Meta Meta, All That Data

This past fall, my conservative counterpart started his own fact-checking website called Zebra Fact-Check, sort of jumping on that "conservapedia" bandwagon of playing to the right-wing choir. He gave a new term to a categorization of his Zebra fact-checks where he was again publishing criticisms of PolitiFact rulings as he did at his original blog: he called it a meta-factcheck, which by definition is the correct terminology, since he is "fact-checking the fact-check." So I suppose that makes me a META-meta fact-checker, because I am "fact-checking" his fact-check of PolitiFact's fact-check. Wew!

 

But more than that, on his new "non-blogspot" website, he includes a little detail on the "About" page that has me wondering....whether my speculation about his concentrated vindictiveness toward PolitiFact may in fact have some foundation.

I graduated from the journalism program at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg in 2008. The university campus is located across the street from the Poynter Institute, which owns both the Tampa Bay Times (then known as the St. Petersburg Times) and PolitiFact.

I regarded Poynter’s 2007 foray into fact checking with hope and interest at first, but that changed quickly to horror. I couldn’t believe that the Times would produce a product so deeply inferior to the Annenberg Fact Check model.

My blogging gradually changed its focus to criticism of PolitiFact. I hoped that vigorous criticism would help PolitiFact reach for a higher set of standards.

Here's what I've "speculated" about previously (in October, 2012):

Speaking of that, this makes my theory seem all the more likely that Bryan White may have been someone rejected for a journalist-type job by the Tampa Bay Times or PolitiFact itself: he states that these [new Zebra] fact-checks are what he does best. So this bolsters my theory that this was his retaliation. But that's pure speculation.

I had written this before I browsed his website and found where he listed his educational achievements. So now I know for a fact that he has the background necessary for such a job, and graduated and (as known) resided in the vicinity of the biggest newspaper in the Tampa/St. Pete area, right at the time the PolitiFact operation was starting. If this was expansion at the paper, there quite possibly could have been openings for, if not full-time journalists, at the very least, interns, for the specific PolitiFact project, because in the course of my recording the writers along with each ruling, it was apparent they had many interns who tried their hand at composing fact-checks. Nowhere did I see anything written, researched or edited by one Bryan W. White.

As of today's date, Robert Farley remains one of Factcheck.Org's lead writers, as can be seen in this screen clip

Then there's the "deeply inferior" comparison of PolitiFact to the Annenberg FactCheck. FactCheck.org, as I've noted in many posts, for the most part agrees with PolitiFact when checking the same item. The only difference is that Annenberg FactCheck doesn't have a Truth-o-Meter, and its fact-checks are often more limited in scope, because they will include several checks in one post at their website. So, in certain respects, its fact-checks are not as complete nor as sourced as PolitiFact's. To top that off, one of its writers, Robert Farley, used to write for PolitiFact (although White seems to have about the same opinion of him as he does Louis Jacobson and the others). While one could say Farley moved "up", there's really no way to verify that Farley went from an inferior fact-checking operation to a superior one...unless White could find out from Farley himself. It would be interesting to see what Farley would have to say about that, and I have a feeling he might not agree with White.

 

Nevertheless, something definitely smells even more rotten in Largo, Florida.

Another Peek at Ponzi

When I first started this blog in 2010, I did a lengthy review of why I thought the social security system was not a Ponzi scheme.

 

It may boil down to an historical argument: that is, which came first, paygo or Ponzi, as well as, from whence did Charles Ponzi get his idea to begin with? I did not cover that part of it at the time, but since then I have come across some new information, and I felt an update was needed.

The history of pensions, particularly public sector pensions, cannot be easily separated from the history of pension finance. The creation of a pension plan coincides with the simultaneous creation of pension liabilities, and the parameters of the plan establish the size and the timing of those liabilities. U.S. Army pensions have always been funded on a "pay-as-you-go" basis from the general revenues of the U.S. Treasury. Thus army pensions have always been simply one more liability of the federal government.

In the United States, pensions have been around since the civil war; in fact, from a world-wide historical perspective, they go all the way back to the Romans, where they started in terms of funding out of the "general treasury"--in other words, they were pay-go from the start. The Ponzi scheme came along in response to Charles Ponzi who glorified it in the 1920's, and he got his idea for his scheme not from working for a pension system, but from a bank:  

In 1907, Ponzi moved to Montreal and became an assistant teller in the newly opened Banco Zarossi, a bank started by Luigi "Louis" Zarossi to service the influx of Italian immigrants arriving in the city. Zarossi paid 6% interest on bank deposits – double the going rate at the time – and was growing rapidly as a result. Ponzi eventually rose to bank manager. However, he found out that the bank was in serious financial trouble because of bad real estate loans, and that Zarossi was funding the interest payments not through profit on investments, but by using money deposited in newly opened accounts. The bank eventually failed and Zarossi fled to Mexico with a large portion of the bank's money.

