Was the PolitiFact Pulitzer deserved? Pt. 2 (Updated)

PolitiFact was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for its election coverage in 2008, based on 13 submissions evaluated by a Pulitzer Prize jury.  With pt. 2 in this series I evaluate the second listed submission from PolitiFact.

The second PolitiFact story on the Pulitzer list was Robert Farley's "E-mail on Clinton twists the facts."  Farley did little to untwist the facts and may have added a few twists.

To begin with, Farley's approach lacked focus.  He took claims from a number of sources (a chain e-mail, Dick Morris, Carl Bernstein) and used a fresh set of claims to gainsay the first set--yet without demonstrating that the second set of claims held greater currency than the first set.  Why is journalist Carl Bernstein chopped liver compared to eyewitnesses who favor Clinton politically?  As a result, Farley ends up checking facts beyond those mentioned in the original e-mail and obscures their origin and reliability.

Though the Pulitzer Prize Web site features Farley's story in its entirety, it lacks additional relevant information that may be found at the story's source location.  That is, Farley's list of sources:

• FrontPageMag.com, "Bill Crafts Hillary's Bio," by Dick Morris, Aug. 9, 2007
• Snopes.com, Black Panthers, last updated Jan. 24, 2008
• Living History, by Hillary Rodham Clinton, 2003
• A Woman in Charge, by Carl Bernstein, 2007
• Rewriting History, by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, 2004
• Interview with Paul Bass, a journalist and co-author of Murder in the Model City, Feb. 8, 2008
• Interview with attorney David Rosen, a junior member of the defense team for Bobby Seale, Feb. 7, 2008
• Interview with Mike Avery, a former staff lawyer for the ACLU who worked on the Black Panther case, Feb. 7, 2008

Which of these sources stands head and shoulders over the others in terms of authority?  I'd say none, though Snopes.com has a pretty good reputation.  The Snopes material does relatively little to help settle the conflicting claims of the other sources.  It seems that Farley simply found a version of events he liked (primarily based on a fresh set of interviews) and went with that version.  And perhaps Farley chose the best version of events.  But his story fails to deliver up the reasoning he used in making that determination.

Let's examine a portion of Farley's gospel account:

Here's the history.

In 1970, eight Black Panthers, including its national chairman Bobby Seale, were brought to trial in New Haven, Conn., on charges of murdering a fellow member, Alex Rackley, who was suspected of being a police informant. He was not a federal agent.

Apparently Rackley was an informant (see update, below).  But not for the police.  The Black Panthers operated across the United States and were monitored by the FBI.  I located a case from the early 1980s where the summary of events identified Rackley as a government informant:

In the late 1960's and early 1970's, the FBI had a continuing investigation of the Black Panther Party ("Panthers"), an organization which advocated violent revolution. In May, 1969 Alex Rackley, a government informer and Panther member, was found murdered. Fourteen members of the Panthers, including its national chairman, Bobby Seale, were arrested, charged and tried for the murder in New Haven, Connecticut.
(Williams v. Federal Bureau of Investigation)

I do not know whether status as an FBI informant fully justifies calling a person "a federal agent."  But it does seem to justify using the term in a looser sense.  Rackley seems to have represented the FBI as its eyes and ears within the Black Panther organization, at least until he was murdered.

Presenting Rackley merely as a Black Panther suspected of being an informant favors one side of the argument.  Presenting Rackley as a "federal agent" minus additional information favors the other side.  As is so often the case, the truth seems to rest in the middle ground.  Farley ended up on one side.

Farley handles biographical details like Clinton's courtroom attendance and Robert Treuhaft's Communist connections in similar manner, accepting contemporary witness accounts as true while downplaying information that appears to lend the offending e-mail at least a patina of truth.

Attorney Barbara Olson wrote about Hillary Clinton's collegiate career, including her involvement in the Black Panther trial.  The book was not among those referenced.


Verdict:  On a 0-10 scale where 10 represents the highest journalistic standards, I rate this one a five.


Update:

Paul Bass, author of "Murder in the Model City" and one of the sources interviewed by PolitiFact, sent a courteous e-mail challenging my trust in the court document identifying Alex Rackley as an FBI informant.  Bass made a good case:

Judge Winter wrote the decision you referenced. The decision at hand had nothing to do with whether Rackley was an informant. It had to do with whether Williams should get files about FBI monitoring of radical groups, especially concerning actions they took to protest the murder trial. That case involved no investigation by any court of the question of Rackley being an informant. It was irrelevant. Winter was merely writing a background paragraph summarizing the record.

Usually summaries such as the one provided by Winter involve agreed-to facts that directly concern the case.  As Bass pointed out, Williams v. the Federal Bureau of Investigation was not concerned with the facts surrounding Rackley's murder.  Therefore, Bass was very probably correct that the case carries no significant weight in determining whether Rackley was an informant.

Further, Bass concluded "I think PolitiFact was right."

I will not duplicate a common PolitiFact error in taking "Rackley was not an informant" as an absolute statement.  Not every statement that appears absolute is intended as one.  Bass concurred that Rackley could have been an informant--as could anyone.  The lack of evidence, including the lack of suitable foundation for the Black Panthers to suspect one of their own, justifies saying that Rackley was not an informant.

Though I maintain my criticism that PolitiFact produced relatively poor evidence for its conclusions, I revise my verdict upward to a six.  And I would not grade my blog post prior to the update as high as that.