Grading PolitiFact (Texas): All out of "out of context" where Romney's concerned

HALF TRUE – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

W. Gardner Selby:  writer, researcher
John Bridges:  editor


Analysis:

I've tipped off that the key aspect to this fact check concerns whether Mitt Romney's statement was taken out of context.  Let's track PolitiFact's treatment of that aspect of this fact check.

PolitiFact:

"Mitt Romney, quite simply, doesn’t get it," the San Antonio mayor (Julián Castro) said in his Sept. 4, 2012, keynote at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. "A  few months ago, he visited a university in Ohio and gave the students there a little entrepreneurial advice. ‘Start a business,’ he said. "But how? ‘Borrow money if you have to from your parents.’

That's the Julián Castro version of the context.  Romney was giving the students "a little entrepreneurial advice."

PolitiFact appears to accept the accuracy of Castro's version of the context at face value with its phrasing, in the very next paragraph, of the question of the fact check would answer:

Did Castro accurately recap Romney’s student advice?

PolitiFact might consider a different angle on that question:  Was Romney giving entrepreneurial advice to the students at Ohio's Otterbein University?

With both questions in mind, watch the video.



In context, Romney was talking about the historical climate for American entrepreneurship. He didn't tell the students to borrow money from the parents. He painted a general picture of ways entrepreneurs chase their dreams, and he gave borrowing money from parents as one example. Notably, the line segued to the example of Jimmy John, who founded a nationally popular sandwich chain using startup money borrowed from his father.

Castro gets the words right, but both Castro and PolitiFact get the context wrong. PolitiFact's conclusion doesn't fly as a result:

Castro told his fellow Democrats that Romney urged students at an Ohio university that if they have to, they should borrow money from their parents to start a business. Romney, in fact, said that. Castro’s claim rates True.

By PolitiFact's statement of principles, Castro's claim is "Half True" at best.


The grades:

W. Gardner Selby:  F
John Bridges:  F

PolitiFact stayed on the same page with Castro as he took Romney's statement out of context.  Castro attempted to make Romney seem out of touch and distant with the supposed suggestion of borrowing money to start a business.  But Romney was correct that borrowing money from parents is one way Americans historically chase their entrepreneurial dreams.  Plus the comment served as an apparently deliberate introduction to the Jimmy John anecdote.

Fact checkers should emphasize such contextual elements, not bury them.

Grading PolitiFact (Texas): Burying the underlying argument for Julián Castro

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

 Or not.


The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Sue Owen:  writer, researcher
W. Gardner Selby:  writer
John Bridges:  editor


Analysis:

PolitiFact maintains a bad habit of applying its standards inconsistently.  This fact check of a statement by San Antonio mayor Julián Castro serves as an example of one common variety of PolitiFact's inconsistency.  Many raw facts have little significance when considered alone.  But often politicians will use an apparently true fact in constructing a fallacious or questionable argument.  PolitiFact's principles assure us that PolitiFact takes such factors into account (see epigraph above).  In practice, that often isn't the case.

On with the fact check:

Addressing the delegates assembled in Charlotte, N.C., Castro said that San Antonio residents recognize the value of investing in pre-Kindergarten and student college loans. "We're investing in young minds today to be competitive in the global economy tomorow [sic]," Castro said. "And it's paying off. Last year the Milken Institute ranked San Antonio as the nation's top-performing local economy."

PolitiFact Texas does "examine" the context after a fashion.  The quotation of Castro succinctly illustrates his point:  Investing in pre-K and student college loans paid off in that San Antonio's economy leads the nation in the Milken Institute rankings.

That's Castro's obvious point, and PolitiFact does enough fact checking to show that his point is highly suspect:

The San Antonio Express-News credited the city’s rise to reasons "including military base realignment, drilling in the Eagle Ford Shale and the growth of health care" in a Dec. 16, 2011, news story.

But military base realignment, producing shale oil and expanding the health care job sector are pretty much the same as "investing in young minds."  Aren't they?

PolitiFact:

Texas’ rise in the ranks, the Express-News wrote, came partly because of downturns in other parts of the country. The story quoted research economist James Gaines of Texas A&M University’s Real Estate Center: "Our growth rate and advancement isn't all that wonderful. We've managed to stay flat or have very small positives. But because everybody has so many negatives, we look so much better."

But aren't those downturns in other parts of the country ultimately because of their failure to match San Antonio's investment in pre-K education and student loans?

