What's that, again?

The Cleveland Plain Dealer's PolitiFact Ohio operation celebrated a birthday this month.

Bureau chief for the Plain Dealer Stephen Koff offered up a bizarre line in his celebratory column:

Here's to the 56 True ratings over the last 12 months. Here's to the 32 claims that PolitiFact Ohio rated False on the fanciful Truth-O-Meter.

The fanciful Truth-O-Meter.   I suppose Koff means to say the PolitiFact folks gave their system a fanciful name, as in "the fancifully named Truth-O-Meter."

But since that is not what Koff wrote, we critics of PolitiFact may well wonder if his statement represents some type of Freudian slip:

1. not based on fact; dubious or imaginary

The second definition is almost as good:

2. made or designed in a curious, intricate, or imaginative way

Isn't it curious that the principles of the Truth-O-Meter mention absolutely nothing about charitable interpretation?

Isn't it curious that PolitiFact offers two different definitions for one Truth-O-Meter rating?

So what are you saying, Mr. Koff?  Double meaning, maybe?

Grading PolitiFact (Ohio): Sherrod Brown claims unemployment is insurance, not welfare

The issue:

The fact checkers:

Stephen Koff:  writer, researcher
Robert Higss:  editor


Analysis:

Sherrod Brown appeared on MSNBC back on Nov. 30 and made the claim pictured in the above graphic (see "The issue").

Context is a wonderful thing.  Unfortunately, PolitiFact provides no way to verify the full context of Brown's conversation with Contessa Brewer (though Brown rhapsodized about the same subject on the Rachel Maddow Show back in July).

PolitiFact does provide enough context to make it look like Brown contradicts himself:

Brown says that Congress needs to show some compassion, because so many Americans are struggling to find work.

"Understand, this is unemployment insurance," Brown told MSNBC anchor Contessa Brewer on Nov. 30. "It’s not welfare, as a lot of my Republican colleagues like to suggest it is. You pay into it when you’re working. You get help when you’re not."

First Brown claims that Congress needs to show compassion.  Then Brown says that unemployment payments are a form of unemployment insurance.

Is an insurance company exhibiting "compassion" when it pays a claim?

No.  In most instances insurance companies pay claims because of a contractual obligation to pay the claim.  It's always possible, though not likely, that an insurance company will pay benefits beyond those called for in the terms of the contract.  Benefits in the latter category are conceptually identical to charity.  Brown, then, is arguing for charity (extending long-term unemployment benefits) and justifying it as the rightful payment of an insurance benefit.

It isn't cut and dried in the world of PolitiFact, however:

Brown raises several points that we thought were worth checking. The key point: Do workers pay into the unemployment system and then draw benefits from it if they lose their jobs?

PolitiFact's "key point" completely overlooks the context of Brown's statement.  Yes, prior to emergency extensions done at the discretion of the insurer (the government), unemployment benefits are an insurance benefit.  But there's no controversy in Congress about paying those benefits.  The controversy surrounds the interminable extension of unemployment benefits.

PolitiFact then digresses into the issue of who pays the premium for unemployment benefits.  Making the long story shorter, the employer pays the premium but most or all of the payment is considered part of the price of employment.  Regardless, PolitiFact is missing Brown's underlying argument and his main point as a result.

After that, PolitiFact notes that the federal contribution to unemployment benefits is not part of the insurance arrangement at the state level.  In other words, the federal dollars are not part of the insurance benefit for unemployment insurance.  One of PolitiFact's expert sources called the federal portion "deficit financing." Brown was talking about money appropriated by Congress.  How does he get away with justifying the expense as meeting the obligations of an insurance program?

PolitiFact is hot on the trail, albeit moving in the opposite direction:

One more component of Brown’s claim: that "a lot of my Republican colleagues" like to suggest that unemployment insurance is like welfare. This was an important part of the claim because it explains why he felt the need to clarify how the system is funded -- not by freeloaders but by workers who pay into the system.

Apparently we're supposed to ignore the fact that the federal component is not funded by the insurance premium.  PolitiFact uncovered that fact and has since ignored it.

As for the rabbit-trail itself, PolitiFact finds Brown "Half True" in saying that a good number of his Republican colleagues suggest unemployment insurance is like welfare.  The justification?  A good number of Republicans say that unemployment insurance serves as a disincentive to find work.

Huh?

Isn't that entirely beside the point?  If welfare made it 100 percent certain that a person would find a job it would still be welfare, wouldn't it?  How did we end up defining "welfare" in terms of its supposed disincentive effect?  That conception of "welfare" is apparently assumed in the story.  The author provides no justification (and the editor apparently couldn't care less).

