PolitiFact and the unimportance of accuracy in fact checking

If you disagree with a ruling, we encourage you to e-mail the writer or editor with your comments about our ruling.
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

We strive to make our work completely accurate. When we think we make a mistake, we correct it if we feel like it and note it on the original item.
--The (annotated) Principles of PolitiFact

Is accuracy important in fact checking?

Most would say it is, I suspect.  My many criticisms of PolitiFact are peppered with the message that using the fact check label raises the necessary journalistic standard.

PolitiFact often seems strangely ambivalent about its standard of accuracy.  I occasionally send a message to the writer and/or editor of a PolitiFact story to point out problems.  Occasionally I get a warm reply.  Somewhat more often I get a defensive reply that does not address the issue.  And most commonly I receive no reply and the problem in the fact check goes unresolved.  Sometimes I post about my attempts to alert PolitiFact about its errors under the tag "Piquing PolitiFact."

And here's the latest example, in response to a PolitiFact story titled "Nancy Pelosi says 'everybody' will get more and pay less under the health care law":

Dear Jon Greenberg,
cc Angie Drobnic Holan

Perhaps my favorite thing about PolitiFact is the way it asks readers to point out problems with its stories while it proceeds to ignore the problems readers point out at an apparently very high rate.

But enough about me.  Let's talk about you.

You wrote:

PolitiFact has looked at Republican allegations that the law is bad because it will drive up premiums for most people and found those statements False.

Are you sure about that?  I found one example (rated "Pants on Fire," which I'd count as false to your benefit).  Perhaps you should include the citations in the sidebar if you're going to write such things.

You also wrote:

But in its study, the CBO number crunchers actually predict that a large number of people will want to buy better insurance. They would opt for a lower deductible, lower co-pays and a wider range of benefits. That personal choice would cause their total premiums to rise some 27 to 30 percent. For a policy covering just one person, the difference would be about $600 a year, before accounting for any of the subsidies the law provides; over half the people in the individual market would qualify for those subsidies.

The above obscures the meaning of the explanation you later quote from  Ed Haislmaier of the Heritage Foundation and runs largely counter to the explanation occurring in the CBO report (note the recurring term "requirement"):

The main elements of the legislation that would affect the amount of coverage purchased are the requirement that all new policies in the nongroup and small group markets cover at least a minimum specified set of benefits; the requirement that such policies have a certain minimum actuarial value; and the design of the federal subsidies, which would encourage many enrollees in the exchanges to join plans with an actuarial value above the required minimum. (The excise tax on high-premium plans would also affect the amount of coverage purchased; the impact of that tax is discussed in a separate section of this analysis.) Those provisions would have a much greater effect on premiums in the nongroup market than in the small group market, and they would have no measurable effect on premiums in the large group market.

Specifically, because of the greater actuarial value and broader scope of benefits that would be covered by new nongroup policies sold under the legislation, the average premium per person for those policies would be an estimated 27 percent to 30 percent higher than the average premium for nongroup policies under current law (with other factors held constant). The increase in actuarial value would push the average premium per person about 18 percent to 21 percent above its level under current law, before the increase in enrollees’ use of medical care resulting from lower cost sharing is considered; that induced increase, along with the greater scope of benefits, would account for the remainder of the overall difference.

The CBO counts two requirements and one personal choice.  You only mention personal choice and obscure the reason for it, that being people's well-understood tendency to spend more if they perceive that they're getting a good deal. The good deal comes primarily from subsidies.

Who cares?

You?  Angie Holan?

We'll see, won't we?

Cheers,
Bryan White

I sent the message on July 8.  Five full days later the Pelosi fact check continues to contain the same two apparent errors.

This type of result, in my experience, is typical of PolitiFact.


Correction 7/14/2012:  Supplied missing text just prior to the quoted email text.