It may be okay to refer to social security as a Ponzi in the same way many refer to the stock market as a casino; a pejorative: defined as "having a disparaging, belittling or derogatory effect or force." Certainly a Ponzi scheme, being an illegal swindle, is a negative, disparaging way to describe the part of social security that works as "pay-go." Or the stock market "casino", with even television announcers and internet articles regularly referring to investments as "bets." But we know realistically that the stock market is not a casino as much as we know that social security is not a Ponzi scheme. They just seem that way because certain aspects mimic fraudulent activities  (as we might even call insurance a "protection racket").

And of course, Ponzi can be re-applied as a pejorative in the same way towards those things "celebrated" by the right to those things "celebrated" by the left, such as climate change. Things go better with tu quoque?

2012 in Review at PolitiFact (Continued)

A few items have been posted already about the year 2012 at PolitiFact (PF).  It was their biggest year because of the presidential election, with 1,961 rulings produced.    Here's how it looked for all Truth-o-Meter categories as a percentage, in 2012:

Click to enlarge

In terms of Republicans versus Democrats, Democrats had a 2012 Truth Index+ of 58.5 (-3.7 PF Truth Index) for 735 rulings, while the Republicans had a 49.8 (-25.6 PF Truth Index) for 1,078 rulings.  That means that for the statements fact-checked by PolitiFact, the Democrats' rulings averaged about 17.5 percent higher (in proportional terms of Truth Index+).

Click to enlarge:  Truth Index+ for party is in parentheses

We've looked at month-to-month already, and took at a better look at Pants on Fire.  Let's take a look at the top ten "rulees"--those who were fact-checked.  This may explain to some degree why more Republicans are checked than Democrats.  While Obama was the person most fact-checked, he was the only Democrat on the top ten list.  Outside of people, only chain e-mails had enough rulings to get to the top ten.  The PolitiFact states showed their contributive power, with Chris Christie (PolitiFact New Jersey), Rick Scott (PolitiFact Florida), and Scott Walker and Tommy Thompson (PolitiFact Wisconsin) making it to the list.  Other than that, there were the expected presidential candidates (Vice president Joe Biden was Number 13 with 14 fact-checks).  The top ten shown reflects about 25 percent of all rulings; it should also be noted that of the 760 individuals/organizations "politi-facted" in 2012, 500 of them only received a single ruling (also about 25 percent of the rulings).  This shows how PolitiFact concentrates its efforts.

Click to enlarge:  Chain e-mails have always had one of the lowest Truth Indexes (highlighted).

In terms of topic, there is some overlap, that is, PolitiFact assigns multiple subjects by the nature of the fact-check, so these aren't quite as straightforward.  Generally, this is the "first" subject assigned in the fact-check, although it can be a subjective selection.  Occasionally it may be changed if I feel it's not correct, but that is rare.  Nevertheless, here are the top ten subjects which cover about 57 percent of all the rulings.  There's actually 11 because Deficits and Abortion tied for tenth place with 56 rulings each.

Click to enlarge:  Healthcare had lowest Truth Index because of high number of False and
Pants on Fire Obamacare claims (highlighted)

As far as separating Democrats from Republicans in other categories, I may be doing that as the year progresses, but more likely in terms of all rulings as PolitiFact quickly approaches 7,000.  Hold that dial.

 

I Brake for Pants on Fire (in 2013)

Since its debut in 2007 through the end of 2012, the PolitiFact team (including its states) decided that 1,915 statements it fact-checked out of the 6,658 total it had done deserved a false.  And of these statements found false, 29.6 percent, or 566, were deserving of its now famous Pants on Fire designation.  While I'm not going to discuss the somewhat subjective exercise of how it's assigned, it may be worth unpacking it and seeing what's inside.

 

If those 566 Pants on Fire rulings, 137 or 24% went to Democrats, 369 or 65% went to Republicans; the rest (60) were non-partisan or unknown as to a party affiliation.  This is what "alarms" to some degree the PolitiFact detractors who are mostly Republican: on a "raw" ruling basis, Republicans (in general) were 2.71 times more likely to be assigned the Pants on Fire than the Democrats.    The Republican theories as to the reason for this have been sampling or selection bias, although there are other compelling ones which I've posted about before:  the loss of the Whitehouse in 2008, and the enacting of "Obamacare."