PolitiFact ends up breaking down Brown's claim into three component parts (in spite of their simultaneous effort to grade just one item where possible).

So let’s break down Brown’s claim and our fact-finding.

• "A lot of my Republican colleagues" like to suggest that jobless benefits are like welfare. What he meant was clear enough -- that they equate jobless benefits to the public dole. We can’t quantify "a lot." But Brown’s staff provided numerous examples that show there are Republicans saying they worry that jobless benefits encourage people to stay out of work. This isn’t to suggest it is a majority view. But Brown did not say "most." He said "a lot." This part of the claim, then, warrants at least a Half True.
• "You pay into it when you’re working." Economists from the right and left agreed that this is essentially correct, with some elaboration required. So it is Mostly True.
• "You get help when you’re not." This is True.

No doubt the elephant in the room feels greatly relieved.

The key issue should have been whether unemployment compensation was comparable to welfare according to the context in which Brown was speaking.  PolitiFact rated the first component item "Half True" based on an illogical procedure, since welfare is welfare regardless of incentive effects or the lack thereof.  The second and third items relate tangentially to the key point.  Employees pay for unemployment insurance ("You pay into it when you're working"=>"You get help when you're not"), but Congress doesn't appropriate funds for extended unemployment benefits according to the insurance contract.  Extensions self-evidently go beyond the normal schedule of benefits.

PolitiFact bought Sherrod Brown's red herring and ended up pursuing rabbit-trails.

Oh, and the "caveat":

This entire discussion needs a caveat. MSNBC put Brown on the air because of the ongoing debate over extending federal jobless benefits. The reason for debate is the fact that the federal government has to pick up the tab and it will have to borrow more to do so, at least in the short term. To put matters clearly: You pay into the unemployment compensation through your employer, and that pool of money pays for your state benefits -- but not your federal benefits -- if you lose your job.

So, apart from the fact that Brown was misleading the audience, what he said was Mostly True.  Or something like that.  Supposedly.

The grades:

Stephen Koff:  F
Robert Higgs:  F

I've applied the "journalists reporting badly" tag.

Afters:

Sherrod Brown made a remarkably similar set of claims in July on the Rachel Maddow Show:

MADDOW:  One of the things that was proven not only to be the right thing to do with people that are down on their luck but also a big economic stimulus is extending unemployment benefits.  That is something you and the Senate have been dealing with over and over and over again as republicans continue to block it.  Do you think the Senate will be able to get an extension next week?
 
BROWN:  I think we are, because Senator Byrd‘s replacement will be appointed by Governor Mansion of West Virginia.  We need one more vote, but that is the hypocrisy.  They insist we—they give tax cuts to the rich, they start wars, they do a drug and insurance company bailout giveaway.  Charge that to our grandchildren.
 
All of a sudden now, we have to pay for unemployment benefits for working people who have been in the job market for 20 or 30 years, working.  They lose their jobs.  They‘ve paid into this.  Republicans seem to think, republican senators, 41 of them vote no on unemployment time after time after time.  They seem to think that unemployment is welfare.  It‘s insurance.  You pay in when you‘re working, you get help when you‘re not. 

The problem, of course, is that the repeated votes where Republicans express opposition to extending unemployment benefits all involve extensions of unemployment benefits.  Brown's words are very misleading, and PolitiFact finds it impossible to notice.

That same Rachel Maddow segment was the subject of an earlier PolitiFact fact check.  Koff and Higgs received the "journalists reporting badly" tag on that one, also.



Dec. 11, 2010:  A URL in the final paragraph led to the wrong destination, though not by much.  Fixed it.

Of informal speech in objective (?) reporting (Updated)

While skimming the latest PolitiFact entries for grading projects, the opening lines from a story on a Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) raised my eyebrows:

Congressional Democrats found a lot of ways to pay for the country’s health insurance overhaul, some more popular than others. But one in particular has small lawn services, work-at-home parents and the nation’s smallest businesses mighty concerned.

"Mighty concerned," eh?  Dern-tootin' they're concerned, 'cuz all them high-falutin' city folk up in Washington are a bunch of Commies.

No, seriously, I got the impression from "mighty concerned" that PolitiFact was trying to give some kind of down home flavor to the opinion of those who operate lawn services and the like.

From Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, page 634:

The use of mighty as an adverbial intensifier has been looked at askance since at least 1829, when the sentence "That is a mighty big dog" was given in Joseph Hervey Hull's Grammar as an "incorrect phrase" to be corrected.

Not exactly an auspicious beginning.  The book confirmed my reading of the connotations attached to its use as an "adverbial intensifier":

In current American English, it usually conveys a folksy, down-home feeling or a rural atmosphere ...

