Lil White Lies Extra: PFB prefers the GOP

PolitiFact Bias (PFB) has recently posted on a comparison of rulings which it insists are very much alike, but totally inconsistent when it comes to the Truth-o-Meter grade, having to do with congressional pay raises. Its recent post states the supposed contrast:

If the PolitiFact Ohio rating is accurate [a False ruling on a Republican] then the PolitiFact Florida rating is wrong [a True ruling for a Democrat]. And if the PolitiFact Florida rating is accurate then the PolitiFact Ohio rating is wrong.

So let's take a look at these rulings, plus a few others, to see if PolitiFact, according to PFB, is really being (unfairly) inconsistent. It turns out, PolitiFact Bias may have selected the wrong rulings to compare....which isn't too unusual.

 

The difference is the specificity.

The PolitiFact Ohio "False" rating is on senatorial candidate Josh Mandel, who said that his opponent, Senator Sherrod Brown, "voted six times to raise own pay." Now, it needs to be mentioned that the Brown campaign responded to Mandel's accusation by stating that it was just the opposite, that Brown had instead voted against pay increases seven times...which turned out not to be quite the case, either, when PolitiFact Ohio checked it out. These votes, from 1997 through 2012, were part of "broad pieces of legislation...[not] focused purely on the pay raise issue."

 

The PolitiFact Florida "True" for the Florida Democratic Party (FDC) said that 2010 governor candidate Bill McCollum voted for a pay increase four times, by the specific amount of $51,000, as well as having a $75,000 pension. This was based on an ethics law passed in 1989, which put automatic pay raises into place, as well as the amount of the raise received at the time as specified in the ad ( actually $55,000) along with the congressional pension. All following raises were automatic unless freezes were put into the "broad pieces of legislation" mentioned above--and if the broader bill was voted against, it was deemed voting "for" a pay raise.

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.

Lil White Lies Extra: SIX Months--Where's the Beef?

Last February 8, with a follow up on May 17, I posted about a comment added at a blog called "Content In Reality" by my conservative counterpart with regard to a study he was working on:

…I've been busy conducting a study that objectively verifies PolitiFact's ideological bias. I've got all the information for the national operation collected and sorted, and I'm in the process of readying it for publication.

In March, a post at his Sublime Bloviations blogsite suggests this is what it was supposed to be about:

The first PolitiFact Bias research project will suggest that all "Pants on Fire" ratings are unfair and the result of a subjective determination by the responsible PolitiFact teams. [For example,] Pat Boone's statement was neither false nor ridiculously false in any non-subjective sense. It was at least somewhat accurate when considered objectively.

So, I’m still keeping track. It’s still not there. Not at either of his anti-PolitiFact propaganda blogs, not publicized to his "fans" at his PolitiFact Bias Facebook page. I know from my “stat counter” that he very likely has something worked up on Google docs. If he’s done it, he certainly hasn’t made it public.

Here’s a screenprint of the empty page of his blog where I would anticipate such a study would most likely be published. It’s not dated, so to prove the time of the screen snip, I included the blog archive which shows it’s at the seventh post for July (see yellow highlight arrow).

Lil White Lies Extra: Do The Hustle!

Well, around we go again. Let me start with the usual explanation. My conservative counterpart (based on this recent post) doesn’t appear to have heard/listened to/understood Eric Levine at his blog Content In Reality with whom he had a lengthy comment exchange early this year (although it certainly does not surprise me). As Levine carefully explained in regard to the allegation of selection bias by PolitiFact, PolitiFact Bias creates a straw man (note: the “article” referred to in the quote is from a PolitiFact Bias’ page where selection bias is the first issue noted warning readers not to trust PolitiFact):  (emphasis added)

To give them the most credit, it is possible there may be some liberal selection bias at work here, but not in the way they think. Politifact often gets ideas for statements to check from their readers. It is possible most of their readers are liberal, which sounds quite plausible given the fact that conservatives seem so ready to accuse Politifact of bias. This is no fault of Politifact, nor does it show any bias on their part. The fault lies squarely with Republicans who chose not to submit statements to Politifact and instead waste their time complaining about perceived bias (a vicious cycle). It should also be noted that the definition of Selection Bias is "A type of bias caused by choosing non-random data for statistical analysis." Well duh! The article itself mentions that Politifact Bill Adair noted "We choose to check things we are curious about. If we look at something and we think that an elected official or talk show host is wrong, then we will fact-check it." That right there should show that there is selection bias, though not liberal selection bias. However, the article intends to show that the bias is toward the left, instead of toward important statements. If the article was intended to merely accuse Politifact of selection bias, they would basically be attacking a straw man since the main goal of Politifact is not to tally true and false statements to figure out which candidates are more honest…

