Lil White Lies Extra: One Context for You, TWO for Me

Fact checkers should emphasize such contextual elements, not bury them.
-- Sublime Bloviations/PolitiFact Bias

And fact-checkers of fact-checkers should bring out those elements as well. Of course, if you're a biased fact-checker like PolitiFact Bias' Bryan White, you'd do it for the side you ideologically prefer and not the other. Here's a most excellent example.

 

In a recent review of a hotly-contested-by-the-right PolitiFact ruling on a statement by Paul Ryan that Obama promised to keep a GM Plant in his Wisconsin home district open, White formatted in bold the last words of Obama's speech "that's the future I'll fight for as your president" to prove it was a "pledge" as compared to Ryan's word "promise." He then said:

Importantly, Obama opened his speech with references to the plant. He then sketched his vision of America before mentioning how the Janesville plant could stay open if the government provides support. In that context, Obama pledged to provide that support. Does Mr. Obama use the specific term "promise" in his statement? No, certainly not. Does he guarantee the plant will remain open? Again, no. However, there is little doubt that every person in Janesville listening to his speech took it as a pledge from the president to work to enact policies to keep the plant open. Mr. Obama did, in fact, pledge to do just that.

Here's the complete context that preceded Obama's statement at the Janesville Plant in February, 2008, that was available on the internet, but White decided to "bury":

I believe that we can create millions of those jobs around a clean, renewable energy future. A few hours northeast of here is the city of Manitowoc [MAN-a-ta-WOC]. For over a century, it was the home of Mirro manufacturing – a company that provided thousands of jobs and plenty of business. In 2003, Mirro closed its doors for good after losing thousands of jobs to Mexico.

But in the last few years, something extraordinary has happened. Thanks to the leadership of Governor Doyle and Mayor Kevin Crawford, Manitowoc has re-trained its workers and attracted new businesses and new jobs. Orion Energy Systems works with companies to reduce their electricity use and carbon emissions. And Tower Tech is now making wind turbines that are being sold all over the world. Hundreds of people have found new work, and unemployment has been cut in half.

So Obama was talking about how a "sweeping energy policy could give the town the resources to produce something else." Since the plant was still producing (the biggest gas-guzzling) vehicles at the time, with the future unknown, this naturally follows and makes the most sense.

White stops cold when it comes to the full "contextual elements" of Obama's remarks at the Janesville Plant, and basically does what he accuses PolitiFact of, taking them at face value while making his own interpretation, asserting it to be a "fact" that Obama had indeed made a promise. He then goes to great lengths to flesh out the full "contextual elements" of Romney's remarks, even including a video, in a ruling he disputes through the pretext of his Grading PolitiFact series, where (Democrat) Julian Castro said Romney told students to "borrow money from their parents (if they must) to start a business."

In context, Romney was talking about the historical climate for American entrepreneurship. He didn't tell the students to borrow money from the parents. He painted a general picture of ways entrepreneurs chase their dreams, and he gave borrowing money from parents as one example. Notably, the line segued to the example of Jimmy John, who founded a nationally popular sandwich chain using startup money borrowed from his father.

So we have the context of "sweeping energy policy" and what it could do for America's future (Obama), and the context of how "entrepreneurs chase their dreams" (Romney). But from PolitiFact Bias and Sublime Bloviations, we are only allowed the context of the "entrepreneur" part for Romney. I'm not going to make any judgments or analysis concerning their specific claims about the Castro/Romney statement; this is to point out a good example of how such slanted coverage turns these websites into just more of your garden variety anti-PolitiFact propaganda.

 

And a much bigger point may have been missed as well on another Julian Castro ruling, covered by PolitiFact Bias for the battle but not noticing the war....in other words, of such significance, it deserves the label "Liberal Evidence of PolitiFact Liberal Bias," and I will cover it in the next post.