The entry concludes by saying that the usage is grammatically correct, and a writer should not refrain from using it if it serves a purpose.

I wonder what purpose it was to serve in the PolitiFact story?  Maybe dropping lawn service workers, work-at-home parents and small business owners a notch closer to yokel status?  It can't be the way writer Stephen Koff and editor Robert Higgs of PolitiFact Ohio normally write, can it?


Update:

About the adverb, from Reuters' Handbook of Journalism:

Like adjectives they should be used sparingly. Avoid adverbs that imply judgment, e.g. generously, harshly, and sternly.

Grading PolitFact (Ohio): Sherrod Brown and presidential job creation

One of the most common manifestations of liberal media bias occurs when a liberal presupposition goes unchallenged in the context of either an objective news story or in news analysis.  Though PolitiFact apparently continues to present itself as objective news, it is better categorized as news analysis if not editorial opinion.

The issue:

The fact checkers:

Stephen Koff:  writer, researcher
Richard Exner:  researcher
Robert Higgs:  editor

Analysis:

The quotation of Sen. Brown came from a segment of the Rachel Maddow Show.  Maddow segued from a caricature of Marco Rubio's plans for improving the economy to her conversation with Brown:

(MADDOW:) Right now our deficit is around $1 trillion, republicans are proposing to add $3.5 trillion more to it.  Thank you very much. 
Now let them all fall down.  Well done.  There we go.  Don‘t let the door hit your fiscal responsibility when you‘re on your way out.  All right.  Joining us now is democratic Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio.  Senator Brown, thank you for joining us tonight. 
SEN. SHERROD BROWN (D-OH):  You‘re having too much fun, Rachel. 
MADDOW:  I am having too much fun.  Whenever things fail visibly on television, I enjoy myself. 
BROWN:  You do.  And we do!
MADDOW:  Well, thank you.  Let me ask, though, if there is something that I‘m missing aside from good double-stick tape.  Are republicans essentially campaigning on adding all this tax cut stuff to the deficit? 
BROWN:  Yeah, in some sense, what you‘re missing is you‘re only telling half the story, in this way that not only what they‘re doing provably increases the deficit, and did increase the deficit in the first several years of this decade, this century, we know that.  You proved that and we knew that. 
What else it did is it doesn‘t create jobs.  Just contrast the last two eight-year administrations.  During the eight Bush years, 3 million jobs, net jobs created.  During the eight Clinton years, 22 million net jobs created.  So I care about deficits, absolutely.  But what I care even more about is job creation that people have a chance to join the middle class. 
We saw jobs created, 22 million in the Clinton years.  Because they were responsible about cutting taxes selectively and increasing taxes selectively and they were responsible about what government programs they formed and they dismantled.  22 million jobs created and incomes went up in those eight years for the average American.  And in the next eight years, the eight Bush years, only 3 million jobs created and that wasn‘t even enough to keep up with population growth. 
So in that sense, there was a relative decline in job creation.  And wages were flat or worse for the average American.  So—and coupled with that, what the republicans did in eight years is they cut taxes for the richest Americans and they deregulated Wall Street and deregulated worker safety.

Brown makes a ton of dubious claims in the above set of talking points.  PolitiFact Ohio accordingly applies selection bias:

Politicians can slice and dice monthly job reports expertly, a useful skill for scoring economic talking points. Include a few months’ worth of job losses here, exclude some job gains there, or do it in reverse, and pretty soon it’s all some scoundrel’s fault. (Never mind whom that scoundrel is.)

So U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown caught our attention when he took a broader historical look while appearing July 14 on Rachel Maddow’s program on MSNBC.

This, plain and simple, is a laugh.  It is not a "broader historical look" to assess economic policy by looking at the beginning and end points of presidential terms.  It's simply the aforementioned slicing and dicing intended to direct blame at a scoundrel.  The start and finish of a presidential tenure count as relatively arbitrary points in terms of the implementation of economic policy within the ebb and flow of the business cycle.  PolitiFact's failure to pick up on this raises an immediate red flag.

Hold on to your hat, because PolitFact will end up producing red flags like a Leningrad parade in the old Soviet Union:

The quantitative claims seemed worth checking out, and in doing so we found a surprise: Brown is wrong – but not in a way he’ll likely mind. No fan of President George W. Bush, Brown grossly understated the poor job growth that occurred on Bush’s watch.

The comparison should have been this: Job growth through Clinton two terms was 22.7 million. Through Bush’s two terms, it was 1.1 million.

