In the waning days of 2011, Politifact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking site, brought the wrath of the liberal blog world upon itself when it dubiously—though not unexpectedly—chose as its “Lie of the Year” Democratic claims that House Republicans had voted to “end Medicare.” The uproar was just the latest wave of recrimination against the “fact-checking” enterprise, which has come in for scrutiny from outlets as diverse as Politico, The Weekly Standard, and Salon. But the rising tide of complaint seems not to trouble the fact-checkers—in addition to Politifact, the most prominent outlets include the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s Factcheck.org; The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” blog, now written by Glenn Kessler, who penned a defense of the genre as part of his own year-end list of “Pinocchios”; and The Associated Press—who can tell themselves, and their readers, that the grievances reflect partisan or tribal sentiments.
But if the fact-checkers won’t listen to their critics, here’s hoping they’ll listen to one of their declared friends, the press critic Jay Rosen, who offered one of the most acute critiques of Politifact’s choice. The Republican proposal would have phased out an open-ended, single-payer, fee-for-service health care program for senior citizens in favor of a very different program that would, in effect, give future seniors vouchers that could be used to purchase insurance on the private market. If you know what the plan would do, whether or not it amounts to “ending Medicare” is an endlessly debatable point. The potential objection to the Democrats’ language is that voters who didn’t know what the GOP plan entailed could be misled—which might make that language problematic, but doesn’t make it a lie, as Rosen noted in a Dec. 22 post. “I don’t think Politifact chose a lie of the year in 2011,” he wrote. “Their sights were set on something different, and they erred by calling it what they called it.”
In fact, the sights of the broader fact-checking movement often seem to be set on something different than strict truth and falsehood. And by acknowledging that, the fact-checkers might grapple with some important questions about the project in which they’re engaged—and might see more clearly the box in which they’ve trapped themselves.
To get at those questions, it’s helpful to think about why “fact-checking” has emerged now. I’d argue that it’s a response to many journalists’ perception that they are ever more outgunned by the increasing volume and sophistication of professional political communication. The fact-check is a tool with which reporters can rescue themselves from oblivion. And the morally freighted language invoked by full-time fact-checkers—true and false, fact and lie—is a weapon, to be wielded by journalists with authority against other, presumably less trustworthy types who make political claims. (At the same time, the framing implicitly exalts a certain class of “fact-finding” journalists above workaday hacks, as a peeved Ben Smith noted in a November story for Politico.)
And two cheers for that. In the face of more and more skillful spin, it’s encouraging that journalists are thinking about ways to be more than, in Todd Gitlin’s poignant phrase, “connoisseurs of our own bamboozlement.” I’m entirely in agreement with The New Republic’s Alec MacGillis, and the CJR editorial he cites, that there are problems with assigning specific teams of reporters to call bullshit on political nonsense, rather than expecting all journalists to do so in the course of their work. Still, it’s good to see the impulse to push back—to assert that good reporting can be an independent source of knowledge about the world—finding institutional expression.
But while the language of fact-checking is powerful, it’s also limited—and the fact-checkers’ tendency to stretch that language beyond its limitations undermines the credibility of their project.
Medicare is the biggest spending program the government has, so it's not at all surprising that they picked a lie about it as the lie of the year.
And as much as you want to spin your BS otherwise, saying the Ryan plan ended medicare IS a lie. I could hardly disagree with the plan more myself, I've blogged against it several times, but it IS a lie. It doesn't end it, it changes it.
You may think it should, but Politifact doesn't listen to partisan talking points in its considerations... which you clearly do here at CJR (I love a lot of your work, but everyone knows you folks have a leftward lean - you either aren't trying to hide it, or you don't care).
Does the Ryan plan end Medicare? No. Fact. Is Medicare hugely important? Yes. Hence, lie of the year.
Politifact didn't say that it was a good change, they said it was a lie to say it ended Medicare.
Seriously, liberals need to get over themselves on this. It was a talking point that was false. Grow up.
Solomon Kleinsmith
Rise of the Center
#1 Posted by Solomon Kleinsmith, CJR on Thu 5 Jan 2012 at 10:02 AM
Well done, Greg. I think you nailed it with this line, "You can’t report your way to the conclusion..." Right. You can get to the conclusion, and the conclusion can be valid, and your reasoning can be sound, but only by exercising your judgment and calling it that: a judgment not about what's true or false, but what's responsible and irresponsible, civil or reckless, or as I put it in my post, virtuous and disciplined vs. sloppy and. indulgent.
