Krugman takes over as head of the Truth Police Police

When PolitiFact Bias started out about a year ago, the clear majority of criticism PolitiFact received over its first three-plus years came from the right. Thanks largely to its 2011 "Lie of the Year" selection--the claim Republicans voted to end Medicare--and some energetic pushback from Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow when PolitiFact dinged them with poor ratings, PolitiFact has started to enjoy criticism from the left in earnest. Economist and partisan hack Paul Krugman has taken it on himself to torment PolitiFact with his scolding, the latest with his New York Times blog item "Finding the Truth."

Krugman knows what a fact checker should do, and he's not afraid to tell PolitiFact:

(T)he point of Politifact and other news-org fact-check things is supposed to be to do this work for readers, so that you don’t have to learn your way around labor-force or trade or crime or whatever statistics every time you have doubts about a political claim.

Happily, there's an element of truth in there amidst Krugman's hacktastic folderol. If PolitiFact presents itself as objective news (it does), Krugman is essentially correct that PolitiFact should simply check what facts it can check and leave the semantic analysis alone.  Semantic analysis, after all, is analysis, and news analysis is a slightly different animal than news reporting. On the other hand, if PolitiFact views itself as a news analysis operation and simply fails to apply to its work the label "news analysis" or the like, then Krugman has no business telling PolitiFact what it is "supposed to" do.  That's kind of like me telling Krugman to stick to economics instead of political hackery.  It might be fun for me to write, but Krugman's free to do as he pleases.  I don't have the moral authority to tell him otherwise any more than he has it to wield on PolitiFact.

Krugman:

Unfortunately, Politifact has lost sight of what it was supposed to be doing. Instead of simply saying whether a claim is true, it’s trying to act as some kind of referee of what it imagines to be fair play: even if a politician says something completely true, it gets ruled only partly true if Politifact feels that the fact is being used to gain an unfair political advantage.

When did PolitiFact lose sight of what it was supposed to be doing? Pretty much right out of the gate.

PolitiFact has always used one of six grades on its "Truth-O-Meter" scale, explicitly taking things like context and misleading presentation into account.  In PolitiFact's first year, it rated poor Joe Biden "Pants on Fire" for calling President Bush "brain-dead."  Did anyone on the planet think Biden meant it as some type of medical diagnosis?  No, I didn't think so.  But PolitiFact treated it that way. PolitiFact hasn't changed much.  After the 2008 election cycle ended, the St. Petersburg Times ended its PolitiFact partnership with Congressional Quarterly and ran PolitiFact with its own staff while working to start up state versions of itself in partnership with other news outlets such as the Miami Herald.  PolitiFact has waffled a bit with its "Half True" rating, and changed the name of "Barely True" to "Mostly False."  It added features like the "Flip-O-Meter."  But in essence, PolitiFact today performs like it did back in 2007 when it started out.

So Krugman could have leveled his criticism against PolitiFact back in 2007.  What stopped him? Oh, that's right.  He's a political hack.  If PolitiFact attacks his sacred cows then Krugman will sharpen his knives and go to work.

Krugman:

The simple fact is that in today’s US political scene, Republicans make a lot more factual howlers than Democrats. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is.

By "Sorry, but that's just the way it is" apparently Krugman is telling us he has no intention of pointing to an expert, study or data source in support of the purported fact. Looks like a job for PolitiFact!

 

Dear Truth-O-Meter,

This week I read yet another political claim that appears dubious. This time the claim came from Paul Krugman.

The simple fact is that in today’s US political scene, Republicans make a lot more factual howlers than Democrats. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/finding-the-truth/

Is it a simple fact? On what objective evidence could Krugman have possibly relied?

Thanks, Truth-O-Meter. I'll never forget you for this.

Sincerely,

Bryan White

Sent.




Update 1/28/2012
Hat tip to Jeff Dyberg for pointing out where I substituted "this" for "things."  Corrected. Also added a link or two.