Levine also refers to the selection bias that writer Bryan White accuses PolitiFact of as “party-related” selection bias, while White makes no distinction. This is very important because Levine notes that in order to prove party-related selection bias, it would have to be shown that the entire crew of PolitiFact, including the three editors who “vote” in agreement on the Truth-o-Meter ruling, are liberal. On top of that, other fact-checkers, such as Washington Post’s FactChecker and FactCheck.Org, who may have made the same fact-checks and reached the same conclusions, would have to be liberal in the same way as well. So we have a good reason why White prefers to use the generic “selection bias” without informing his readers that there are different types, and what evidence is required to prove the type (party-related) he contends PolitiFact has. 

Keeping that in mind, it appears White may be using selection bias as a way to influence his readers to believe there’s a false choice (i.e., selection bias equates to only party-related selection bias for which PF is at fault for having no solution) because there is no way, as far as I know, for PolitiFact to “control” for such selection bias. As PolitiFact Editor in Chief Bill Adair has stated:  

It's fine if people want to use our report cards to compare the records of people we fact-check. But it's important to be accurate about what those report cards say and what they don't," Adair said. "The report cards provide a tally of the claims we chose to check. But it's not accurate to say the report cards indicate who ‘told the most lies.’ We are journalists who choose our fact-checks based on what is newsworthy. We are not social scientists and are not using any kind of random sample to select statements to check.

So, it’s been again re-hashed here as an intro for a post in response to White’s allegations of “truth hustling” by Chris Mooney, who wrote an article in something called the Desmogblog called “More Evidence that Republicans are more factually challenged” in which he re-verified an analysis of every fact-check by Glenn Kessler in the Washington Post Fact Checker, with a conclusion (somewhat similar to what I’ve done with the Truth Index) that based on the fact checks, Republicans tell more lies than Democrats, and he concludes with a query—“there has to be an explanation”(so, what is it?):

In my opinion, what they're telling us is that Republicans today are simply more untruthful than Democrats—and the difference is dramatic enough that even a centrist-leaning fact checker, who strives to be non-partisan, cannot fail to pick it up.

My conservative counterpart, of course, would have none of it; he presents his false dichotomy thusly:

If Kessler and the PolitiFact folks thought of themselves as partisan, maybe it would increase the chances they would institute controls on selection bias. Mooney's self-confessed reassurance is misplaced. In truth, the self-perception of bias is irrelevant. A properly done study controls for bias so that the point of view of the researcher is irrelevant. But Kessler and PolitiFact apparently do absolutely nothing to control for selection bias.

Bill Adair states above that he’s not a social scientist. White knows that “controls on selection bias” is an impossibility. But because he infers that the only selection bias “that exists” is party-related, the only conclusion that can be reached is that both Kessler and PolitiFact (and my reviews of FactCheck.Org indicate the same), until they institute such controls, are all suffering from liberal (party-related) selection bias, and therefore should not be trusted.

White’s conclusion, however, dances around with distortion and catches his pants on fire, to Mooney’s original query of why there has to be an explanation of why Democrats score as more truthful, emphasis added, link mine.

The answer to the question isn't that tough. The data are not designed to give us a dependable differential breakdown for the claims of Democrats against those of Republicans. No serious researcher would try to answer that question while relying on left-leaning journalists with no control for selection bias. But the data do have an obvious use. The data directly measure how fact checkers choose subject matter. Kessler and PolitiFact give us an excellent tool measuring their selection bias. Add to that the ratings each fact checker provides and we end up with data that can help us measure media bias.