But here we get to the tricky part. Mainstream journalists still believe that "reporting" has an unassailable validity that making a judgment call does not. They still lust after the impression that, if you're strictly dealing in facts, you are innocent of having any politics. Politifact isn't part of the editorial page operation of the St. Pete Times, and my guess is the editors wouldn't want it to be.
So even though Bill Adair would gracefully concede that he and his colleagues "make calls" all the time, and because they are making calls they expect criticism, which arrives in buckets... it is still true that there remains within the language and rhetoric of Politifact the troublesome claim that you can report your way to the 2011 Lie of the Year. But you cannot. Not to the claim they chose.
Also, I think you overlooked something about Hemmingway's Weekly Standard piece. It pointed out some fine examples of fact checkers trying to fact check uncheckable claims, claims that are really arguments. That was good. That was fair. But then it wen't on to say that the whole fact checking enterprise that you write about here--Politifact, factcheck.org, Glenn Kessler, the AP, all of it--is just another case of liberal bias, thus signaling to conservative readers of the Weekly Standard that it could be wholly dismissed.
That, to me, was pernicious as hell.
#2 Posted by Jay Rosen, CJR on Thu 5 Jan 2012 at 10:08 AM
Seriously, liberals need to get over themselves on this. It was a talking point that was false. Grow up.
Some conservatives need to get over themselves too and grow up. They've made exactly the same point that Solomon falsely associates only with liberal writers.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/286301/re-mediscare-2011-s-lie-year-robert-verbruggen
#3 Posted by Jay Rosen, CJR on Thu 5 Jan 2012 at 10:18 AM
As I wrote here:
http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/testing_the_truth-o-meter.php
"Yeah. sure the republican plan doesn't END medicare, it only ENDS medicare as a provider of coverage and institutes a voucher system instead. A voucher system that doesn't rise with the cost of medical inflation (which the republicans do nothing to rein in). Their plan, which the republicans would happily put in place if they could convince the electorate that they aren't trying to attack new deal programs and entitlements and that it's the democrats who are trying to cut medicare:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/sep/20/60-plus-association/medicare-cuts-health-care-law-will-hurt-seniors-sa/
(thanks politicrap) wouldn't end medicare, it would just convert medicare into "medicare advantage" without a public option and then offload the growing costs of medical coverage onto seniors who are about to face cuts in their social security and increases in ages of eligibility again IF the republicans get their way.
So the republicans wouldn't be FORCING people to work, because the elderly always have the option of starving and dying.
And that's why politijunk calls the democrats a bunch of liars with their pants on fiars because you shouldn't mess around with words like FORCE and END in a political ad. You should be more nuanced, like the truth-o-meter's barely true republicans.
What a joke."
#4 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 5 Jan 2012 at 11:16 AM
@Jay Rosen,
Thanks for the kind words. And your second graf sounds right to me.
Re: Hemingway, I agree with you, and maybe I should have said so above. I don't mean to endorse his wholesale rejection of the enterprise -- in fact, I'm hoping to flag a couple strong recent fact-check items in the next day or two. But he did identify some good particular examples of the "fact-check" frame gone astray.
#5 Posted by Greg Marx, CJR on Thu 5 Jan 2012 at 11:54 AM
Hey neat, politicrap went back and changed their barely true rating to a mostly false, via the internet way back machine and the bottom of their link today:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/sep/20/60-plus-association/medicare-cuts-health-care-law-will-hurt-seniors-sa/
"Because it leaves critical facts out of its description in a way that gives a misleading impression, we rate the statement Barely True."
So they get to do partisan political damage during a campaign and then clean up their tracks after by switching a graphic? Who's watching the watchers?
#6 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 5 Jan 2012 at 12:02 PM
Great piece, @Greg. Politifact and its clones have long since proven that they are not honest actors. The whole thing seemed like a good idea, but you are right, Adair and company have veered into arbiters of what is acceptable discourse (to them) rather than their original franchise of impartial fact-checking.
As it is, when a journalist relies on a Politifact link to prove a point, he demonstrates that 1) he is too lazy to check his own facts and 2) he is insecure in his own abilities and therefore, not a credible writer.
