PolitiFact Detractors: WatchDog? More Like Watch-Mutt!

The latest in PolitiFact detracting, in this case  PolitiFact Ohio detracting, comes from something called Watchdog.Org which is part of “The Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.” Of course, my conservative counterpart starts out his post with the Franklin Center’s honorable-sounding name as the sentence subject to give his post some false stature even though the Watchdog.Org website includes this disclaimer:

The Franklin Center is not responsible for the information that appears on the watchdog sites. The organization serves as a capacity builder and networking agent for independent, state-based journalists and organizations…”

Most of the PolitiFact-is-opinion-parading-as-fact series they’ve done, by two “journalists” Jon Cassidy and Will Swaim, consist of some very narrow interpretations of the ruling along with a lot of condescension toward PolitiFact….about adding numbers, understanding economics, finance, etc., as if the authors were some sort of experts themselves, for which there was pretty scant evidence. Usually only one link, to the PolitiFact ruling, was included in their “article.”

PolitiFact Bias, however, takes no notice of the excessive snark (their own name for it) and does their usual cheer leading routine: “Jon Cassidy blasts PolitiFact Ohio….” in one and “absolutely clobbers” them in another. I guess snark is okay by writers for the “Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity” when talking about PolitiFact, but a slight implication of it from PolitiFact is a seering indictment of bias.

In some of them, Swaim or Cassidy argue the difference between True and Mostly True. Now, to find something categorically false, or to argue the degree of falsity, is one thing, but the True to Mostly True or vice versa is sort of like arguing which horse is the best horse in the glue factory. I’m only going to cover a few of their criticisms here, but will include links to all of them. I liken some of the writing to my own: I consider myself an amateur at “journalism” because I have no education or training in it. In other words, Cassidy and Swaim aren’t very professional….well maybe professional hacks, you never know. They all start with the identical copy and paste intro:

PolitiFact Ohio practices opinion journalism under the guise of fact-checking. They often get things wrong — particularly, we’ve noticed, in their coverage of U.S. senate candidates Sherrod Brown (Democrat) and Josh Mandel (Republican). So we bring you PolitiFact or Fiction, a semi-regular review of pronouncements issued by PolitiFact Ohio, a blog run by staff at the Cleveland Plain Dealer and supported by Politifact.com.

They hit the ground running with their penchant for snark in the very first critique by Jon Cassidy, comparing two statements related to the same subject by Josh Mandel, a Republican candidate (State of Ohio Treasurer) running against Democrat Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, with “Does anyone at Cleveland Plain Dealer understand finance?”   It's in the flimsyTrue-or-Mostly-True venue first mentioned.

Politi-Score: PF Ohio and the Truth Index

PolitiFact (PF) Ohio (Stephen Koff) recently did a sort of self-congratulatory one-year anniversary article on the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s foray into doing Truth-O-Meter rulings in partnership with PolitiFact. This was one of the first times I saw more “raw” numbers come out for Democrats and Republicans, as well as the defending of the selection of more Republican statements, Koff’s reason being the same as that I had stated previously: there’s just more Republicans in office since the elections of late 2010, especially in Ohio.

My numbers did not correlate precisely with PF Ohio because of how I had compiled them in 2010, which was by person/entity since the beginning of PF in 2007, not ruling by ruling to differentiate the state. I started doing it ruling by ruling in 2011. So, for example, I had seven more rulings for Dennis Kucinich and three more for Sherrod Brown, because PF National was doing rulings on them prior to PF Ohio’s existence. In addition, there were a few people and groups who, as I just noted in a previous post on light bulbs, do not have an affiliation indicated by PF, when they should. When PF doesn’t show an affiliation, I will do some research to determine one, and if the connection to one party is crystal clear, I will assign it as such.

So, I will just go with PF Ohio’s numbers. Here’s Democrats and Republicans, this time in the mobile app format with the Truth Index ("Score") calculated.

My conservative counterpart (Bryan White) just published an exchange he had with Robert Higgs, who appears to be the lead journalist for PF Ohio, and who responded to some of the commenters to the PF Ohio article. Higgs published this reply concerning PolitiFact bias, which he thereupon immediately published in his blog:

What I can tell you about PolitiFact Ohio is that in our first year we did 81 Truth-O-Meter rulings on statements from Democrats and 103 from Republicans (more on the GOP side principally because Kasich is governor and there's twice as many Republicans in power as Democrats).

The average grade for Democrats: Half True

The average grade for Republicans: Half True

Some say the Texas Rangers have a better team batting average than the Seattle Mariners.

What I can tell you about it is that right now both teams are in the American League.

The Seattle Mariners are batting roughly .250.

The Texas Rangers are batting roughly .250

Bryan White responded in a post through his blog the way I might have, except I would not have used the Rangers-Mariners analogy…I would have used the Truth Index, the actual measure, to show Higgs that there was a statistically significant variance even though they’re both “roughly Half True.”

Higgs isn't saying anything. The "average" when there are only six positions on the scale is a very rough approximation, just like rounding the Rangers' batting average down from .272 and the Mariners' battering average up from .226. Is a difference of .46 statistically significant? You betcha. It's huge.

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Tax Break Mistakes

When my conservative counterpart *grades* PolitiFact, he occasionally employs his own version of the “slippery slope” analogy, attempting to make it appear a logical explanation for why PolitiFact’s rulings are in error. According to him, if the slippery slope is reasonable in each step of the slope, that makes it a legitimate argument. As I later noted, there should additionally be proof conclusive that these steps are indeed occurring (which in the case of “death panels” was not evident, and so failed the full test of legitimacy).

For this particular ruling on a statement by Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, the same slippery slope rationalization can be applied, and the “reasonableness” badge even more easily awarded. Using Bryan Whites’ own words:

One of the commonsense rules of charitable interpretation involves accepting a reasonable explanation from the person making the statement, at least to the point of granting the explanation the benefit of the doubt in a close contest of most plausible explanations.

Translated: Baffling with bullsh*t is perfectly reasonable! Whatever “plausible explanation” that’s buyable is acceptable. That’s how argument is done in Facebook commentary, so why not the same here.

Lil White Lies: I've been framed!

President Clinton: "My only regret in creating 23 million new jobs is that 2 million of those jobs were for right-wing pundits." That must be why we see 22 million and 21 million, no one knows how many right-wing pundits are actually in the number.

Joking aside, one of Sublime Bloviation’s conclusions to its review of a PolitiFact fact-check on President Clinton's statement above (as stated by Sherrod Brown) is “…it should be obvious that Brown's intended point--that tax cuts do not create jobs--cannot find reasonable support in the Clinton/Bush comparison.”

To expect PolitiFact (PF) to provide “reasonable support” for tax cuts not creating jobs was beyond the scope of their stated purpose: To verify Brown’s quantitative claim of 22 million jobs created during the Clinton years.

It should be noted that this claim is consistent with other PF reporting as well as FactCheck:

“…Clinton saw a gain of nearly 21 million jobs during his tenure (January 1993 - January 2001)…Certainly Clinton deserves some credit for that remarkable economic growth, but just as certainly he can't claim all the credit."