I didn’t know he knew that everyone who worked at PolitiFact National, as well as Glenn Kessler, were “left-leaning journalists”. Where’s his evidence? Does he have copies of their voting records and political donations? Did any one of them work for Bernie Sanders or write for Current TV or even one of the MSNBC evening talk shows? If he thinks his targeting (mostly) Lou Jacobson through his “Grading PolitiFact” reviews is sufficient evidence of “left leaning”, he better think again. Weak, anecdotal write-ups by someone who’s admitted their own bias do almost nothing to prove PolitiFact journalists are liberal-leaning.

Lil White Lies Extra: Hopelessly De-Voted

Early in June, as I was about to take an intermission from my blog, I received some commentary from my conservative counterpart, lambasting a recent Lil White Lies post on his criticism of a PolitiFact ruling concerning shark attacks and voting fraud in Florida.

I decided not to waste my time with him and deleted his comment; I also felt it was a bit of a threat—basically the sort of argument by intimidation he commonly uses.

Customized for Lil White Lies

He intimated that I had better recant and delete the post called “Jumping the Shark” because it contained such grievous errors...about which, of course, he would elaborate no further. I refused to take the bait….well, until now—and no, I didn’t withdraw the post: it remains intact and unedited. At the time, however, I couldn’t waste time with his never-ending Gish Gallup (thank you, Eric Levine) of why he is the conservative cartel of truth and why anything a liberal says (or I should say, anyone who disagrees with him) doesn’t know what they’re talking about and must be condescended. And if you won’t buy into his bogus quality, he’s then going to resort to quantity. Until he wears you out.

After the threat of whatever error I made ruining my blogging career, he then followed with how "all you liberals have to censor my comments”….an accusation of cowardice (more argument by intimidation), basically. Well, yea, this is my blog and I’m not obligated to publish everyone’s comments….some blogs don’t allow any comments. I didn’t feel like publishing his. He can call me whatever, if I don’t want to publish them, I don’t have to.  Conservatives like to go on and on about freedom, but somehow I don't have the freedom to delete a comment.

So he then posted something to replace those comments at his “Bad Blogs Blood” blog, which I’ve previously described as a poorly formatted, sporadically posted, minutely viewed blog used to supplement his “master blog” for criticism where he wants to give his victim the least web “airtime” possible, to create a class below Slimey Bloviations for blogs that he doesn’t agree with.

But let’s get to the gist of his criticism:

In my original post I pointed to evidence from the Miami Herald that thousands of felons may have voted in the 2000 election. That's the Bush/Gore election. It was illegal at that time for felons to vote in Florida. No question about it. As for my follow up post about the television news story, that wasn't about felons at all. It was about non-citizens voting. Non-citizens aren't allowed to vote whether felons or not.

The way in which I do Lil White Lie posts needs to be explained first. I copy/paste the Grading PolitiFact piece to a Word document, along with the link. That way I only have to go to the Slimey Bloviations blogsite one time. That way I can refer to it as much as I want on one page, and can directly, easily copy whatever White has written if a quotation is needed.

So, since White is complaining that his post was not about felons but about non-citizens, I searched the post first for the word felons…it appears six times, here’s where it appears four times, and you can tell this is what the post was about: (italics added)

The fallacy in PolitiFact's reasoning comes easily to light.

For most of Florida's history as part of the United States it has prohibited voting by felons. Every time a felon votes illegally, it constitutes a case of voter fraud--albeit not the phony representation of "case" settled on by the fact checkers.

Most often nothing can be done to prosecute a case of voter fraud against a felon who votes illegally even though it happens with some regularity. The Miami Herald, for example, reported the following in the wake of its investigations of the 2000 presidential election:

At least 445 Florida felons voted illegally on Nov. 7, casting another cloud over a disputed presidential election already mired in legal challenges, a Herald investigation has found.

So how about “illegal immigrants” or “non-citizens”? The word immigrant could not be found. The word “non-citizen”—the word which White says this post was premised on and that through “fallacious impetus” I missed it, only appeared in a very brief addendum as an update to his “concrete examples” listing the types of voter fraud: “A Florida television station airs a story documenting approximately 100 non-citizens registered to vote in Florida, at least some of whom voted in past elections.”

That was it. I never read whatever follow up story he had after this Grading PolitiFact review. Although he may later have added a link, my copy/paste would have brought it over to my Word document, but it didn’t. My review was based on his original review, as well it should have been, not what he decided to add later about non-citizens.

Lil White Lies Extra: DAY 121...AND COUNTING!