PolitiFact provides no evidence in support of Castro's claimed cause-and-effect relationship.  Instead, we get a ruling based entirely on the raw claim about San Antonio's ranking which completely ignores Castro's underlying point:

San Antonio hasn’t just been holding steady in the economic downturn; it’s been gaining ground, even compared to other Texas cities. Castro’s statement rates True.

If the rest of the nation wants to keep up with San Antonio then maybe we'd better increase our investment in education.  Hmmm?

PolitiFact editor Bill Adair, from January 2012:

About a year ago, we realized we were ducking the underlying point of blame or credit, which was the crucial message. So we began rating those types of claims as compound statements.

Adair referred to claims associated with an executive's tenure, such as "Since X became governor, crime has decreased 50 percent."  Such claims imply that the executive carries some significant share of responsibility for the change.  In this case, Castro did not explicitly claim personal credit at all, but he did offer an explanation for San Antonio's economic performance--an explanation that jibes with the Democrat Party's prescription for helping the economy.

PolitiFact presented evidence that severely undercut Castro's point, yet gave him an unqualified "True" rating.

That's the kind of thing you get with PolitiFact.  Bias in story focus contributes heavily to the resulting "Truth-O-Meter" ratings.


The grades:

Sue Owen:  F
W. Gardner Selby:  F
John Bridges:  F


Update/Correction June 10, 2015: Replaced wrong fact check URL with the correct URL.

Grading PolitiFact (Texas): Paul Sadler and the doubled debt?

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Sue Owen:  writer, researcher
W. Gardner Selby:  editor


Analysis:

Speaking for myself, if I fact checked Paul Sadler on a claim that the federal debt doubled during the Bush administration there's little chance I'd have much problem with it.  It's the way PolitiFact does its fact checking that draws my scrutiny.

PolitiFact tracked the origin of Sadler's claim down to a chart published in the New York Times.

PolitiFact:

According to the chart, the Bush administration began with a $5.8 trillion gross federal debt, which grew by $6.1 trillion to reach $11.9 trillion --  an increase of 105 percent, or slightly more than double. The Times ascribed the increase in debt to "tax cuts, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, (the) economic downturn in 2001 and recession starting in 2007."

Following a suggestion from Treasury spokesman Matthew Anderson, we found that plugging the fiscal years of Bush’s presidency -- October 2001 through September 2009 -- into the Treasury’s online calculator gives debt figures that tally with the Times graphic. While that period begins nearly nine months into Bush’s presidency, it also aligns with the years over which he held budgetary sway.

With a little luck Bush can get credit for President Obama's FY2009 spending while also losing out on any help at all from the modest budget surplus in 2001.

PolitiFact got help from Robert Sahr, a political scientist at Oregon State University.

PolitiFact:

Sahr produced a spreadsheet for us with fiscal year-end debt numbers from the federal Office of Management and Budget. Among the results: As with the Treasury calculator, 2001-2009 public debt in non-inflation-adjusted dollars went up 130 percent. Adjusted for inflation (to 2011 dollars), though, the increase was 88 percent.

Lucky Bush!  Using the OMB numbers will, in fact, allow Bush to take advantage of Obama's 2009 spending, in particular the initial phase of the economic stimulus package. Bush also ends up on the hook for the OMB's calculations for bailout spending, most of which was repaid and thus had little lasting effect on the federal debt.

This is a PolitiFact fact check.  This is what you get.

PolitiFact:

Some news analyses have compared changes in debt using inauguration dates. We checked those with the Treasury calculator, finding that from Bush’s first inauguration, January 20, 2001, to the day President Barack Obama took office, January 20, 2009, gross federal debt in non-inflation-adjusted dollars rose from $5.7 trillion to $10.6 trillion, up 86 percent.

So now PolitiFact is trying to steal credit for stimulus spending from Bush.  But at least he still gets a heap of credit for bailout loans at this stage.  Note that PolitiFact doesn't bother chipping away at the 86 percent figure by adjusting the figures for inflation.  In 2009 dollars the $5.7 trillion from 2001 turns into $6.9 trillion, which drops the increase by 32 percentage points down to 54 percent.  The latter figure doesn't look very good for Sadler, so let's just forget we ever did that calculation.  Thank goodness PolitiFact didn't bother us with such distractions.

Now for some comedy relief from Sadler:

When we checked back in with Sadler, he objected to adjusting the debt changes for inflation, saying by email: "I seriously doubt any holder of the debt or your bank would allow you to adjust your debt for inflation.  The amount owed is the amount owed - you don't get to adjust it for inflation."

