{"id":1772509,"date":"2022-12-12T12:40:29","date_gmt":"2022-12-12T17:40:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1772509"},"modified":"2022-12-12T12:49:09","modified_gmt":"2022-12-12T17:49:09","slug":"matt-palumbo-how-we-know-politifact-is-biased","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/matt-palumbo-how-we-know-politifact-is-biased\/","title":{"rendered":"Matt Palumbo: How We Know PolitiFact Is Biased"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fmatt-palumbo-how-we-know-politifact-is-biased%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1772509&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/original_Screenshot_2022-12-12_at_17.16.21.png\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\"   style=\"display:none\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"advertisment pb-5 text-center\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"col\">\n<div class=\"advertisment pb-5 text-center\"><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em><strong>This article is an excerpt from <a href=\"http:\/\/How the Left Hijacked and Weaponized the Fact-Checking Industry\">Matt Palumbo&#8217;s &#8216;Fact-Checking the Fact-Checkers&#8217;: How The Left Hijacked and Weaponized the Fact-Checking Industry<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>The existence of bias at PolitiFact has been studied and analyzed many times over the years\u2014and all with the same result.<\/p>\n<p>That so-called fact-checkers are just biased left-wing gatekeepers is obvious to anyone that\u2019s followed their track record, and PolitiFact in particular has done a poor job of concealing its partisanship. In one case they assigned different ratings to nearly identical statements based on the ideology of the person making them. When Ron Paul (a libertarian who was a registered Republican at the time) and Jim Webb (a Democrat) made nearly identical statements about the U.S. lacking income taxes prior to 1913 they received different rulings from the site. Ron Paul\u2019s statement was only determined to be \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politifact.com\/factchecks\/2012\/jan\/31\/ron-paul\/ron-paul-says-federal-income-tax-rate-was-0-percen\">Half True<\/a>,\u201d while Webb\u2019s was \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politifact.com\/factchecks\/2015\/aug\/24\/jim-webb\/jim-webb-says-us-didnt-have-income-taxes-until-191\">Mostly True<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In one amusing case of reality slapping them in the face, PolitiFact initially rated Obama\u2019s first-time campaign promise that \u201cif you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan\u201d claim as \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politifact.com\/factchecks\/2008\/oct\/09\/barack-obama\/obamas-plan-expands-existing-system\/\">True.<\/a>\u201d PolitiFact would later have to reevaluate that claim, which they determined to be the \u201clie of the year\u201d in 2013.<\/p>\n<p>Both the article rating Obama\u2019s \u201cif you like your plan you can keep your plan\u201d lie true and the one years later rating it the lie of the year were written by the same person, PolitiFact\u2019s editor-in-chief Angie Drobnic Holan. She made no mention of her own positive evaluation of the lie while penning her 2013 \u201clie of the year\u201d article where she admitted that \u201cObama\u2019s promise was impossible to keep.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But she didn\u2019t realize that years prior?<\/p>\n<p>The RealClearPolitics <a href=\"https:\/\/www.realclearpolitics.com\/articles\/2018\/07\/18\/snopes_and_editorializing_fact_checks_137551.html\">Fact Check Review<\/a> reviewed 434 articles from PolitiFact and found that 15 percent of their \u201cfact-checks\u201d are really \u201copinion-checks.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A University of Minnesota School of Public Affairs survey of all five hundred statements that PolitiFact rated in <a href=\"https:\/\/smartpolitics.lib.umn.edu\/2011\/02\/10\/selection-bias-politifact-rate\/\">January 2010 through January 2011<\/a> found that of ninety-eight statements they rated false, seventy-four were from Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University found in a 2013 study that in the first four months of Obama\u2019s second term, PolitiFact flagged Republicans as being dishonest at three times the rate of Democrats.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsbusters.org\/blogs\/nb\/tim-graham\/2013\/05\/29\/study-reveals-republicans-lie-moreor-politifact-has-serious-liberal.\">Media Research Center\u2019s Tim Graham<\/a> noted of the report: &#8220;Even while the Obama scandals piled up\u2014from Benghazi to the IRS to the DOJ phone-records scandals\u2014Republicans are still being flagged as worse than Democrats, with 60 percent of the website\u2019s selective claims rated as false so far [in May 2013] compared to 29 percent of their Democratic statements\u2014a 2 to 1 margin.