There are two major flaws with these "fact" checking enterprises. One is the arbitrary choice of subjects. There is no rhyme or reason to why they choose to "fact" check someone's opinion, and not "fact" check someone's assertion of quantifiable fact. It seems like whatever makes Bill Adair mad gets the treatment. Whatever the reason, the arbitrary nature of what gets picked for the treatment invalidates them as any kind of credible arbiter of fact.
The second major flaw is the "rulings" themselves. They are arbitrary and often bear no relationship to the excellent research behind the question. I suppose they use these arbitrary rulings to protect themselves from charges of bias, but they are silly and inane, and not worthy material for a serious journalist. They reflect only the arrogant conceit of the arbiter -- Kessler, Adair among the worst -- and I can't imagine why a serious journalist would substitute these men's opinion for his own good judgment.
It's a pity, though, because the Politifact staff does some excellent and comprehensive research on those questions that they decide to address. A journalist would retain his credibility, I think, by using that research and doing his own analysis, rather than just quoting Bill Adair's opinion and saying "See?? Nyah nyah!" Journalists risk their own credibility, such as it is, when they do that. Many, I have noticed, however, are indifferent to that prospect.
It does help readers to narrow the list of journalists who should be taken seriously, though. So Politifact is a really valuable service in that respect.
#7 Posted by James, CJR on Thu 5 Jan 2012 at 12:14 PM
I'm disappointed that in a generally good piece, Greg Marx obfuscated and dodged on the issue of whether the original Ryan Medicare plan would end Medicare, or at least end Medicare as we know it. Two weeks ago, I talked to two nationally known Medicare experts, one of whom supports the Medicare voucher/premium support concept and one who is critically sympathetic to it, and both stated that the Democrats' claim that the Ryan plan would end Medicare is indeed accurate. Rather than arbitrating semantics, fact checkers like PolitiFact should engage in a close policy analysis of the Ryan plan to suss out its likely effects on Medicare beneficiaries. I and others have done that. Any proposal that would shift costs to seniors to the extent that many would likely become uninsured or not able to afford basic health care amounts to ending the universal coverage program known as Medicare. That's not demagoguery. PolitiFact and other fact checkers need to rely on common-sense understandings of political claims rather than getting all Talmudic on us.
#8 Posted by Harris Meyer, CJR on Thu 5 Jan 2012 at 01:31 PM
Sorry, I meant to include a link to my 2011 analysis of the Ryan plan. Here it is.
http://managedhealthcareexecutive.modernmedicine.com/mhe/News+Analysis/Ryan-pushes-defined-contribution-for-Medicare/ArticleStandard/Article/detail/724487
#9 Posted by Harris Meyer, CJR on Thu 5 Jan 2012 at 01:35 PM
Hey Greg --
Interesting piece. I think it's useful to discuss when we might have over-reached in deciding to a fact-check. But I think by highlighting a few well-publicized controversies you miss the broader context for our work.
I'm sure anybody can find some disagreements in our large volume of work. PolitiFact has now published nearly 5,000 fact-checks, which is more than any other news organization in the history of journalism.
A lot of the criticism after Lie of the Year went beyond that choice to declare that fact-checking as a whole is not valuable. It also spawned a lot of over-the-top headlines. So I'm glad to see your comment that you soon will be highlighting some valuable fact-checking.
A few other responses to your piece:
Not everything is true or false ("As the media critic Dan Kennedy wrote last month in a terrific item at The Huffington Post, 'politicians don’t flat-out lie as frequently as we might suppose.'”)
True. Many things are misleading without being completely false, and fact-checking is a great way to call that out. That's why we created the Truth-O-Meter, which has six levels from True to Pants on Fire.
We use gradations of true or false as a full employment act for fact checkers. ("But the volume, and the consequence, of that material just isn’t great enough to sustain what Kennedy aptly calls “a veritable fact-checking industry.”)
False. There is never a day when we come to work and say, "Oh, darn, nothing to check."
The line between fact and opinion is sometimes hard to discern.
True. And we welcome discussions of whether we draw the line correctly. But still, our work adds value to the discourse.
The Medicare ad’s outrageous imagery buttresses a larger point the fact-checkers want to make: the “end Medicare” line was a bit of Democratic demagoguery designed to scare seniors, which has no place in responsible political debate.
True. It was demagoguery, which is why it warranted calling out.
Fact-checkers have reached for the clear language of truth and falsehood as a moral weapon, a way to invoke ideas of journalists as almost scientific fact-finders.
