Was PolitiFact's Pulitzer deserved? Pt. 4

The fourth of 13 items considered by the Pulitzer jury when awarding PolitiFact its Pulitzer Prize for national reporting concerned then-Sen. Barack Obama's claim that his uncle had been among the first American soldiers to liberate Auschwitz.

Recall from my previous writings on this subject that the Pulitzer juries are supposed to put a premium on fairness.

I guess snark can be fair.  Check out the opening sentence:

Political opponents of Sen. Barack Obama thought they finally had the goods to pin him as a serial fabricator.

The next day, the Republicans pounced. RNC secretary Alex Conant correctly noted that it was Soviet, not American, troops that had opened the gates of Auschwitz in 1945. Obama's story of his uncle was dubious, Conant said, while concluding that the latest of Obama's "frequent exaggerations" raised questions about his readiness to lead as commander in chief.

Objective reporting typically requires some sort of direct statement from at least one political opponent to the effect that they viewed the Auschwitz claim as PolitiFact says they did.

The opening line also hints at the eventual Truth-O-Meter finding.  Barack Obama will be rated "Mostly True," so apparently falsely claiming that one's uncle was among the first American soldiers to liberate Auschwitz does not contribute to serial fabrication.

The story on Obama's uncle is relatively well known by this time.  Obama did have a great-uncle who served with the soldiers who liberated the less-famous (but still extremely nasty) concentration camp at Buchenwald.

This example from PolitiFact points up again one of the problems I keep highlighting with their methods.  A statement like Obama's presents PolitiFact with a number of claims.  They could focus on just one (Does Obama really have an uncle?  Was Auschwitz liberated the way Obama described it?), take the whole set and/or deal with the underlying argument.  Choosing which portion of the claim to check makes huge difference when it comes to positioning the "Truth-O-Meter" needle.

PolitiFact took the whole set of statements from Obama as well as what they took as his underlying argument and essentially pronounced it no big deal.

But getting the concentration camp wrong should be kind of a big deal in this case.  It isn't as though Obama simply got Buchenwald mixed up with another nearby concentration camp.  He happened to settle on the most famous of them all, and one that his uncle could not have helped liberate without somehow serving with the Soviet armed forces.  The mistake was a notable historical error rather than a mere confusion of two otherwise interchangeable sites.

While I think it fair to consider the respects in which Obama's tale was accurate, PolitiFact went pretty easy on Obama for a historical error that a president should not commit.  The kid gloves for Obama, combined with a number of snarky references to Obama's detractors, compel me to count this entry mildly against PolitiFact's Pulitzerworthiness.  On a scale of 0-10 where 10 represents the pinnacle of journalistic achievement, I rate this story a five.  Make that a four, in consideration of my final word, below.


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I can imagine some objection to Obama referring to his great-uncle as his uncle.  The term is very often used of persons who are not uncles in the more narrow sense of the parental sibling.


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I was fascinated to find that the version of this story currently residing at the PolitiFact site has the snarkiness removed.  I now wonder at the history and chronology of the two versions.

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One more, then I'll shut up.

I located the RNC statement attributed in the story to Alex Conant:

Barack Obama's dubious claim is inconsistent with world history and demands an explanation. It was Soviet troops that liberated Auschwitz, so unless his uncle was serving in the Red Army, there's no way Obama's statement yesterday can be true. Obama's frequent exaggerations and outright distortions raise questions about his judgment and his readiness to lead as commander in chief.

PolitiFact is guilty of a good old-fashioned inaccuracy in its reporting of Conant's statement.

Review:

Obama's story of his uncle was dubious, Conant said, while concluding that the latest of Obama's "frequent exaggerations" raised questions about his readiness to lead as commander in chief.
(blue highlights added)

Conant referred to the collection of exaggerations and distortions as raising questions about Obama's readiness.  The PolitiFact story erroneously had Conant placing special emphasis on the Auschwitz gaffe.  Pulitzer committees are supposed to place great importance on accuracy in addition to fairness.