Grading PolitiFact: Nancy Pelosi exempts ObamaCare from basic economics

“Even if you disagree, our articles will make you smarter.”
--attributed to PolitiFact editor Bill Adair by the Nashua Telegraph

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Jon Greenberg:  writer, researcher
Angie Drobnic Holan:  editor

Analysis:

Why review PolitiFact's grading of Nancy Pelosi's truth-challenged statement when PolitiFact gives it a "False" rating and I don't think any "Pants on Fire" rating is fair?  It has to do with the epigraph above and a very recent PolitiFact Florida fact check of Gov. Rick Scott.

In short, PolitiFact misinforms.

First let's hit the transcript from "Meet The Press" (MSNBC, bold emphasis added):

DAVID GREGORY: Well, Republicans have said they won't waste any time to try to repeal this.  Is that fantasy from your point of view?

NANCY PELOSI: It's being the mouthpiece of the health insurance industry.  And we're saying let's not have them be in charge anymore.  Let the people be in charge of how they receive coverage and health care.  It's -- they'll bring it up, and when they bring it up they will ask for repeal, repeal of all the things I said that help children, help young adults, help seniors, help men or women who may have prostate cancer, breast cancer, whatever it is, any precondition.  And everybody will have lower rates, better quality care and better access.  So that's what they want to repeal, we're happy to have that debate.

Note to scouts:  Pelosi has trouble handling a softball down the center of the strike zone.

PolitiFact:

That last line is a bold statement, because "everybody" covers a lot of people. PolitiFact has looked at Republican allegations that the law is bad because it will drive up premiums for most people and found those statements False.

PolitiFact apparently neglected to publish its findings on those supposed Republican allegations.  Except maybe one.

But back to Pelosi and PolitiFact:

Pelosi’s statement allows us to make an assessment of the opposite point -- the law is good because everyone will save money.

Woohoo.

PolitiFact:

The Congressional Budget Office is designed to be the neutral analytic arm of Congress, and its study on how the ACA will affect insurance premiums is widely seen as the gold standard when it comes to projections. We called Pelosi’s office for background on her claim, and they pointed us to a CBO analysis of the law.

Pelosi’s staff highlighted part of the report that states that for people who buy insurance on their own -- the individual market as it’s called -- rates will be 7 to 10 percent lower. Rates for those in the "small group" market will be 1 to 4 percent lower; and there will be little appreciable change for those in the "large group" market.

PolitiFact points out that the explanation from Pelosi's office misinterprets the report.  An average decrease doesn't necessarily indicate that all share the savings. PolitiFact then explains a separate  problem inaccurately (bold emphasis added):

Second, the CBO did this section of its analysis assuming that people would buy the same kind of insurance they do today, without the new law. So if they have a $5,000 deductible and limited coverage today, the CBO analysts compared that to the rate they would pay in 2016 to get that same coverage under the law.

Because the ACA changes minimum standards for insurance plans in exchanges, the report calculates according to what people would pay today if they had the type of coverage the CBO expects them to purchase in 2016.  Some of today's insurance plans won't qualify for an exchange offering, so it makes no sense to calculate according to plans that will not exist on the exchange.

PolitiFact immediately follows up with another flawed explanation (bold emphasis added):

(I)n its study, the CBO number crunchers actually predict that a large number of people will want to buy better insurance. They would opt for a lower deductible, lower co-pays and a wider range of benefits. That personal choice would cause their total premiums to rise some 27 to 30 percent. For a policy covering just one person, the difference would be about $600 a year, before accounting for any of the subsidies the law provides; over half the people in the individual market would qualify for those subsidies.

The above explanation is contrary to the one offered in the CBO report (bold emphasis added):

The main elements of the legislation that would affect the amount of coverage purchased are the requirement that all new policies in the nongroup and small group markets cover at least a minimum specified set of benefits; the requirement that such policies have a certain minimum actuarial value; and the design of the federal subsidies, which would encourage many enrollees in the exchanges to join plans with an actuarial value above the required minimum.