False. In a new media age, we've created a tool to help readers understand the claims being made by politicians. We draw our own conclusions about these claims, but by linking to our sources, we also allow readers to look at what we looked at in making our decisions and to draw their own conclusions. Because it's not science: It's journalism.
#10 Posted by Bill Adair, CJR on Thu 5 Jan 2012 at 03:09 PM
Bill, "a few well-publicized controversies"?? This was your marquee judgment call of the year. That's not worth focusing on? Come on. You defend your judgment calls by pointing out that you have various gradations of "lies." But why make such dubious judgment calls at all? Why not just present the evidence and let readers decide? Glenn Kessler of the Post called your approach a marketing and promotion technique that is academically indefensible. And when you call the Democrats' statement about the Ryan Medicare plan demagoguery, what comes to mind is Trudy Lieberman's constant exhortation for journalists to go out and talk to ordinary Americans about how policies and proposals impact them. Polls showed that Americans reacted very negatively to the Ryan plan. If your squad of reporters went out and explained the Ryan plan to regular people and asked them for their opinion about whether it would end Medicare, you'd get a very different take than from talking to your usual policy shop and political sources. Then I think you'd find that the Democrats' critique is not demagoguery, it is consistent with what regular people think about the plan. I would call your approach and that of most mainstream media plutogoguery.
#11 Posted by Harris Meyer, CJR on Thu 5 Jan 2012 at 05:05 PM
@James,
I’m glad you liked the piece, but I didn’t intend it as—and I don’t think it reads as—a wholesale repudiation of the fact-checking enterprise. I said I hope the fact-checkers listen to friends like Jay Rosen, who are offering what seems to me to be constructive criticism, and I meant it.
@Harris Meyer,
I “dodged” on that issue because, in the end, I wasn’t trying to convince anyone of the rightness of my particular views about the “end Medicare” line. As it happens, I thought the Democrats’ language was justified, for pretty much the reasons you outline above. Other people whom I respect, and who were not necessarily sympathetic to the Ryan plan, found it less so. I see where they’re coming from, and I tried to acknowledge their perspective as well.
The point I was trying to make, in the passage Jay Rosen flags above, is that this isn’t an argument that can be settled by reporting out “the facts.” It all depends on what you think is captured by the word “Medicare,” and also your views about what political actors owe to their opponents, and their audience, as they advance their claims in the public sphere. That’s a fine argument to have, but I’d agree that it verges into the Talmudic.
#12 Posted by Greg Marx, CJR on Thu 5 Jan 2012 at 05:34 PM
@Bill Adair,
First of all, thanks much for reading, and for your reply. A few responses to your responses:
True. Many things are misleading without being completely false, and fact-checking is a great way to call that out.
Many things are misleading without being completely false. Which is why, sometimes, a “fact-check” model that’s built on divisions between truth and falsehood—even one that allows for gradations along that spectrum—isn’t the best way to call that out. I don’t want to speak for Brendan Nyhan here, but I think it’s noteworthy that he and his co-authors called their site Spinsanity, rather than choosing a name that had “fact” in it. That makes sense to me, because how misleading a claim is may not map neatly onto a distinction between fact and not-fact. True facts can be marshaled in support of a misleading argument. When that happens, I absolutely think journalists should present counter-arguments. I just don’t think the language of fact and not-fact, truth and falsehood, is the best way to do it.
True. It was demagoguery, which is why it warranted calling out.
Thanks for confirming my sense that this is part of what bothered you about the ad. But what’s the relationship between calling out what you see as demagoguery and “fact-checking”? Is demagogic speech inherently false? If so, does that mean that people who disagree with you about what constitutes demagoguery—like Harris Meyer at #11—are refusing to see the facts?
John McQuaid wrote today that he wishes I had pushed harder against the idea that it’s a good thing to promote civil political discourse. I see his point—and as I wrote, I tend to draw the line about what’s “civil” in a different place than the fact-check sites do. But if Politifact and its peers want to make calling out demagoguery part of their mission, I don’t think I’ll complain, even if I’ll often disagree with your judgments. I just wish you would acknowledge that that’s a different project than “fact-checking”—or at the very least, show that you understand why so many other people see it that way.
False. In a new media age, we've created a tool to help readers understand the claims being made by politicians…
I don’t want to be too cute here, but I think your “False” kind of proves my point. I offered an interpretation about what’s happening here. You rejected that argument and offered your own account. As is your right! And as it happens, I think your interpretation is totally fair and legitimate, and I understand why you reject mine. But that doesn’t make mine “false.”