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;As for the entire four months, PolitiFact rated 32 percent of Republican claims as \u201cfalse\u201d or \u201cpants on fire,\u201d compared to 11 percent of Democratic claims\u2014a 3 to 1 margin. Conversely, Politifact rated 22 percent of Democratic claims as \u201centirely true\u201d compared to 11 percent of Republican claims\u2014a 2 to 1 margin.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A majority of Democrat statements (54 percent) were rated as mostly or entirely true, compared to only 18 percent of Republican statements. By contrast, a majority of Republican statements (52 percent) were rated as mostly or entirely false, compared to just 24 percent of Democrat arguments.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, statements by Republicans were rated entirely false (\u201cFalse\u201d or \u201cPants on Fire\u201d) twice as often as Democrats (29 percent vs. 15 percent). At the time Graham reported on this study, the \u201cPants on Fire\u201d page on PolitiFact\u2019s website displayed eighteen false claims by Republicans and two by Democrats.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2016\/12\/16\/running-data-politifact-shows-bias-conservatives\/\">Federalist\u2019s Matt Shapiro<\/a> ran the numbers in December 2016 and further confirmed that there really is a double standard when it comes to how PolitiFact evaluates claims.<\/p>\n<p>After evaluating thousands of PolitiFact articles and assigning their ratings a score ranging from 0 (True) to 5 (Pants on Fire), he found that Democrats had an average rating of 1.8, which is between \u201cMostly True\u201d and \u201cHalf True.\u201d The average Republican rating was 2.6, which is between \u201cHalf True\u201d and \u201cMostly False.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMostly False\u201d is the most common rating given to Republicans besides Donald Trump, and they ranked Hillary Clinton as the second-most honest politician (lol).<\/p>\n<p>When it came to the worst possible ruling, \u201cPants on Fire,\u201d Donald Trump accounted for half of those ratings. But even with Trump excluded, PolitiFact has a penchant for giving Republicans that rating which indicates they were caught in an outrageous, bald-faced lie, while when Democrats make false claims, PolitiFact will be able to find some semblance of truth within the claim so that they only have to rate it \u201cMostly False\u201d or \u201cHalf True.\u201d During the 2012 election season, PolitiFact assigned Mitt Romney nineteen \u201cPants on Fire\u201d ratings, while ALL Democrats combined received twenty-five \u201cPants on Fire\u201d ratings from 2007 to 2016.<\/p>\n<p>Are we to believe that Romney was more of a liar during the 2012 campaign season than all Democrats over nearly a decade? That\u2019s about as believable as the claim that Hillary Clinton was the second-most honest politician in America.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of Hillary, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.investors.com\/politics\/columnists\/brent-bozell-the-liberal-tilt-at-politifact\/\">Media Research Center<\/a> analysis during the 2016 election found that PolitiFact gave its \u201cPants on Fire\u201d rating to Trump fifty-seven times, compared to only seven times to Hillary Clinton, the woman who played a role in creating a conspiracy theory that Russia was behind a secret plot to elect her opponent. Trump\u2019s statements received \u201cFalse,\u201d \u201cMostly False,\u201d or \u201cPants on Fire\u201d ratings 77 percent of the time, compared to only 26 percent for Hillary.<\/p>\n<p>As the race was in its endgame, from September to Election Day, Republicans received the \u201cPants on Fire\u201d ranking twenty-eight times, half of which went to Trump, while Democrats only got that ranking four times, one of which went to Hillary.<\/p>\n<p>The inconsistencies in ratings are everywhere\u2014and while they aren\u2019t as explicit as fact-checking a nearly identical claim and giving it a different rating, they aren\u2019t hard to miss.<\/p>\n<p>The obvious bias has only continued into the Biden era.<\/p>\n<p>During Joe Biden\u2019s first one hundred days in office, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsbusters.org\/blogs\/nb\/tim-graham\/2021\/05\/04\/study-politifacts-8-times-likely-defend-biden-check-his-facts.\">PolitiFact evaluated<\/a> only thirteen of his claims while evaluating 106 others in defense of him.<sup> <\/sup><\/p>\n<p>Of the thirteen Biden statements, eight were some sort of falsehood, but not one earned him a \u201cPants on Fire rating.\u201d Of the 106 fact-checks of claims about Biden, ninety-one were \u201cMostly False,\u201d and twenty-four were \u201cPants on Fire.