Grading PolitiFact: Speaker Gingrich shrinks unemployment?

To assess the truth for a numbers claim, the biggest factor is the underlying message.
--PolitiFact editor Bill Adair

The issue:

The fact checkers:

Louis Jacobson:  writer, researcher
Eric Stirgus:  writer, researcher
Martha Hamilton:  editor


Analysis:

The same old story just keeps getting older with PolitiFact, namely a failure to offer charitable interpretation and an inconsistent commitment to evaluating numbers claims primarily in relation to the underlying point.

Here we go again:

The former Georgia congressman made it official in a campaign video on his website, as he had signaled earlier in the week. Gingrich promoted his credentials by touting a list of accomplishments in his four years as House Speaker, which began in January 1995 and ended in January 1999.

Those accomplishments included cutting unemployment, which was at 9 percent in April 2011 and one of the nation’s biggest problems.

"Unemployment came down from 5.6 percent to under 4," Gingrich, a Republican who now lives in Virginia, said in the video.

Viewing Gingrich's statement in context places it in a slightly different light (yellow highlights indicate portion quoted in the PolitiFact story):

As Speaker of the House, I worked to reform welfare, balance the budget, control spending, to cut taxes to create economic growth – unemployment came down from 5.6% to under 4. 

Grammar time:  "unemployment came down from 5.6 percent to under 4" is not subordinate to "As Speaker of the House."  Rather, the finishing clause is constructed to imply an effect from the things Gingrich claims to have done "as Speaker of the House":  working to reform welfare, balance the budget, control spending and cut taxes to create economic growth.  It's certainly possible to question the implied cause and effect relationship, but it is unfair to Gingrich to mangle the understanding of his syntax.

Yet PolitiFact does exactly that without apparently blinking an eye.

The facts as PolitiFact gives them support the charitable and reasonable understanding of Gingrich's claim, though he is vulnerable to the charge of employing a mild ambiguity and for making a dubious argument via implication.

The underlying point also relates to that implication:  The things Gingrich did as Speaker of the House helped the economy.  The PolitiFact trio of Jacobson, Stirgus and Hamilton ignores the underlying point.

The dark cloud of their collaboration did produce a silver lining, however:  We have more data with which to reconstruct the PolitiMath theorem of mathematical accuracy.  Ignoring PolitiFact's uncharitable assumption that Gingrich used the wrong figure and the possibility that PolitiFact punished Gingrich based on the judgment that he could have easily used the correct figure, Gingrich received a "False" rating for a figure that was off by about 10 percent.  (Update:  It occurred to me belatedly that the reduction number--not the destination number--is probably the better one to represent Gingrich's supposed imprecision.  That figure was off by about 33 percent)

Recall that Barack Obama once received a "Mostly True" rating for a figure that was off by over 80 percent, albeit the president was substantially rescued through an appeal to his underlying point.

The underlying point, after all, is the most important aspect of a numbers claim.  Sometimes.

The grades:

Louis Jacobson:  F
Eric Stirgus:  F
Martha Hamilton:  F

All three flunk for failing to recognize the most likely interpretation of Gingrich's statement while also failing to pay attention to the most important aspect of a numbers claim.