#13 Posted by Greg Marx, CJR on Thu 5 Jan 2012 at 05:37 PM
Politifact
suffers from two fatal flaws
first, it sets itself up as a "fair" judge of "fact." but it is as subject to the lies and propaganda as anyone else.
second, the whole art of lying is to lie while telling the strict truth. politifact seems to endorse the "it all depends on what the meaning of is is" defense.
a lie is a deliberate attempt to deceive a person... to that persons hurt. you can do this and never say anything that is not "technically" true.
Politifact is reliably ignorant and wrong about Social Security.. but that's not surprising. there as been a billion dollar campaign to deceive the people.. and the President... conducted by very clever people over some twenty years. I would not expect the average journalist to penetrate the lies without help. What has surprised me is their complete inability to profit from help when it is available.
Calling themselves "fact checkers" is in fact a lie. Worse, they are lying to themselves.
#14 Posted by dale coberly, CJR on Thu 5 Jan 2012 at 05:49 PM
I still want to know what the deal was with that Winston Smithesque revision of republican medicare claims from barely true to mostly false.
That's shoddy sloppy work Billy boy.
#15 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 5 Jan 2012 at 06:00 PM
A lot of great thought in this piece and the comment section, and the subject is always timely. Thanks for the post.
The core issue appears to be more reflective of how our society and culture creates an atmosphere that nurtures fact-checkers to check the validity of arguments that are virtually unverifiable.
Greg, you alluded to this: "So why have the fact-checkers ventured into uncheckable territory? Kennedy explains it as a simple matter of supply and demand—to keep content flowing to their sites, the operations need to expand their reach beyond clear untruths. There’s probably some truth to that."
I think there is more than "some" truth to that. The fact-checkers are merely engaging in legitimizing one debate over another the same way that media has for the past century or more. The new danger is this omnipotent name (fact-checker), and, as you say, their powerful language. But really this is nothing new.
In the above comments, Bill Adair states that "PolitiFact has now published nearly 5,000 fact-checks, which is more than any other news organization in the history of journalism." Certainly that is a worthy achievement, but does quantity of fact-checking equal legitimacy?
I would argue no, it doesn't. I would also argue that our constant desire for more, faster and now pushes these orgs to extend their reach. Certainly there are no shortages of facts to check, but when it comes to politicians, these people often speak in such vague platitudes to appeal to everyone that their “facts” become impossible to verify.
I’m curious to know whether the industry of fact-checking would be better served as an on-demand service that responded to community requests, rather than trying to stand alone by, as Greg says, “assigning specific teams of reporters to call bullshit on political nonsense, rather than expecting all journalists to do so in the course of their work.”
Politifact and like-minded operations certainly have value. I would like to see that value maximized by focusing on the "journalism of assumption," which leads to grand confabulations that then become part of common knowledge (the water crisis, fiat currency, carbon credits, global warming, justification for war, etc). Or focus on fact-checking opinions masked as fact in advertisements and press releases. What a whirlwind that would start!
David DesRoches
http://savingethicaljournalism.blogspot.com/
#16 Posted by David DesRoches, CJR on Thu 5 Jan 2012 at 06:18 PM
help for solomon:
if you bring your Ford into my shop for a tune up and I rip out the engine and transmission and replace them with a bicycle chain and pedals
and you claim that i "destroyed" your car
and i reply, nonsense, see.. it stll has the Ford logo, and the sheet metal, and you can still use it for transportation...
which one of us is "lying"?
but just a word to the Democrats: if you rip the guts out of Social Security by cutting off it's funding and replace it with deficit spending
and say that restoring its funding is a "huge tax hike"
which one of us is lying?
#17 Posted by dale coberly, CJR on Thu 5 Jan 2012 at 06:18 PM
@Greg -- thanks for acknowledging. I understand that your piece wasn't meant as a repudiation of the fact-checking industry; in fact, it was just the opposite.
What I meant to do, and perhaps without as much clarity as I could have, was to point out that Politifact is not an honest player, and journalists shouldn't substitute Politifact's gimmicky pronouncements for their own analysis and fact-checking. Many journos tend to use Politifact links as a weapon -- "Nyah nyah! Politifact says so!" -- and they impair their credibility when they do so. You addressed that briefly in your piece, and I wanted to expand on it.