On February 8 I noted a post made in comments by Bryan White at a PolitiFact Bias-critical blog called Content in Reality, on January 16, 2012:  

…I've been busy conducting a study that objectively verifies PolitiFact's ideological bias. I've got all the information for the national operation collected and sorted, and I'm in the process of readying it for publication.

Here’s a screenprint of the empty page of his blog where I would anticipate such a study would most likely be published. It’s not dated, so to prove the time of the screen snip, I included the blog archive which shows it’s at the eighth post for May (see yellow highlight arrow).

Click to enlarge:  It's been "Coming Soon" since January.

So here we are in the middle of May, about 4 months or 121-plus days since he said this, and there’s STILL nothing out there on the PolitiFact Bias Research page. I thought he might have a different blog where he was hiding his “study objectively verifying PolitiFact’s ideological bias” but all I found was something called “Beyond the PolitiFact Matrix” where he had blogged some paranoid pinings mid-2011 about what he believed was PolitiFact censoring his Facebook comments, which abruptly ended when he discovered it was some glitches with Facebook itself.

I’m sure a HUGE deal would be made out of the publishing of such of study by Bryan and his ilk….but it doesn’t seem there is any. Post activity at both blogs had diminished greatly early in the year, so I was highly expectant and interested in seeing what he came up with. Supposedly, from what I could glean from his blog and Facebook comments, it was a comparison of the degree of “ridiculousness” in Pants on Fire rulings, although I’m sure if my post was read, there’d be a different spin on it. But there’s been no links at Facebook at either the PolitiFact or PolitiFact Bias page, no big announcements at the Sublime Bloviations blog…nothing.

I do recall as well, but cannot find, comments also made early in 2011 that he was doing the same sort of research project. I wish I could find them…because if he does this sort of thing early in 2013, I may be onto something.   However, if he does eventually get something out there, I will be the first to say "well, it's about damn time" and then take a good look at it.

Lil White Lies Extra: Subjectively Objective

Every few days I check the PolitiFact Bias "Research" page for that totally objective, non-biased, scientific proof to end all proofs of PolitiFact's (PF) liberal bias. PolitiFact Bias’ founder Bryan White must have noticed at his StatCounter page, so he served me up this little clue:

The first PolitiFact Bias research project will suggest that all "Pants on Fire" ratings are unfair and the result of a subjective determination by the responsible PolitiFact teams. [For example,] Pat Boone's statement was neither false nor ridiculously false in any non-subjective sense. It was at least somewhat accurate when considered objectively.

In other words, it sounds like he’s going to make his own ruling determination on a group (probably all Pants on Fire statements uttered by Republicans) of PF Pants on Fire rulings as to whether or not they are really a “ridiculous claim”. But just reading Bryan’s example leads me only to conclude that he is making his own subjective judgment (“suggest that all ‘Pants on Fire’ ratings are unfair”) under a false moniker of objectivity.

Pants on Fire is PolitiFact’s “signature”, the “flagship” of its brand. Sinking the Pants on Fire flagship could do it pretty heavy damage although it’s likely not to destroy the fleet. But unless Bryan can present his findings in a truly scientific manner , maybe even get them peer reviewed neutrally, he won’t even be rocking the boat.

If he cherry picks the rulings or does only Republicans, then he will be open to charges of bias as well (I can’t wait until he starts reviewing Democrat Pants on Fire rulings…if he does!).

In the meantime, as I’ve pointed out before, switching all those Pants on Fire rulings to False for both Democrats and Republicans would change the Truth Index some, but not a lot, and Democrats would still have a higher average. Here is the before and after when moving all Pants on Fire to False for all PolitiFact rulings through the end of 2011 (4,707):

(1) All PolitiFact rulings (4,707) through the end of 2011 by Truth-o-Meter and Affiliation.

(2) Same as above, only with Pants on Fire moved to False (the "gray" turns red, and the Truth Index is re-computed).

As can be seen in the above charts, by "removing" Pants on Fire the overall Truth Index is moved up 4 points from -13 to -9.  The Democrats move up 2 points (from 1 to 3) and the Republicans go from -23 to -18.  You could look at it this way:  with Pants on Fire, the Republican Truth Index was about 77% less "truthier" than the overall Truth Index.  Without Pants on Fire, it's about 100% less truthier.  The flattening effect on the Truth Index overall average still makes the Republicans appear relatively less truthful even though their Truth Index has improved.