While PolitiFact sells the resulting higher premiums entirely as a personal choice, the CBO explains them as two parts requirement and one part personal choice.   The personal choice, as it happens, reflects the opportunity to use other people's money (the subsidy) to obtain a better relative value on one's own expense.  A New York Times blog explains it well:

The premium subsidies will be based on the price of the second-lowest-cost silver plan in a geographic area. If you sign up for that particular silver plan, you will pay no more than 9.5 percent of your income in premiums. But if you decide you want lower cost-sharing and want to spring for a pricier gold or platinum plan, you will be responsible for paying the difference between that silver plan premium and those of the more expensive plans, pushing your share of the premium over that 9.5 percent cap, said Jennifer Tolbert, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Going with a more expensive plan may make sense, depending on your health, family medical history or other factors. “If they’re paying 20 percent of their income now for insurance, it may be worth it to pay 11 or 12 percent for a more generous plan on the exchange, because they’d get much better coverage,” Ms. Tolbert said.

And of course somebody has to pay for the subsidy in any case.

PolitiFact quoted Heritage Foundation's Ed Haislmaier regarding the tendency of subsidy recipients to upgrade their level of insurance but probably provided insufficient context for readers to properly understand what he was saying.

PolitiFact had Pelosi dead to rights on her trifecta of falsehood but ignored everything for the sake of the fact check except her claim about lower rates.  And then PolitiFact botched the reporting on that issue, making the ACA look better than it is.

Smarter.  Right.


The grades:

Jon Greenberg:  F
Angie Drobnic Holan:  F

Afters:

Pelosi completely misrepresents CBO data and gets a "False" rating from PolitiFact.  Rick Scott accurately represents CBO data and gets a "Mostly False" rating because he supposedly left out a huge amount of critical context.

The ratings make perfect sense in a liberally biased kind of way.

PolitiFact fishing for Romney error?

There's something fishy about PolitiFact's July 3 fact check of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Fishy fact checks are common at PolitiFact, but the stench this time comes from a less common source:  The key quotation is missing from the story.

PolitiFact (bold emphasis added):

Mitt Romney likes to draw a straight line between environmental regulations and the jobs they cost. That was the thrust of his statement at a Frankenmuth, Mich., campaign event on June 19, 2012.  Romney said Oklahoma lost out on a plant that Dow Chemical ended up building in Saudi Arabia.

Citing a conversation he'd had with a person from Dow, Romney told his audience at a business roundtable, "They said they couldn't rely on the natural gas here given the environmental regulation and whether it would be an abundant supply and reliable or not."

PolitiFact writer Jon Greenberg cited a transcript of the business roundtable Romney attended in Michigan.  So why no quotation? 

Upon investigation, perhaps we get no quotation because that gives the reader too much information.

A video of the roundtable is available at electad.com.  Romney makes the comments PolitiFact found interesting at about the 12:45 mark of the video.  My transcript follows (bold emphasis added):

"Yeah, I heard from Dow Chemical, they just did, they announced a major facility in I believe it's Saudi Arabia, they were looking at building it in Oklahoma but they said we couldn't rely on the natural gas here, the environmental regulation and whether it would be an abundant supply and reliable or not."

Greenberg fact checks whether a Dow Chemical plant planned for Saudi Arabia was planned for Oklahoma.  But Romney clearly indicated his uncertainty that the facility for which Oklahoma was in the running ended up in Saudi Arabia.

Is Greenberg hiding the ball from his readers?

Greenberg remains fixed on Romney's tentative recollection of the Saudi Arabia facility:

But Romney wasn’t highlighting a Dow project by itself. He was saying it could have happened in Oklahoma. We asked the Romney campaign to back up the claim that Dow had picked Saudi Arabia over Oklahoma for reasons related to the natural gas supply. We never heard back.

We asked Dow if Oklahoma had ever been in the running as a possible location for that facility. The company never responded to that direct question.

Greenberg supplies sufficient reporting to make it appear unlikely the facility in Saudi Arabia was ever a possibility for Oklahoma.  But he spends apparently no time at all exploring other possibilities where Romney expressed uncertainty.  The PolitiFact story mentions a new plant in Freeport, Texas as part of an effort to take advantage of cheap natural gas reserves.  Why not explore that avenue?

