PolitiFact can't handle the truth

Editor Bill Adair wrote a year-end summary about PolitiFact's fact checking efforts for 2008.

The piece deserves its own fact check.

The Truth-O-Meter went red in 2009.

We mention red because that’s the meter’s color for our lowest ratings, False and Pants on Fire. Of the 432 fact-checking items we published this year, 26 percent were rated False and 10 percent earned a Pants on Fire.

That means more than one-third of all the claims we checked were incorrect.

Gotta love the confidence.

Plenty of evidence exists to show that PolitiFact errs in its ratings.  Even when much of the research is on target, the assignation of a "Truth-O-Meter" rating often might as well be random.  Thus, it does not follow that "more than one third of all the claims (PolitiFact) checked were incorrect."  It follows that PolitiFact graded as incorrect more than one-third of all the claims it checked.

Another way to look at it: The truth took a beating in 2009.

That was particularly true in the debate over health care, where nearly 40 percent of claims were rated False or Pants on Fire.

The truth particularly took a beating because an outfit posing as an objective and unbiased source started putting the fact-checking label on ordinary flawed opinion/news analysis journalism.

And if you’re relying on pundits or talk show hosts for your facts, you might want to reconsider. More than 45 percent of their claims were False or Pants on Fire.

If Adair was one of those pundits--especially a conservative pundit--he could expect PolitiFact to count his statement either "False" or "Pants on Fire" because PolitiFact only graded a very select few statements from pundits.  It is absurd to state that "More than 45 percent of their claims were False or Pants on Fire."  Absurd claims rate the "Pants on Fire" rating, using PolitiFact guidelines.

Adair could of course argue that he was, if context was considered, merely saying that of the pundit claims rated by PolitiFact more than 45 percent received a "False" or "Pants on Fire" rating.  But if he were to receive that type of benefit of the doubt it would represent a special dispensation.

The social scientists on our staff (okay, there’s just one) discourage us from comparing this year’s ratings with last year, when we were focused on the presidential campaign. Our ratings are journalism, not social science, after all, and the items are chosen based on our news judgment and staffing, not randomly selected.

We can be thankful for small favors.