But there might be a more beneficial effect when Bryan determines that all Republican Pants on Fire should be True or Mostly True and all Democrat Pants on Fire should remain Pants on Fire through his objective, scientific analysis. As I'm being cynical, I might say NOT (!) here except for the first part. Because, like what he already hinted at with the Pat Boone claim, there’s a strong possibility that will be the outcome of his so-called research.  I will be "staying tuned" on that.

Find THIS PolitiFact Ruling: Michele Bachmann

In my last post I promised that I'd follow with ten excellent statements by Michele Bachmann never covered by PolitiFact.  Because, like the blog PolitiFact Bias, here at Politi-Psychotics, we "anticipate a pattern of ignored stories that puts PolitiFact in the role of serving the interests of the" RIGHT.  Unlike those who promise objective research proving PolitiFact liberal bias, I keep my promise.

So let’s get started on a Republican who should have been taken to task by fact-checkers for some things, but true to being in the role of serving the political interests of the right, PolitiFact didn’t select these items for fact-checks. Our subject speaker today is Mrs. “PolitiFact said everything I said was True” Michele Bachmann, and all that snarkiness Bryan White complains about that could have gone along with it. 

1. On the payroll tax cut extension:

And remember, the reason why President Obama proposed it in the first place was to create jobs. There isn’t one shred of evidence that that created jobs. So it defeated its purpose. 

Great one for economic specialist and Grading PolitiFact's favorite PolitiFact journalist Lou Jacobson. Except…except….he didn’t select this one! Why not?!!! It’s a no-brainer!

2. On the Keystone XL pipeline:

The delayed Keystone XL pipeline "would have brought at least 20,000 jobs,"

Another good one for “counts.” PolitiFact never addressed the “jobs” part of it at all, gross or net.

3. On solving the deficit and national debt crisis:

We need to simply tell people the facts, like Glenn Beck, with that chalkboard, that man can explain anything. I think if we give Glenn Beck the numbers, he can solve this.

So, can Glenn Beck solve the debt crisis with a chalkboard, like Bachmann says?

4. On marriage equality:

Because the immediate consequence, if gay marriage goes through, is that K-12 little children will be forced to learn that homosexuality is normal, natural and perhaps they should try it.

Will K-12 children be forced to learn that homosexuality is normal as a result of same sex marriage?

5. On global warming:

But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows carbon dioxide is a harmful gas. There isn’t one such study because carbon dioxide is not a harmful gas, it is a harmless gas. Carbon dioxide is natural. It is not harmful. It is part of Earth’s life cycle.

Lil White Lies Extra: Nothing to See WHERE?

In December, my conservative counterpart  told Eric Levine of Content in Reality (in the comments section) the following:

…I've been busy conducting a study that objectively verifies PolitiFact's ideological bias. I've got all the information for the national operation collected and sorted, and I'm in the process of readying it for publication

As I posted in early February, I’m still waiting! It’s going on three months now, and PolitiFact Bias’(PFB) “Research” page still has “nothing to see here” (all it says is “Coming Soon.”) This was supposed to be THE objective, definitive proof of PolitiFact’s left-wing ideological bias, so you’d think Bryan White would be very anxious to publish his findings for all to see! Now all we have is another futile attempt to prove selection bias by PolitiFact: noting claims with a cynical “Nothing to See Here” that it thinks PolitiFact is not selecting because of its bias.

To provide some contrast to the selection process PolitiFact uses to choose its subject matter, PFB introduces a new feature: Nothing To See Here.

Posts in this series will feature claims a non-liberal might find interesting enough to fact check. While we won't be surprised if PolitiFact checks some or perhaps even many of the issues we highlight, we still anticipate a pattern of ignored stories that puts PolitiFact in the role of serving the political interests of the left.

OK, well, Politi-Psychotics can do that liberal style too. I’m still trying to find a humorous double-entendre to title the categorization: it could be something innocuous like a “Where’s THIS Fact-Check PFB?” all the way to something riské like “I’ll Show PFB Just Where It Can Stick This Fact-Check.”

