Truth Index Extra: Who's On First

Since I do the PolitiFact (PF) Truth Index in a variety of ways as permitted by my data, I thought it might be interesting to use my conservative counterpart’s so-called “PoF” (Pants on Fire) bias factor in a way he may not have thought of. It seems to me he should have calculated this bias factor not for PolitiFact National as a whole but for its writers, to see if the results point to a person who may be “liberally biased” with "subjective" judgment more than the others. After all, for him it should not be what but who--PolitiFact National is 74% more likely to make a False ruling Pants on Fire for Republicans, according to him…well, then, who at PolitiFact National is more likely to relegate a Republican False ruling to Pants on Fire?

Since I've kept track of the PF ruling writers since the beginning of 2011, this chart represents 18 months of data up until June 30, 2012, the Falses and Pants on Fires from roughly 3,000 rulings. These totaled 790 rulings for Democrats and Republicans; here is a graph of the top ten writers representing a little over 55% of these 790 rulings, starting at 107 for Lou Jacobson down to 23 for PF Rhode Island’s C. Eugene Emery (on average about 44 False rulings each). They are arranged in order of “PoF Bias” lowest to highest.

Click to enlarge:  Only writers with 20 or more False/Pants on Fire rulings were included.

Aaron Sharockman (PolitiFact Florida) and W. Gardner Selby (PolitiFact Texas) never assigned a Pants on Fire to a Democrat during that period of time. I jury-rigged their scores because Excel doesn’t recognize zero divisors….by adding one to the calculated Republican and Democrat percentages . My suggestion to the PolitiFact Bias blog would be to take a look at their False rulings on Democrats to see if they are “fair” because if the vast majority of them are, he has a problem. Of course, he has a problem with the entire bogus formula he came up with, but that’s another discussion.

PolitiFact Georgia’s Willoughby Mariano should be PolitiFact Bias’ new little friend (or maybe a thorn in their side since she’s doing the opposite of what their formula is supposed to reveal). From 2011 through the end of June she was 78% more likely to assign Pants on Fire to a Democrat—almost the opposite of the percentage calculated for PF National. She also makes PolitiFact Georgia the most Republican friendly (in terms of the “PoF” factor), even though its overall Truth Index favors the Democrats. And to think she was actually a “co-winner of a National Headliner Award in investigative journalism for a 2002 series of stories about exploited workers at theme parks”—sounds like a bleeding heart liberal to me! Second to Mariano was PolitiFact Wisconsin’s Dave Umhoefer, who was 35% more likely to assign Pants on Fires to a Democrat.

Interestingly the chart points to the person who the anti-PolitiFact blog seems to have the most beef with as seen in its Grading PolitiFact critiques—Louis Jacobson. He’s the most frequent assigner of Pants on Fire to Republicans before Republicans-only Sharockman and Selby. I also looked at Angie Drobnic Holan in terms of National versus Florida for the Pants on Fire assignment to Republicans. Unfortunately, there were only 11 done for PF Florida and ALL Pants on Fire went to Republicans at a rate of 36%; in the case of National she was 48% more likely to assign a Pants on Fire to a Republican. For Sharockman, who as noted never assigned a Pants on Fire to a Democrat, he was almost twice as likely to assign a Pants on Fire for National as he was for PF Florida (40% versus 21.1%).

Here’s a look at the bias factor at the PolitiFact State level. In this case it is for all data through 6/30/2012 because all of it had a state designation (unlike the writers).  Willoughby Mariano’s Pants on Fire reticence (as well as that of the PolitiFact Wisconsin writers) may have contributed to the balance tipping in favor of the Republicans at these two states, whereas the rest, for the most part, heavily favor the Democrats, as in the chart by writers. 

Click to enlarge:  Note "ALL" PoF factor of 1.32 has increased from 1.21 calculated for data through 12/31/11

All this says is that it appears more “ridiculous” statements by Republicans come out at the National level. In reading over previous posts on Truth Index averages as applied to PF states, I came across one particular reason from several sources as to the best theory as to why PolitiFact National’s Lou Jacobson and Angie Drobnic Holan assign so many Pants on Fire to Republicans.   For example, Steve, who made a similar analysis to mine in 2011 at his blog Quibbling Potatoes:

For Democrats, PolitiFact National averages very close to the state average. For Republicans, PolitiFact National scores much lower than the state average. Since the National branch of PolitiFact tends to analyze statements with a national policy scope more than the state branches do, one can look at this fact a couple of different ways. One is that Republicans with a national scope lie more often than their state and local counterparts do. Or, PolitiFact National has an anti-Republican partisan bias. Or perhaps it could be due to some other factor. Maybe Republican pants-on-fire ratings drive more traffic to the website through links on Facebook and liberal blogs, and PolitiFact’s editors could be motivated to sample more of these statements than other types.

Here’s a similar response from Paul Ustrand, commenting on a published response by PolitiFact to the Eric Ostermeier study:

...I would assume the statements being investigated would be the most controversial or heavily covered stories, and those judged to be significant given whatever debate is taking place at the time. Obviously Republicans are going fair poorly since they have tight noise machine echo chamber high school debate approach to facts and information. This is well documented, from Fox to Clear Channel. The problem with Ostermeier's complaint is that it assumes Politifact could be checking other facts that Republicans are getting right or that would score higher. Well, if he Ostermeier wants to make that claim he needs to do more than compare numbers, he needs to compare actual rating, and make his own comparative selection that demonstrate parity of inaccurate statements instead of a Republican dominance.

Finally, some possibilities (never looked at by White) from Eric Levine at his blog Content in Reality:

For instance, it could be the case that the loudest and most media-covered Republicans are more likely to not only lie, but tell ridiculous lies, than the loudest and most media-covered Democrats (sensationalism, my friend). And there are many reasons why this would be expected. …Just like the liberal anti-war protestors during the years of the Republican majority, minority parties may be more prone to extremism in protest of the other party's agenda. All these factors could suggest that a small group of loud media-covered Republicans are likely to blame for the discrepancy. However as with the former explanation, the data alone does not necessarily suggest this is the correct explanation. Further research outside the grade of PolitiFact would need to be performed.

In other words, until it can be adequately substantiated, "liberal bias" is only a speculation as to why more statements are deemed Pants on Fire for Republicans (here's another reason not mentioned above which I looked into recently). I labeled this post for "Liberal Proof of PolitiFact (Liberal) Bias" only because of that speculation.