Business Insider, April 12, 2012:

My friend who has been running hedge fund money for years had this to say:

“Nat Gas could go to zero. Gas is a byproduct of drilling for oil. With US oil still worth $100+ a barrel, the drilling will continue, and more gas will be the result.”

“There are many things that are changing due to the cheap Nat. gas. Companies that are running short haul truck routes out of central locations are converting to gas. Chemical companies that use natural gas as a feedstock are seeing new opportunities. The first new ethylene plant (plastic from natural gas) in many years will be built in Oklahoma. This plant was going to be built in Mexico, but cheap gas has brought it back home.”

I'm not going to try to do Greenberg's reporting for him.  But it seems possible that Oklahoma could host an ethylene cracking facility, for example, and that Dow may have initially considered Oklahoma as part of the expansion based in Freeport.

It looks like Greenberg either ignored his reporter's instincts or else had no such instincts to ignore.

Editors Aaron Sharockman and Bill Adair failed to bridge the gap.

Grading PolitiFact: Mitt Romney, the NLRB and Boeing

Words matter -- We pay close attention to the specific wording of a claim. Is it a precise statement? Does it contain mitigating words or phrases?
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Jon Greenberg:  writer, researcher
Aaron Sharockman:  editor


Analysis:

PolitiFact, it is said, pays close attention to the specific wording of a claim.  We might as well look at the precise wording from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney before we delve into the nitty gritty of the fact check.

PolitiFact, oddly enough, provided no link to a transcript of the debate.

Romney's claim was part of a reply to fellow candidate Herman Cain (yellow highlights indicate portion used by PolitiFact):

CAIN: Yes. One of my guiding principles has been and will always be, surround yourself with good people. The 999 plan that I have proposed is simple, transparent, efficient, fair, and neutral My question is to Governor Romney. Can you name all 59 points in your 160-page plan, and does it satisfy that criteria of being simple, transparent, efficient, fair, and neutral?

(LAUGHTER) 

(APPLAUSE) 

ROMNEY: Herman, I have had the experience in my life of taking on some tough problems. And I must admit that simple answers are always very helpful, but oftentimes inadequate.

And in my view, to get this economy going again, we're going to have to deal with more than just tax policy and just energy policy, even though both of those are part of my plan. 

And the other parts of my plan are these. One is to make sure that we stop the regulatory creep that has occurred in Washington. And all of the Obama regulations, we say no to, we put a halt on them, and reverse all those that cost jobs. 

Number two, we have trade policies that open up new markets to American goods. And I lay out a number of things that I would do in that 59 points to open up more markets to American goods. And, we, of course, stop the cheating that goes on. 

We also have to have the rule of law. By that I mean you can't have the federal government, through its friends at the National Labor Relations Board, saying to a company like Boeing that you can't build a factory in a non-union state. That's simply wrong and violates the principle of the rule of law. 

We also have to have institutions that create human capital. We're a capitalist system. But we don't just believe in physical capital or financial capital, also human capital. We need great schools, great institutions.

Finally, you have got to have a government that does not spend more money than it takes in. Those are the seven major pillars of those 59. 

 (Time) 

 Either PolitiFact did not pay particularly close attention to the precise wording of Romney's claim or else something is amiss.  Note that the PolitiFact headline/deck material portray Romney as saying unequivocally that the government told Boeing that it could not build a factory in a non-union state.

In fact, Romney references the Boeing case as a hypothetical ("a company like Boeing"), so his point stands regardless of whether the event occurred or not.  Granted, Romney's point receives its greatest support with a valid concrete example, but for purposes of evaluating PolitiFact we are interested in the specific wording of the claim.

PolitiFact:

We decided to examine this question: Did the NLRB tell Boeing that it "can’t build a factory in a non-union state."

That's an interesting question, I suppose, but a picture of Romney's face appears near the "Truth-O-Meter" rating.  Wouldn't it be a good idea under those circumstances to rate a statement that Romney made and did not simply imply?