It was magnanimous of PolitiFact to refrain from pointing out that Sadler's statement is silly.  Inflation is the borrower's friend.  It is the lender who would like to adjust for inflation and receive an added bonus to the repayment.  Fortunately for the lender, inflation is typically accounted for in the scheduled interest rate.  Lucky Sadler!


PolitiFact Texas concludes:

We see how Sadler reached his conclusion. In raw terms, both the public debt and gross federal debt more than doubled during the fiscal years corresponding to Bush’s presidency. However, adjusting for inflation, gross debt increased 70 percent over those years, while public debt increased 88 percent. That’s not quite doubling.

We rate Sadler’s claim Mostly True.

Problems:

1)  Evidently none of the figures recognize the temporary nature of the debt resulting from the bailout spending in 2009.  That bailout spending accounted for very roughly $441 billion as of  June 30, 2009 (note that the government accounting is not straightforward--the OMB and CBO use different methods of calculating TARP spending).  The budgeted spending is very probably much less than the amount added to the debt because of loan repayments, and the spending will appear higher in OMB estimates.

2)  Bush gets about $120 billion in ARRA (stimulus) spending credited to his FY2009 account.  ARRA spending and bailouts combined may account for nearly $600 billion in supposed debt.  The story omits all of this context.

3)  Following the above, the inauguration date figures probably provide a better estimate of the debt increase than those from the end of the 2001 and 2009 fiscal years:  That estimate comes to a 54 percent increase on the gross debt after adjusting for inflation.

4)  PolitiFact's figure for the increase in gross debt after adjusting for inflation represents a 63 percent inflation (34 percentage points) over the more realistic 54 percent figure.  PolitiFact proposes grading Sadler "Mostly True" for a figure that, by PolitiFact's accounting, was exaggerated only by as much as 43 percent.  Sadler appears more accurate than PolitiFact.

5)  PolitiFact omits a great deal of information regarding the precipitous climb in spending for 2009, much of it owing to the bailout programs, and apparently never considers the debt as a percentage of GDP, perhaps the method most favored by economists in measuring the growth of debt.

In terms of normal communications, Sadler is in the ballpark even if the debt only increased 54 percent under Bush.  Sadler's mild exaggeration is not nearly as offensive as sham fact checking that pretends to an expertise absent in the finished product.  This fact check looks like it was chosen and executed primarily to aid President Obama in the 2012 election by blaming Bush for a large federal debt.

Contrast this fact check with PolitiFact's consistent treatment of recent Republican claims that ObamaCare taxes make up the largest tax increase ever.  PolitiFact doesn't even pause at adjusting for inflation and proceeds straight to the percentage of GDP.  Lucky Charlotte Bergman!  Lucky Rush Limbaugh!  Lucky Josh Mandel!  All recipients of a "Pants on Fire" rating thanks to PolitiFact's use of the GDP measure.


The grades:

Sue Owen:  F
W. Gardner Selby:  F

I'm okay with a "Mostly True" for hapless Paul Sadler, who apparently has no clue as to how inflation affects lending.  I'm not very sympathetic to fact checking that could pass for deliberate partisan spin.


Afters: 

For the curious (obviously not PolitiFact), gross debt as a percentage of GDP increased from 56.4 percent in 2001 to 83.4 percent in 2009.  That's an increase of 47.9 percent, well short of the 100 percent figure that would mean doubling, and even short of the 50 percent increase that would allow Sadler to do some liberal rounding up.  Lucky.


Correction July 26, 2012:  Originally published including the sentence starting "The latter figure doesn't look very good for Sahr."  Sadler was the name I intended to use.  Apologies to good Mr. Sahr for my error.

Grading PolitiFact (Texas): Rick Perry and the lightbulb police

The issue:

The fact checkers:

W. Gardner Selby:  writer, researcher
Ciara O'Rourke:  editor

Analysis:

Let's get right to the PolitiFact analysis:

Saying there's "no end to the reach of Washington," Perry writes that Washington is "even telling us what kind of light bulb we can use."

The quotation is pulled from page 37 of Perry's book, "Fed Up":

But the problem goes far deeper than that.  Prohibition on school prayer, the redefinition of marriage, the nationalization of health care, the proliferation of federal criminal laws, interference with local education, the increased regulation of food--even telling us what kind of lightbulb we can use--there is seemingly no end to the reach of Washington.

(Yellow emphasis added)

Perry, then, provides little context for the remark.  It is simply a statement intended to illustrate the broad reach of the federal government.