Journos and other writers would do well to treat Politifact like they do Wikipedia -- quick and easy to get to, with sometimes-helpful synopsis and many useful links, but not the be-all and end-all of political truth. Because they are not that at all, any more than Wikipedia is an authoritative, credible source. But Politifact does do a nice job of aggregating original sources on many political questions.
So can the pompous pronouncements, Mr. Adair, and let the research stand on its own.
#18 Posted by James, CJR on Thu 5 Jan 2012 at 07:55 PM
I should add ...
We already have the Official Civility Police; in the blogosphere it is called High Broderism, after the most egregious of handwringing, pearl-clutching of the genre and the genre is ubiquitous among those elite political journalists who have been blessed (or cursed) with a bigtime pundit gig. Mr Broder is gone but High Broderism lives on.
I'm not sure that we need yet another Office of Political Civility in the form of Politifact. At least Mr. Broder didn't stoop to calling his hit jobs 'liars' like Mr. Adair does. In Politifact, the Official Civility Police and Arbiter of All Political Discourse has itself become uncivil and out of bounds.
Irony.
#19 Posted by James, CJR on Thu 5 Jan 2012 at 08:18 PM
I am amused that the author and CJR feel it is time to let us plebes in on the great secret: that fact-checking organizations don't really confine themselves to checking facts, and that many of them are highly selective about what they fact-check (ever see any of them fact-check Obama's statement that he sat in Rev. Wright's church for 20 years and didn't hear a word of racism? No, me neither). I am just astounded at this revelation.
Here's a fact for you: anyone with the slightest discernment has been aware of the "fact-check hustle" for years. Another fact is that this response from CJR was occasioned by one of the first times any of the hi-profile fact-checkers has crapped on Democrats in any significant way. Exactly who do you people think you are fooling?
The fact-checking industry is simply a new tactic for helping liberals by lying by omission, since the shenanigans in that department in the MSM have finally gotten too blatant to credibly ignore.
#20 Posted by sherlock, CJR on Fri 6 Jan 2012 at 12:02 PM
Since you agree with Rosen's logic (that changing a system over a period of time to another system...which may or may not work better...amounts to ending that system) does the Columbia Journalism Review agree that allowing same sex marriage "ends" marriage?
#21 Posted by Geoff Milke, CJR on Fri 6 Jan 2012 at 01:11 PM
Please point me to where I said changing a system over a period of time to another system...which may or may not work better...amounts to ending that system.
I think you made that up. I did not take a position on that question.
What I've said is that many people make that argument, it is a valid argument to make, and that Politifact cannot resolve the conflict between that argument and its own conclusion on the basis of one being false and the other one being true.
I also said that it was valid for Politifact to warn Democrats who are critical of the Ryan plan about speaking less exactly than they could have and thereby running the risk of scaring some people unnecessarily.
#22 Posted by Jay Rosen, CJR on Fri 6 Jan 2012 at 02:58 PM
the minute politifact announce their nominees for "lie of the year," everyone paying attention knew that "ends medicare" was their winner for an obvious reason: they couldn't give the award to a republican for the third year in a row. it was all politics on their part. the end.
the fact that they had to offer up a long winded defense/explanation as to WHY it was a lie [depends on the meaning of the word "end"], took it out of "pants on fire" territory, therefore disqualifying it for "lie of the year."
#23 Posted by dj spellchecka, CJR on Fri 6 Jan 2012 at 03:18 PM
"The fact-checking industry is simply a new tactic for helping liberals by lying by omission, since the shenanigans in that department in the MSM have finally gotten too blatant to credibly ignore."
Dude, politians lie and fact checking works when it calls out those lies both left and right. The problem is that conservatives use lies as their means of breathing, thus an honest factchecker will appear imbalanced due to the unbalanced nature of the right wing side of the political spectrum. So, in order to appear balanced, politifact sacrifices a bit of their honesty - which is really the story of most major press enterprises these days.
Or, as George Packer recently put it:
http://m.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/01/santorum-and-the-republicans.html
"But political journalism—unlike war reporting [me and packer differ on this]—long ago stopped being about what is true or important. Sometime in the nineteen-eighties, reporters began covering politics like sports and entertainment. How many times and ways can you say that the Republican Party has descended into unreality and extremism before you lose your viewers and readers?"