We might ignore the fact that Clinton inherited a recovering economy from President George H. W. Bush while President George W. Bush inherited an economy poised to enter recession, and the fact that banking crisis at the tail end of the latter Bush presidency had a substantial root in Clinton's policy.  But should we ignore those factors while comparing fiscal and economic policy?  Should we ignore those factors while fact checking?

A chart from Heritage Foundation (click chart for enlarged view) helps fill in some of the blanks:

The two worst periods of job creation during the Bush presidency, as the chart helps highlight, occurred during a recession worsened by the destruction of the World Trade Center towers and the banking crisis for which Democrats share considerable blame.  As for Clinton's impressive record of job creation, that was accomplished with the assistance of a Republican-controlled Congress after Clinton inherited an economy on the rebound from recession.

Armed with something more akin to a "broader historical outlook," back to the PolitiFact story:

The quantitative claims seemed worth checking out, and in doing so we found a surprise: Brown is wrong – but not in a way he’ll likely mind. No fan of President George W. Bush, Brown grossly understated the poor job growth that occurred on Bush’s watch.

The fact check on the raw numbers proves satisfactory--but isn't Brown doing far more than making a comparison between the net job creation numbers for Clinton and Bush?  He has an underlying argument supposedly girded by those numbers, doesn't he?  So what is it?

Skipping over the justification for the 1.1 million figure, PolitiFact continues:

OK, but what about Brown’s claim that incomes went up under Clinton?

The numbers bear this out, too. BLS data, adjusted for inflation, show that average weekly wages grew by 21 percent from the start of Clinton’s first term to the end of his second term. They grew by only 2 percent under Bush’s two terms.

OK, so what's Brown's argument based on these numbers?

PolitiFact:

Is it fair to compare job growth under these presidents? Just in case we were missing some context – because these numbers seemed to turn conventional wisdom of its head -- we ran this by Dan Mitchell, an economist and fan of fiscal restraint who works as a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian-oriented think tank. Mitchell said he didn’t find the numbers surprising. Luck and the economic cycle played a role in both presidencies, but the officeholders’ policies played bigger roles, he said. Citing free-trade agreements, welfare reform and deregulation in the telecommunications and agriculture industries, Mitchell said that Clinton’s economic policies were actually geared more to free markets than Bush’s, and the results speak for themselves.

Mitchell, unsurprisingly, makes some of the points to which I alluded above while giving appropriate credit to Clinton for favoring free markets in his economic approach.

But if Clinton's success occurred largely because of a free market approach, besting Bush in terms of conservatism, then might there be consequences for Brown's underlying argument?  And speaking of Brown's underlying argument, does PolitiFact have any insight as to what it might be?

Sorry, folks!  It's conclusion time already:

But that’s for others to argue. Bush, while insisting on tax cuts, faced a national security crisis unparalleled in the last half-century, and his response – including wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – had serious economic consequences.  Political values, including those of Sen. Brown, shape the debate on whether the president took the right or wrong approach. As for us, we’re sticking to the factual claims.

Brown’s numbers on Bush were off, but his point was right on target. We rate his statement True.

"(H)is point was right on target."  Apparently PolitiFact takes Brown to mean simply that Clinton's job creation numbers were much better than Bush's measured from the start to the end of their two terms.  But the caveats discussed above make that an effectively meaningless comparison except perhaps, as Cato's Mitchell put it, as a measure of Clinton's free market savvy.  But seriously, doesn't the context demand that Brown's underlying argument is something other than that?

The whole of the Maddow-Brown interchange amounts to an attack on the notion of cutting taxes to grow the economy.  Brown tried to make the  point that cutting taxes does not create jobs, using the Clinton/Bush comparison to prove his point.  Review the transcript:

"What else it did is it doesn‘t create jobs.  Just contrast the last two eight-year administrations.  During the eight Bush years, 3 million jobs, net jobs created.  During the eight Clinton years, 22 million net jobs created."

Without specifically identifying Brown's point, PolitiFact declares his point "right on target."  But given the information above, it should be obvious that Brown's intended point--that tax cuts do not create jobs--cannot find reasonable support in the Clinton/Bush comparison.

PolitiFact again ignored the clear underlying argument of a Democratic Party figure.  The supposed fact check serves to frame, rather than interpret, Brown's statement in the most favorable manner possible.  Any communication deserves charitable interpretation.  Charitable framing, however, should not be the business of a fact checker.  That is the job of public relations workers and partisan spinners.

The grades:

Stephen Koff:  F
Richard Exner: F
Robert Higgs:  F

Exner may have done a fine job, but the research on this story is so thin that he gets an "F" by default.  I like to hope that he made some sort of comment to the writer and editor to the effect that their story was fundamentally flawed.