PolitiFact:

We asked Perry for backup on that claim and didn't hear back. Then we launched a search for "use-this-bulb" regulations.

PolitiFact appropriately looked for and found the obvious bill from 2007 signed by President George W. Bush.  That legislation phases out traditional incandescent bulbs (with apparently some exceptions) starting in 2012.

PolitiFact also noted that President Obama has pledged to "phase out all incandescent light bulbs."

Then PolitiFact followed its custom of presenting expert opinions:

Jen Stutsman, spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Energy, told us that conventional incandescent bulbs are not expected to meet the efficiency standards Congress set, though the government expects manufacturers to improve incandescent technologies to meet the higher standards or consumers will move to compact fluorescent light bulbs, LED technologies or halogens. She said new standards for 100-watt bulbs take effect in January 2012. New standards for 75-watt bulbs start in 2013 and standards for 60- and 40-watt bulbs start in 2014.

Stutsman said the expected shifts aren't equivalent to the government telling Americans which light bulbs to use. "Under no circumstances does it say that a consumer must purchase a specific type of light bulb," Stutsman said.

Did it occur to PolitiFact that Stutsman is simply wrong?

When the government prohibits the sale of light bulbs that fail to meet its efficiency standards then it is equivalent to the government determining that those within its jurisdiction must purchase a specific type of light bulb--that is, one that meets the federal efficiency standard.  Stutsman appears to equivocate on Perry's meaning, uncharitably supposing that Perry meant that the government would force consumers to use very specific light bulbs for very specific applications.  Stutsman creates a straw man argument, and PolitiFact proceeds to treat it as the real McCoy:

So, is Washington telling us what kind of bulb to use?

Not yet, though the 2007 law steps up efficiency requirements and that's expected to result in consumers purchasing and using different bulbs. These factors give Perry's statement an element of truth. We rate it Barely True.

Good grief.  Washington told us in 2007 that we would not be able to replace our typical incandescent bulbs with similar bulbs, with the phase-out starting in 2012.  It takes uncharitable interpretation to rate Perry's claim below "Mostly True."  The typical reader knows exactly what Perry was talking about.  Rather than making an attempt to inform readers about surprising government intrusion, Perry was illustrating the intrusion with an example likely present in the reader's knowledge base.

The grades:

W. Gardner Selby:  F
Ciara O'Rourke:  F

Grading PolitiFact (Texas): John Cornyn and the importance of judicial experience (Updated)

PolitiFact, the fact checking outfit begun by the St. Petersburg Times, usually rates according to a "Truth-O-Meter" rating. Some stories, however, are graded according to the similarly cutesy "Flip-O-Meter." The "Flip-O-Meter" is supposed to rate whether a position is held consistently.

Which brings us to PolitiFact and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex).

The issue:

Judging from the above, PolitiFact presumes to judge Cornyn's consistency on the importance of judicial experience as a qualification for a Supreme Court justice.

The fact checkers:

W. Gardner Selby:  writer, researcher
Brenda Bell:  editor

Analysis:

This PolitiFact piece finds Cornyn guilty of a "Half Flip."  It will be useful to highlight the PolitiFact understanding of that term.  On second thought, it would be useful to highlight the PolitiFact understanding of the term if it was available.  The description is minimal:

We also rate the consistency of public officials on our Flip-O-Meter using three ratings: No Flip, Half Flip and Full Flop.

Needless to say, the practice of omitting any description of standards with respect to the application of the "Flip-O-Meter" may assist PolitiFact in avoiding the appearance of inconsistency.

Fortunately, the stories ought to provide us with some kind of picture of PolitiFact's practical guidelines.

On with the analysis:

"Something Wicked This Way Comes"

Barry Popik of Red State offered a timely reminder that PolitiFact is spreading to the great state of Texas.  That means I'll have to revise my description of PolitiFact as "the fact checking arm of the St. Petersburg Times" or the like.

Popik's take is worth quoting:

My local Austin American-Statesman has just added PolitiFact Texas. If this works as well as the one at the St. Petersburg (FL) Times and Barack Obama’s “Fight the Smears,” then in won’t exactly be about the truth. The plan is to make this nation-wide.
It’s sort of a Snope with, unfortunately, a little Media Matters under the hood.

Or, as Popik phrased it while commenting here, "Same biases, different state."

Popik included a few examples of PolitiFactual malfeasance in his Red State post. Thanks for the link, Barry!