Is Politifact Wooing Wingnuts?
The sad tale of Politifact's convoluted analysis of Obama's claim that American businesses have created 3 million jobs in the last 22 months. Though it's true and clearly so--and 100% so--Politifact gave it a "half-true" rating. Now they're backing off of that, fortunately.
My guess is that they are afflicted by something I find in myself. When faced with a completely deranged right wing, I find myself nit-picking and spinning in an attempt to find something they are saying right, and to find things that Obama and liberals are getting wrong. It's not that the latter group is blameless or flawless...it's that the errors of the former groups so overwhelm those of the latter that one feels compelled to try to balance things out to at least some degree.
Still, a bad--even if somewhat understandable--job by the folks at Politifact. Of course they face the added pressure that they are concerned about their reputation, and that the right now accuses them of liberal bias. Though, as we know, everything that is not blatantly conservative will be accused of liberal bias. That's something Politifact is just going to have to live with.
The sad tale of Politifact's convoluted analysis of Obama's claim that American businesses have created 3 million jobs in the last 22 months. Though it's true and clearly so--and 100% so--Politifact gave it a "half-true" rating. Now they're backing off of that, fortunately.
My guess is that they are afflicted by something I find in myself. When faced with a completely deranged right wing, I find myself nit-picking and spinning in an attempt to find something they are saying right, and to find things that Obama and liberals are getting wrong. It's not that the latter group is blameless or flawless...it's that the errors of the former groups so overwhelm those of the latter that one feels compelled to try to balance things out to at least some degree.
Still, a bad--even if somewhat understandable--job by the folks at Politifact. Of course they face the added pressure that they are concerned about their reputation, and that the right now accuses them of liberal bias. Though, as we know, everything that is not blatantly conservative will be accused of liberal bias. That's something Politifact is just going to have to live with.
posted by Winston Smith at
11:16 AM
1 Comments:
Where to begin?
The rating of Obama that recently outraged the left is standard fare from PolitiFact. They have often rating literally true claims well below "true" for a variety of reasons.
Is PF wooing the right wing? I doubt it. Few on the right take PF seriously, in my estimation. Is a "Half True" for Obama going to help if PF turns on a time and without any reasonable *specific* justification changes the ruling to "Mostly True"? Especially when that ruling is juxtaposed with an undeserved "True" ruling on Obama's claim about the EPA's treatment of milk spills?
It's like this: PF just does fact checking badly. Their system is non-objective from top to bottom--like they didn't know what they were doing when they designed it. So now we're supposed to register surprise when they're inconsistent in following their own principles? This outcome was predictable. And it'll get worse for PF before it gets better.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home