Well we might as well see where the errant path leads us.

PolitiFact:

About six years ago, Boeing was ramping up to build its newest passenger jet, the 787 Dreamliner. The company explored making all the planes at its factories in Washington state, but in 2009, it decided to start a second, smaller production line in South Carolina. The union plants in Puget Sound would make seven planes a month; the non-union facility in North Charleston, S.C. would produce three a month.

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers complained. The NLRB’s general counsel tried to bring the parties together but failed. In April 2011, the general counsel’s office formally issued a complaint on the grounds that Boeing built its factory in South Carolina in order to punish the union.  

Top Boeing officials were quite open about  the connection between the machinists union and the new factory. According to the filing,one executive told a newspaper that "the overriding factor (in transferring the line) was not the business climate. And it was not the wages we’re paying today. It was that we cannot afford to have a work stoppage, you know, every three years."

The first of the above three paragraphs seems accurate on its face, but the second paragraph is loaded.  The union complained.  The NLRB's general counsel tried to bring the parties together?  How?  In what way?  By telling the union its complaint was poorly founded?  By telling Boeing to cave and build the Dreamliner in Washington state?  Something in between?   It matters to Romney's case.

In the third paragraph PolitiFact offers a one-sided account of the situation between Boeing and the union.  The first sentence makes a judgment about statements from "top Boeing officials."  Supposedly they were "quite open about the relationship between the union and the new factory," and our concrete example chops off Boeing's rationale for avoiding a work stoppage (it's also a phantom citation; see "Afters").  Boeing maintains that delivering its product on time plays a key part in global competition.  The union characterizes the move as a punitive action against the union.  The PolitiFact story highlights the union's position and obscures that of the company.

We see that biased presentation continue in the next paragraph from the NLRB:

In the eyes of the general counsel, this was a form of retaliation against the union for having conducted strikes in the past. As such, he argued Boeing violated the National Labor Relations Act, which prohibits employers from interfering with the right of workers to organize and to strike.

The question is: Did Boeing act to get back at the union or did it have other reasons? "The whole thing boils down to motivations," said Nancy Cleeland, a spokesperson for the NLRB. "That’s the reason  to have a hearing. To see what was going on."

Golly.  What possible reason could Boeing have for wanting to avoid a work stoppage other than to punish the union?  It's quite the mystery!  Except that looking at Boeing officials' words in context we see again and again the rationale of remaining competitive in the global market.

Yet we don't see that rationale in this fact check.

PolitiFact:

Cleeland’s emphasis on a hearing could sound like boring procedure, but it’s actually pivotal.  Since Romney brought up the Boeing dispute to demonstrate his regard for the rule of law, it's worth looking at the legal process here. The NLRB has five board members. So far, they have played no role in this matter at all.

Board members are appointed by the president and heavily reflect President Obama's preferences, but you don't need to be bothered with that while we're fact checking.

PolitiFact:

The call for a hearing came when the general counsel of the NLRB, who acts independently of the board, filed a complaint because there seemed to be enough evidence to make it stick. Based on such a complaint, this case now sits before an administrative judge who has yet to make a decision. After the judge rules, that ruling will then go to the NLRB to be voted up or down or changed.

Yes, the NLRB's general counsel is independent of the Board, but both are appointed by the president.  Not that you need to know that.  It should be enough to know that the general counsel is independent of the board even if both operate at the behest of President Obama.  Right?

PolitiFact:

In short, the law provides a process with checks and balances.

How silly.  The NLRB operates under the executive branch.  The board is dominated by the president's appointees.  The general counsel is likewise appointed by the president.  Even the administrative judge is part of the NLRB and as such an extension of the executive branch rather than the judicial branch of government.

If we have checks and balances here, they consist of the Senate's advise and consent power in the Democrat-dominated Senate and the roles of Congress and the judiciary in keeping the executive branch (and with it the NLRB) in line.