Nevertheless, posts in this series will feature claims a non-conservative “might find interesting enough to fact check.” After all, as I’ve pointed out 26 times already (the list shows 25 but I haven't added the most recent one yet), there’s plenty in the “vast ocean" of PolitiFact's 5,000-plus statements that could be construed as showing a conservative bias, so that it could as easily be said (although I feel paranoid doing so), that “these put PolitiFact in the role of serving the political interests” of the right.

But I must commend the PolitiFact Bias page on Facebook. The page has almost 50 fans, including Ann Coulter wannabe Michele Malkin. Which brings me back to my initial thoughts about Bryan White: WHY? Why such a vendetta against PolitiFact? What did they ever do to him that put him on such a mission?  I mean, maybe 200 or more mostly lengthy, detailed (although often incoherent) and very scathing critiques of PolitiFact rulings in a blog called Sublime Bloviations; an additional  "PolitiFact Bias" blog single-sourced to bring together only conservative critics of PolitiFact, a Facebook page for the PolitiFact Bias blog (indicating his eliciting support from other PolitiFact detractors), his partnership with PolitiFact disparager Deff Jeff Dyberg, along with a steady practice of attacking liberal commenters on PolitiFact's Facebook page with what seems to be the goal of pushing them away from posting comments.  This is a pretty serious indictment. 

Someday we may know. In the meantime, I will shortly follow with a post of ten excellent statements by Michele Bachmann that PolitiFact never bothered to fact-check that will most likely not be part of "Nothing to See Here" for very obvious reasons.

Lil White Lies Extra: The Unbearable Rightness of Bryan

My conservative counterpart recently offered up a 1,500-word tome essentially doing a finger-pointing “shame on you” to PolitiFact for “caving to the pressure” of its left-wing readers in its “flim-flam” ruling on Marco Rubio who stated that the majority of Americans are conservatives (from Mostly True to Half True).

He went into a diatribe on what appeared to be PolitiFact’s reliance on further polling numbers which he translated into this:

PolitiFact repented of its original ruling in advance of and regardless of new reporting, refused to admit any error in reaching the original conclusion and subsequently used the new reporting as a deliberate pretense to unveil a new ruling motivated by criticism from the left.

This is one of the best examples of the paranoid, conspiratorial thinking of conservatives I have ever encountered. PolitiFact’s change of the rulings is in and of itself admitting an error. On the top of that, if it was in fact motivated by criticism from the left to “cave” why did they not do it on the “2011 Lie of the Year” which created an outcry from the left of Biblical proportions? Maybe that would be too much to back down from, but there are many other rulings that PolitiFact has re-examined and left the same,  like here and here (and there have been Democrats downgraded as well).  What PolitiFact did here was realize—and admit--that with polls, the answer was not certain. As noted by Jonathan Bernstein of Washington Monthly:

One could look at it another way, which is to get beyond self-identification to go to whether people believe in conservative concepts or not. But then it gets very tricky, as can be seen easily in from the speech Politifact was fact-checking

This may be the best fit for Rubio's statement.

The Minnesota MPR PoliGraph is done by a former PolitiFact writer, Catherine Richert. It employs a category called “Inconclusive” which seems to correlate to the Half True rating.

PolitiFact might want to add something to its definitions which allude to the “inconclusive” nature of the Half True designation. It often uses the expression “on balance” in its “Our Ruling” finale. This would be a case of “on balance” we are at a “zero”—the negatives equal the positives. It’s sort of like something I’ve seen in legal responses that “PolitiFact can neither confirm nor deny the truth of this claim based on the 'facts.' "

But caving into liberal readers? PolitiFact occasionally caves to both sides. Sometimes it won’t cave. It’s the nature of the beast. Nobody’s perfect (unlike Bryan). But to accuse it of caving as some sort of proof of its left-wing bias is beyond the pale, and is not supported by the evidence of its corrections and updates.

And as I noted in my original "Grading PolitiFact Liberal Style" post on this ruling, this was more than about Rubio’s statement about conservatives: it was about the context of his remark. It was about all the other statements (most blatantly false) included with this that PolitiFact could have fact-checked, but chose not to, which my conservative counterpart chose to cherry-pickingly ignore as well—or I should say, as “nothing to see here” featured in his new blog series.  Except you won't see it in his series since it's  unseen fact-checks found false for a Republican.