 

One particular categorizing that was first done by the University of Minnesota's Eric Ostermeier in a study of 511 PolitiFact rulings in 2010 was "official versus non-official"; it took into account those who were in office.  Only 190, or about one third, of the Pants on Fire rulings were awarded to people who were in office; of the other 376 who were not in office, half were organizations and the on-line media.  If we look at party affiliation of those in office who were assigned the Pants on Fire, we have 60 Democrats (32 percent) and 128 Republicans (67 percent).  This means Republicans in office were 2.1 times more likely to be awarded the Pants on Fire than were Democrats in office, still more than double but about 25 percent less than the 2.71 overall.

 

The media--which includes celebrities, pundits, blogs, websites and chain e-mails--received the largest percentage (24%) of Pants on Fire claims, followed by governors and state government officials (19%).

 

Sixty-eight rulings receiving the Pants on Fire related to Obamacare, the vast majority from Republicans.  Claims on the subject of healthcare generated the most Pants on Fire rulings, with over 80 percent of them about Obamacare, or 14 percent of the Pants on Fire claims.   Obamacare overlapped to the subjects of Medicare, housing and abortion as well.  As a general topic, however, fiscal subjects (deficit, economy, federal/state budgets, stimulus and taxes) took up about 20 percent of the Pants on Fire claims.

 

As the number of fact-checks has grown year to year, however, the percentage of Pants on Fire claims in terms of the total has been gradually dropping year to year since "peaking" in 2009 as shown here.

Click to enlarge:  Number of rulings shown in parentheses after year

Finally, below are the same numbers which show the Republican/Democrat breakdown each year. What this appears to show is that while the percentage of Pants on Fire overall has gone down, the percentage of those Pants on Fire assigned to Republicans has gone up.  Non-official candidates--which include Mitt Romney and the other Republican presidential candidates like Herman Cain and Rick Santorum--comprise the third highest category in terms of candidate occupation for Pants on Fire rulings, which may have contributed to this high percentage in 2011 and 2012.  So, we may see a drop in this high Republican percentage in 2013.  Stay tuned.

Click to enlarge: Years (2010-12) of most Pants on Fire were dominated by Republicans

 

One Way PolitiFact Contends with "Selection Bias"

Coming from that exciting (ha ha ha) world of accounting, the audit or financial internal control function served to police those who kept the books, from committing fraud or gross accounting malpractice.  There were certain procedures that had to put into place:  one was not to let one person control too much of the process, and to transfer employees between jobs frequently--even to compel them to go on vacation because often when the employee was away, such fraud or malpractice would be discovered.

 

This analogy is of course not about "fraud" in relation to PolitiFact, but about how a journalist who in the same way might write all fact-checks for one person (on one topic) might encourage the potential for the selection bias that is so often cited by its many critics.  And in the course of my recording over 6,500 PolitiFact rulings I noticed a pattern in assignment of the fact-checks in that no one writer dominated covering any one person or subject.  I have previously posted that writer Lou Jacobson appeared to be the "economics" guy, but economics has a wide umbrella covering many subject areas, such as jobs, taxes and the federal budget, even healthcare.  For example, a selection of the 13 consecutive rulings on Obama under the subject of taxes, out of 121 total rulings on Obama in 2012, shows this alternating pattern of ruling assignment quite clearly:

Click to enlarge:  Note column for writers. 

Even in the PolitiFact states, alternating topics and who was assigned the fact-check seemed to be the norm.  Here's an example from the  fact-checks by PolitiFact Wisconsin of its most frequently checked person Governor Scott Walker, on one of its most frequently checked topics, the state budget:

Click to enlarge

On occasion where there was a speech or television interview with a lot of statements to check, we might see a concentration of fact-checks by one writer, sometimes as many as five, but this was rare.  Eventually another writer would take the reins.  After the election in some of the states, it appeared that a single writer took over until the new year; then it was back to alternating.

Of course, I can't say that this resolves the problem of selection bias.  The type of bias that they're being accused of having--which involves a liberal partisanship--would still be evident regardless of how and to whom a fact-check is assigned, if it could be proved.  But I would think it would be somewhat ameloriated through multiple journalists covering multiple topics, because not everyone has the same bias going in the same direction.