PolitiFact:

Romney’s statement gets way ahead of that process, and it runs into trouble on another front. The complaint against Boeing is not based on the fact that South Carolina is a right-to-work state. We spoke to lawyers who think the complaint is well founded and lawyers who think it is utterly misguided, but they agree on this point.

Again, the PolitiFact evaluation comes across as simply laughable.  The entire process is under the NLRB thus far and thus entirely under the auspices of the Obama administration.  When Obama's general counsel files a complaint it is likely on its face that Obama's board of directors will back it.  But credit PolitiFact writer Jon Greenberg with a valiant effort to make it look like a process fitted with all manner of checks and balances.

Greenberg's attempt to fault Romney's reasoning is similarly lame, even if he can share that blame with his cited experts (like Stanford's William Gould).

Romney doesn't affix any particular importance to the fact that South Carolina is right-to-work state.  He could have said it was a Southern state instead and that would not indicate that South Carolina's position relative to the equator had a role in the Obama administration's decision.  That complaint against Romney is a non-starter.


Does Greenberg buy what he's selling?

PolitiFact:

The third problem with Romney’s statement is that if the general counsel at the NLRB really wanted to block the factory in South Carolina, he could have asked for an injunction, which is allowed under the National Labor Relations Act. He did not. The factory is up and running, and Cleeland, the NLRB spokesperson, says Boeing now can tell the administrative judge that to shut the plant would cause undue economic hardship.

Perhaps the general counsel was concerned that the judicial branch would not back the NLRB.  Best to stick with political pressure based on an in-house effort from the executive branch without risking interference from an independent judiciary.  You don't always get to pick your own judge.  Note the expert job Greenberg does of making it appear that the administrative judge is part of the judicial branch.  You'd think the administrative judge would have had a role in granting the would-be injunction based on Greenberg's writing.  Maybe Greenberg even believes that's the way it works.

Just before PolitiFact's grand conclusion, Greenberg adds a paragraph's worth of balance to the story:

There is of course political context to this story. Organized labor has more pull with Democrats than with Republicans, and the machinists union pressed hard to have its complaint move forward. Semmens with the NRWC said he thinks that pressure lies behind the NLRB action. 

No kidding.

PolitiFact:

Romney claimed that the NLRB told Boeing that it  "can’t build a factory in a non-union state." This presents a sweeping distortion of the NLRB's actions that is not borne out by the facts.

Compare the above with my parallel version:

PolitiFact claimed that Romney claimed that the NLRB told Boeing that it "can't build a factory in a non-union state."  This represents a sweeping distortion of Romney's words that is not borne out by the facts.

The same type of argument that PolitiFact uses to undermine Romney works to undermine PolitiFact's criticism of Romney.

PolitiFact:

An office at the NLRB has started a process that could, at the theoretical limit, result in a factory closure, but the NLRB as a whole hasn’t told Boeing anything.

Again, Romney did not say that the NLRB told Boeing anything.  PolitiFact inferred that from Romney's statement and blamed Romney.  Boeing experienced a threat from the executive branch of government to its plans to maintain global competitiveness.  Romney's statement need not mean more than that.

Romney’s statement reflects reality in that a Democratic administration tends to give more weight to union complaints, and unions don’t like to see jobs flow to right-to-work states. But his words go far beyond what the NLRB has actually done.

We rate his statement False.

PolitiFact's words go beyond what Romney actually said.  I say this is journalists reporting badly.

The grades:

Jon Greenberg:  F
Aaron Sharockman:  F

PolitiFact editor Bill Adair has said PolitiFact tries to go beyond the "both sides of the story" approach to fact checking.  Greenberg and Sharockman succeed at avoiding the "both sides of the story" method and then some with this lopsided account of the Boeing labor dispute.  The only thing missing is the rigorous finding of fact that would support PolitiFact's landing on the side of Obama and the union with this fact check.

Afters:

Here's another good example of PolitiFact's shoddy handling of evidence:

Top Boeing officials were quite open about  the connection between the machinists union and the new factory. According to the filing,one executive told a newspaper that "the overriding factor (in transferring the line) was not the business climate. And it was not the wages we’re paying today. It was that we cannot afford to have a work stoppage, you know, every three years." 