"does the Columbia Journalism Review agree that allowing same sex marriage "ends" marriage?"
That depends. If I'm 40 and I wanted to get married at 65, could I marry a woman? If that option isn't available than I guess that marriage "as we know it" has ended.
Let's try to avoid the stupid semantic tricks, kay?
#24 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 6 Jan 2012 at 05:02 PM
And let's be clear, the problem with politifact and others isn't that they had criticism of the claim, it isn't wholey true to say without qualifier that the proposal "ends medicare" and it's the job of a factchecker to be pedantic. If this was rated "barely true" - hell "mostly false" would have been alright - there would not have been such an uproar.
They made it Lie of the Year.
That's not being pedantic, that's being a "both sides do it, suck it libs" a-hole.
Bill, you can twist it any way you want, but you know what you're looking at when you stare into your bathroom mirror. And the truth is, that must suck for you.
#25 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 6 Jan 2012 at 05:23 PM
Mr. Adair begs us to look beyond the "well-publlicized cases" like his "Lie of the Year" to the "broader context" of his work. Okay then.
Mr. Adair's Politifact decided that this statement was worthy of fact-checking:
Tim Kaine, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said the following to Ed Henry, who noted that Obama's approval ratings had dropped 6 percentage points in 2010. Kaine replied, "Relatively, if you look at the president’s mid-term numbers compared to other presidents in their mid-term, he’s fine."
Yes, Politifact actually fact-checked that statement. Kaine was awarded a half-true. First of all, why in heaven's name would anyone bother to FACT-check an assertion that approval ratings were "fine"? What the hell is the point of that? If you want any evidence that Politifact is trivial and irrelevant, here it is right here. And how can someone come up with an official determination that the assertion is HALF true. What would make it TRUE? What would make it FALSE? It's just a silly, pointless exercise.
Oh, but it gets worse. Kaine also got a half-true with this:
"Kentucky Democrats got more votes than Republican Rand Paul, DNC chair says"
The statement was factually true. Rand Paul, the Republican, got "almost 207,000 votes" in his race. Jack Conway, the Democrat, got 229,000 votes in his race. Okay? So Kaine stated a quantifiable fact. A provable, undeniable fact. Yet he got a HALF-true because Politifact decided that Rand Paul was going to win because Kentucky leans Republican, so it was irrelevant that Conway got more votes in the primary. Again, why Mr. Adair wanted to FACT-check a statement like that is beyond my comprehension; it is a trivial, unimportant statement. But if he is going to FACT-check trivial bullshit, he ought to at the very least award true, factual statements as "true."
So, there you have it. That's the "broader context" of Mr. Adair's profitable little enterprise. Profitable, ego-boosting what with the Pulitzer and all, but increasingly petty and irrelevant.
#26 Posted by James, CJR on Sat 7 Jan 2012 at 12:02 AM
Greg Marx's thoughful article covered the subject almost completely, but herewith three suggested additions.
First, fact checkers must determine whether the facts are true or false, but truth seekers must also ask what facts were left out -- and that decision depends in part on the truth seeker's values, including political and ideological ones.
Second, whether politicians are lying, or lying to themselves as to us, or are saying whatever comes into their heads is really about their character. Consequently, it is not an issue for fact checkers but for reporters, requiring research and probably investigative reporting.
Third, at some point fact checking will have to confront the question of what is a fact, which involves epistemology and other philosophical fields, but thats for later.
#27 Posted by Herbert J Gans, CJR on Tue 10 Jan 2012 at 11:20 AM
"Does the Ryan plan end Medicare? No. Fact. Is Medicare hugely important? Yes. Hence, lie of the year."
No, Solomon Kleinsmith, you are wrong. The Ryan plan DOES end Medicare. Following this up by creating a new program to inherit the Medicare name does not chance that fact. The "new Medicare" under Paul Ryan's plan would have nothing in common with the current Medicare. It would differ in purpose, in implementation and in effect. It would not be a single-payer health care system for seniors. It would be a program of handing out health insurance coupons. This new program inheriting the current Medicare program's name would not change the fact that the current Medicare would be gone, thus "ending Medicare." All Paul Ryan did was use a word game to make it look like he wasn't ending Medicare.
By PolitiFact's "logic", if I took away your house but gave you a cardboard box and called it your house, that would mean you didn't really lose your house.
#28 Posted by Cal, CJR on Wed 25 Jan 2012 at 10:28 PM