months) as a whole, including PF National, don’t show the same large improvement on Friday. The Truth Index improved very slightly for the Republicans, but was roughly the same as during the week (from -27.2 to -24.6). The same for the Democrats (-1.2 to -3.6).

The PolitiFact National Republican Truth Index variance between “Monday through Thursday” as compared to “Friday” is a pretty sizeable one, especially when you take into account that there was only one Pants on Fire published Friday (on the Republicans, of course) compared to the 17 during the week noted above. The PolitiFact Friday ruling count  is very close to the daily average, so looking at the Pants on Fire, on average we should expect four, not one.

This may not mean anything, because I don’t know if the publish date at the PolitiFact website is one in the same as to when it’s published in the newspapers. I don’t know if rulings get re-published in any of the newspapers in the PolitiFact consortium. But if Friday PF National rulings are published in the Richmond Times Dispatch over the weekend, the Virginia Republican Party may have a case with their “weekend dump” allegations. If not the question becomes why the Truth Index appears to improve so significantly on Fridays, much more so for Republicans. It could mean nothing with other studies (as time goes on) which has happened to me before. However, even with this disclaimer, for the purposes of the Virginia Republican Party, the recent trend seems to support them.

But Friday is fact-check day in one sense.  For total PolitiFact regions in the first half of 2012, more than 40% of all rulings were published on Thursday and Friday, the most on Friday.   This tends to confirm a quote cited by PolitiFact Bias of Rick Thornton of the Richmond Times-Dispatch that "A number of our rulings on both sides are on Fridays because they're being finished up on Friday for Sunday."  Whether what looks like so-called less Republican negative bias for the "weekend dump" is deliberate or accidental remains to be seen.

Postscript 7/24/2012:  The so-called Friday Dump theory may have been turned on its head by none other than PolitiFact Bias.  Now it looks like PolitiFact National may be doing the Republicans a favor.