You won't find the quotation in the linked filing.  Go ahead and look.

See?  It's not there.  It's not in the other documents PolitiFact links as sources of the story, either, so far as I can tell.  Judging from the information in the other documents the quotation probably occurs in one of the sources cited in the filing PolitiFact linked.  Linking to a secondary source is not among the best practices for a researcher.  Linking to a secondary source that doesn't even include the material that supposedly came from that source is worse.  Congratulations to PolitiFact.


Second Afters:

One of the more interesting aspects of the labor dispute comes from the union's claim (later picked up by the NLRB's general counsel) that a Boeing official appears on videotape saying that the Dreamliner work was moved to South Carolina because of work stoppages and the like.  Recalling that Boeing asserts the importance of maintaining its ability to compete globally via dependable delivery of its products, you be the judge:

Grading PolitiFact: Gingrich, Dodd-Frank and 20 percent

The goal is to help readers judge for themselves whether they agree with the ruling.
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

Context matters -- We examine the claim in the full context, the comments made before and after it, the question that prompted it, and the point the person was trying to make.
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Jon Greenberg:  writer, researcher
Bill Adair:  editor


Analysis:

This fact check by PolitiFact may end up perfectly accurate.  Unfortunately, the PolitiFact team failed to provide material sufficient for the reader to make a sure judgment other than through simple trust of PolitiFact and author Jon Greenberg.

Let's have a look:

With the 2012 election in their sights, Republican candidates spend most of their time trying to prove that President Barack Obama and the Democrats will make the economy worse.

Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich recently used this tactic in discussing housing and the new law to regulate the financial industry known as the Dodd-Frank Act. In a June 13, 2011, appearance in Concord, N.H., Gingrich said that Dodd-Frank "establishes a mandatory 20 percent down payment to buy a house. So at a time when housing prices have dropped worse than the Great Depression, we’re now going to have a law that guarantees there’s no housing market for a generation?" Gingrich said this was just one of many reasons to scrap Dodd-Frank entirely.

First-paragraph snark?  Check.  There's nothing like a little snark to project the aura of objectivity.

Partial quotation?  Check.

This Greenberg fellow will fit right in with PolitiFact.

If Republican candidates really spend most of their time trying to prove that Democrats will make the economy worse, then PolitiFact certainly wouldn't need to go back in time a month for this supposed example.  Even more interesting than the dated example is the lack of context for the quotation of Gingrich.  The sidebar citation leads us to (shocka!) a month-old story by this same Jon Greenberg.

Here's how Greenberg represented Gingrich in that story (yellow highlights added):

He criticized the Dodd Frank act on many fronts, including its impact on housing. “ It establishes a mandatory 20% down payment to buy a house,” he said. “So at a time when housing prices have dropped worse than the Great Depression, we’re now going to have a law that guarantees there’s no housing market for a generation?”

That assertion is questionable. The Mortgage Bankers Association’s analysis of the law makes no mention of such a rule. The law does require that borrowers prove that they have sufficient income to repay a loan.

Greenberg gave us all but one word of the quotation from his original story and we're still left with no surrounding context and nothing regarding the question (if any) that prompted Gingrich's comment.

Was Gingrich talking about the text of Dodd-Frank specifically?  Maybe.  Probably.  But with respect to offering the reader the tools to confirm PolitiFact's judgment (see epigraphical PolitiFact principle), this story falls short.  It comes down to trusting Greenberg.  Yeah, the guy who gave us first-paragraph snark.

As it turns out, Dodd-Frank empowered regulators to determine a down-payment threshold for a certain class of home mortgages.   Under Dodd-Frank, banks must retain a portion of the value of the mortgages they issue.  But some mortgages would qualify for an exemption from that treatment.  And for those types of exceptions the Obama administration regulators voted to establish the 20 percent down payment requirement.

