Grading PolitiFact: Giving the "see no evil" treatment to Moveon.org

PolitiFact's propensity for offering supporting evidence for the charge of partisanship persists, this time with a blind-as-bats review of a MoveOn.org advertisement.


Fact-checking the fact checkers

The issue:

MoveOn.org issued advertisements pointing out how a group of senators voting in opposition to a particular bill had received campaign donations from the financial sector.

Here is one version of the ad, this one attacking Sen. Carper (D, DE):



The PolitiFact analysis focused on whether the ad was accurate in portraying the amount of campaign cash received by the respective senators.


The fact checkers:

Angie Drobnic Holan: writer, researcher
Bill Adair: editor


Analysis:

The PolitiFact analysis pretty much skips its responsibility to its readers. Note the following description of the various indications from the vaunted "Truth-O-Meter":

TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing.

MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.

HALF TRUE – The statement is accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.

BARELY TRUE – The statement contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.

FALSE – The statement is not accurate.

PANTS ON FIRE – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.

As noted above, Drobnic sets the focus narrowly on the question of whether MoveOn's numbers are correct for donations from financial interests.

We wanted to check MoveOn's math about what the senators had collected from the financial industry.

I call that an exceptionally narrow focus, given that the dollar amounts are given very clearly for one reason: To insinuate that each of the senators featured in the ads were influenced by the money.

There is no other reason to mention the donations.

MoveOn could easily distribute the same ad minus the dollar figures and simply disagree with the senators on policy. And the ad would have essentially the same meaning without the insinuation noted above. Drobnic almost completely ignores that issue in her analysis, despite the fact that numbers provided by MoveOn.org are misleading.

How are they misleading? Not in the respect Drobnic covers. The numbers are fair approximations of the campaign contributions. But the amounts received by those who voted against the bill are not significantly different from those who voted for the bill, and the donation numbers given are cumulative, which provides a number of potential distortions for the supposed influence on the naysaying senators.

First, a list of the targeted senators and their respective cumulative donation amounts, duly provided by Drobnic:

• Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa. -- "close to $6 million" -- career total: $5,753,310

• Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D. -- "close to $3 million" -- career total: $3,020,966

• Sen. Ben Nelson, D.-Neb. -- "close to $3 million" -- career total: $2,667,406

• Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del. -- "close to $2 million" -- career total: $2,160,628

• Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark. -- "close to $2 million" -- career total: $1,671,292

• Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. -- "close to $2 million" -- career total: $2,399,134

• Sen. Mark Pryor, D. Ark. -- "close to $1 million" -- career total: $1,321,948

MoveOn.org makes no effort to place those numbers in context. Worse, Drobnic doesn't either.

The median career total for those who supported the bill (all Democrats except for two independents who caucus with the Democrats) was $1,462,731, and that counts two appointed senators, Roland Burris and Ted Kaufman, who had no listed contributions because they did not need to run for office. Even skewed as it is by outlier data, each targeted senator except for Specter and Johnson is within shouting distance of that figure.

The average career total for those who supported the bill was $2,748,279, and that again includes the goose eggs for Burris and Kaufman. That is higher than the amount donated to the bottom five targets and very close to what Sen. Johnson received according to the numbers provided.

If President Obama's career donation figure of over $40 million had been included then the average would assuredly have been much higher.

Bottom line, the career numbers for donations from financial concerns provide no reasonable basis for inferring influence in this case, and omitting a deeper look at the numbers is, quite simply, misleading.

Here is the extent of Drobnic's concern:

Getting back to the ads, MoveOn says the senators voted with Wall Street and the banks after accepting campaign contributions from them. We can't say if there is a cause and effect, but MoveOn is right about how the senators voted.

Drobnic's statement, in practical terms, suggests that the MoveOn.org insinuation is reasonable on its face, even if it is short of absolute proof. It was irresponsible of her to ignore the numbers that show the staggering weakness of the attack, and Bill Adair was no less irresponsible in sending the story to print while lacking all that relevant information.

Drobnic had every reason to see the problem with the ad. She had the right trail before her:

We should note here that five other Democrats voted against the measure, but were not targeted by MoveOn. A spokesperson for MoveOn told us that those senators had either accepted less money from the financial industry, or they had a better overall voting record on MoveOn's core issues. Those senators included: Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.; Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo.; Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W. Va.; Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.; Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont.

What do the numbers tell us about this group? Drobnic offers us nothing but the MoveOn.org line:
Baucus: $4,633,243
Bennet: (appointed)
Byrd: $420,830
Dorgan: $1,102,184
Tester: $473,226

The figure for Sen. Baucus should leap out immediately, and it surely would have drawn attention if Drobnic had bothered to include it, which she did not. Baucus' number is closer to that of Specter than to that of runner up Johnson. So MoveOn.org will forgive plenty for the sake of ideology.



The ad is flatly misleading, and ought to have rated a "Half True" rating on the "Truth-O-Meter." As is so often the case, a true statement may be employed to mislead others, and MoveOn.org made a deliberate attempt to do just that. And got a pass from PolitiFact.

We rule MoveOn's collective statement that senators accepted millions in campaign contributions and voted against cramdown legislation as True.

Pathetic. It should have been hard to flunk this one without the influence of an ideological bias.


The grades:

Angie Drobnic Holan: F
Bill Adair: F

May 19, 2009: Subtracted an extra "d" from "add."