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There wasn\u2019t exactly a shortage of false claims they could\u2019ve evaluated, as even the <i>Washington Post<\/i>\u2019s fact-checker (Glenn Kessler) had concluded that Biden told seventy-eight lies that earned a \u201cFour Pinocchios\u201d rating by that time (but then, as mentioned previously, announced that he would be discontinuing the database of Biden falsehoods during his first one hundred days in office).<\/p>\n<p>This was just the beginning of PolitiFact treating the Biden presidency with kid gloves.<\/p>\n<p>According to Graham, after reviewing Biden\u2019s first year, the same pattern held. Biden was fact-checked forty times by PolitiFact his first year, while his critics were checked 230 times. Excluding the aforementioned first one hundred days, Biden was checked twenty-eight times, compared to 124 fact-checks of his critics. While nearly half of Biden fact-checks were \u201cMostly False\u201d or worse, 201 of the 230 claims from his critics (87.4 percent) were rated the same. Only three statements from Biden\u2019s critics were rated true. PolitiFact also didn\u2019t assign a single \u201cPants on Fire\u201d rating to any of Biden\u2019s comments, of which he\u2019s only received six since they launched in 2007. As <a href=\"https:\/\/newsbusters.org\/blogs\/nb\/tim-graham\/2022\/01\/27\/study-politifact-almost-6-times-more-likely-defend-biden-check-his\">Graham<\/a> puts it, \u201cBiden can say the evacuation from Afghanistan was an \u2018extraordinary success,&#8217; and the Republicans are pushing \u2018Jim Crow on steroids,\u2019 and there will be no fact checks.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>By contrast, many of the \u201cPants on Fire\u201d ratings for Biden\u2019s critics were claims laughably pointless to fact-check. That included fact-checking claims such as \u201cBiden is computer generated,\u201d debunking photoshopped pictures of Biden sniffing people (though there are plenty of real ones), and refuting a report that Biden was handed a \u201cvile of blood\u201d from a child on a walk back to the White House. (Similarly, over at Snopes, they\u2019ve gone as far as to get to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.snopes.com\/fact-check\/did-biden-poop-his-pants-in-rome\">bottom of whether or not<\/a> Biden really pooped his pants while on a trip in Rome.)<\/p>\n<p>Similar to the example given with Ron Paul and Jim Webb, PolitiFact\u2019s bias leads to inconsistent standards in fact checking. In one case PolitiFact\u2019s writers couldn\u2019t even agree with one another on what it means to \u201ccut\u201d government spending.<\/p>\n<p>PolitiFact rated Republican claims during the 2012 election that Obama had cut Medicare by $700 billion as false because it wasn\u2019t an outright $700 billion cut but a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.snopes.com\/fact-check\/did-biden-poop-his-pants-in-rome\">$700 billion reduction<\/a> in future spending.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, in a fact-check defending Britain\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politifact.com\/factchecks\/2018\/feb\/08\/donald-trump\/donald-trump-wrongly-suggests-british-dont-love-th\">National Health Service (NHS)<\/a> against criticism from Donald Trump, PolitiFact reported that \u201cwhile the NHS has lost funding over the years, the march that took place was not in opposition to the service, but a call to increase funding and stop austerity cuts towards health and social care.\u201d They were referring to Trump mistaking a pro-NHS protest for an anti-NHS protest, but the relevant point here is that NHS had <i>not <\/i>seen their budget cut, it was a cut in future spending.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a common trick for politicians to frame reductions in increases in spending as cuts, and PolitiFact was able to correctly identify this in the former example yet also apply it inconsistently in the latter depending on the party of those being fact-checked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article is an excerpt from Matt Palumbo&#8217;s &#8216;Fact-Checking the Fact-Checkers&#8217;: How The Left Hijacked and Weaponized the Fact-Checking Industry\u00a0 The existence<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1772512,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[547],"tags":[7615,5458,3622,8160,8159,3819],"class_list":["post-1772509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-bongino-report","tag-biased","tag-bongino","tag-matt","tag-palumbo","tag-politifact","tag-report"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1772509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1772509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1772509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1772512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1772509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1772509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1772509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}