Gingrich appears to say that all mortgages must meet the 20 percent requirement (trust Greenberg?).  And Gingrich appears to say that the regulation comes from Dodd-Frank.  The latter, depending on how Gingrich presented it, may have a grounding in the truth, albeit indirectly.

Too bad Greenberg skimped on the context, though I should note that PolitiFact's lone expert (a journalist) disagrees that Dodd-Frank could be the origin of the 20 percent requirement:

"It's totally incorrect to say that Dodd-Frank came up with the 20 percent down payment standard," said Ken Harney, a real estate columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group. "It just could not be further from the truth.  So whoever says that is just misinformed."

Harney notes that after the firestorm of protest, regulators extended the comment period for rule making. Harney’s assessment?  This is "a proposal that I think has no chance of becoming reality."

Though Greenberg downplays the rule as "just a proposal," the fact is the Obama administration was poised to enact it as a part of its execution of the Dodd-Frank law.  And if it would not hurt the housing market significantly, partially supporting Gingrich's claim, then why so much bipartisan resistance?

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., Kay Hagan, D-N.C., and Mary Landrieu, D-La., and U.S. Congressmen John Campbell, R-Calif., and Brad Sherman, D-Calif., today hosted a news conference calling on federal regulators to revise their proposed 20 percent down payment requirement for Qualified Residential Mortgages. The lawmakers reiterated that the regulators’ proposed rule would shut out responsible homebuyers and further cripple the housing market.

Assuming that Greenberg has represented Gingrich's claim fairly, it seems as though Gingrich's claim does have some truth to it.  Federal regulators under the Obama administration and ostensibly exercising authority granted them under Dodd-Frank voted to institute a 20 percent requirement for a certain class of mortgages.  And that proposal drew bipartisan condemnation based on the damage it might cause to the housing market.

Obama's administration favors policies that make that economy worse.  Fortunately for those suspicious (racist?) types, Greenberg waves them away.  Move along.  Nothing to see here.

As a result of Greenberg's initial snark, his story ends up misleading the reader.  The raw information provides a good bit of evidence of economic incompetence in the Obama administration.  But the story conveys the impression that it contains nothing to show that Obama or Democrats do anything at all to harm the economy.  A close examination of the evidences shows the reverse.

Welcome to the wonderful world of PolitiFact fact checking.


The grades:

Jon Greenberg:  F
Bill Adair:  F

The story accomplishes the agenda of minimizing the appearance of economic cluelessness in the Obama administration.  And even assuming that Greenberg presented Gingrich's statement fairly Gingrich may well have warranted a "Barely True" rating.  The PolitiFact team also fails based on its failure to provide sufficient context for Gingrich's statement.


Afters:

PolitiFact is in the process of expanding its operation to New Hampshire.  New Hampshire, of course, is the home of New Hampshire Public Radio--Jon Greenberg's employer.

It's all too easy to imagine the genesis of this story.

BA:  Hey, Jon!  It's great to welcome you as part of the PolitiFact team!
JG:  Thanks, Bill!  I've got to say I'm very enthusiastic about this partnership.  I've found the PolitiFact approach to fact checking inspiring.  Your story about how you realized you were reporting things you knew were untrue struck home with me.  As a matter of fact, I recently did a story where I questioned a politician's statement.  I was actually thinking of you while I did the story.
BA:  No kidding!  What was the story about?
JG:  Oh, it had to do with Newt Gingrich.  He made some crazy claim last month about the Dodd-Frank bill and I knew he was full of it.
BA:  Hey, you know what?  We can use that story in PolitiFact National to kind of get your feet wet with our system.
JG:  Really?  Great!
BA:  Great!
:-)


In other words, it wasn't really about Gingrich.  He apparently made the claim only once that we know of and did not continue to repeat it.  It didn't get picked up and recirculated. Old news, as they say.  This was about giving Jon Greenberg a pat on the back a month after he published his original story.


Gingrich merely receives the harm from the relatively frivolous fact check.  Selection bias?  You bet.



Disclaimer:  Any resemblance between the above dialog and an actual conversation between Bill Adair and Jon Greenberg is purely coincidental.