Grading PolitiFact: More unprecedented Obama

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:

Amy Sherman:  writer, researcher
Angie Drobnic Holan:  editor


Analysis:

One would think that persons paying close attention to the specific wording of a claim would accurately note the difference between "outspent" and "out-raised."

PolitiFact give an accurate enough account of the statement from President Obama and its context in a fundraising letter.

Then comes the odd turn:

We researched whether Obama’s team could be outraised by Romney and concluded that there are too many unknowns to determine if his prediction will come true. (Read our extended analysis of the issue.)

It's okay to research whether Mitt Romney would outraise Mr. Obama so long as one maintains the distinction between raising money and spending it.  Certainly it's far easier to outspend an opponent if one has raised more money.

The fact check proceeds to focus on fundraising and concludes that presidential challengers Ronald Reagan and Bob Dole outraised the incumbent in 1980 and 1996 respectively.

The issue of spending gets somehow misplaced along the way and we end up with the following conclusion (bold emphasis added):

Obama was wrong to suggest that there hadn’t been other presidents in modern history to be outraised in their re-elections. Looking at numbers alone, Carter and Clinton fall into that category. But what we are comparing is  primary races then with total fundraising for the general election now.

We think 1980 and 1996 certainly fall under "modern history," but the campaign finance picture has changed dramatically since then, and there are important caveats to those races. Those earlier races involved public financing -- this time Obama and Romney are forgoing those dollars.

PolitiFact rates the statement "Mostly False," defined as "The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression."

Yes, the fundraising letter ignores the critical fact that the modern era for incumbent presidents begins this year with Mr. Obama's campaign.  Both campaigns eschewed public financing for this election.  But what was the element of truth in the statement?  It was false that Mr. Obama would be the first incumbent outspent by his rival.

The fact check doesn't tell you what's true about the statement, if anything.

We are left to guess whether Mr. Obama receives credit for the underlying argument, minus the unprecedented second-place fundraising, that the Romney campaign will outspend the President's campaign.  And the fact check never gets around to checking on spending after looking at fundraising.

In the end, we get another example of PolitiFact applying its standards unequally.  PolitiFact checks the wrong fact--fundraising instead of spending--and after that ignores its own "burden of proof" standard that assumes a claim false if PolitiFact does not discover evidence to support the claim.

The grades:

Amy Sherman:  F
Angie Drobnic Holan:  F

The PolitiFact team checked the wrong fact, so readers will not find out from this story whether past incumbent presidents were outspent by their challengers.  The PolitiFact team gave Mr. Obama a "Mostly False" rating without explaining what aspect of the claim it found true.  That rating appears to contradict PolitiFact's statement of principles.

Grading PolitiFact: President Obama and Romney's alleged outsourcing

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)

PolitiFact finds "Half True" the statement from the Obama campaign that "Romney Outsourced call center jobs to India."  According to PolitiFact's statement of principles (see epigraph), the statement is "partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.


The fact checkers:

Molly Moorhead:  writer, researcher
Bill Adair:  editor


Analysis:

I think I was drawn to this story out of a sense of wonder.  How can one obtain a "Half True" for a non-compound proposition?  For "Beavis and Butt-head broke the window with a rock" we have a compound proposition.  Beavis broke the window with a rock.  Butt-head broke the window with a rock.  If one of the two cartoon characters didn't break the window one could still consider the statement half true.  But no direct route to that kind of half truth exists for "Romney outsourced call center jobs to India."

Let's observe the experts at work.

PolitiFact:

The Obama campaign pointed us to news accounts of a budget issue in 2004, the second year of Romney’s term. The Democratic-controlled Massachusetts legislature sent Romney a budget with an amendment that "would prohibit Massachusetts from contracting with companies that ‘outsource’ the state's work to other countries," according to the Boston Globe.

Okay, we can see where this is going.  Romney vetoes the proposed legislation, leaving in place the status quo and allowing a company contracting with the commonwealth of Massachusetts to outsource jobs.

By analogy, Butt-head failed to confiscate from Beavis a rock that Beavis could throw at a window.  Since Beavis subsequently broke the window with the same rock, it is half-true that Butt-head broke the window.

Maybe we're missing something?

PolitiFact:

At the time Massachusetts had a $160,000 a month contract with Citigroup to process debit cards for food stamps. Citigroup outsourced its customer service call center to a facility in India.

A small but important detail: the state didn’t outsource the work -- a state contractor did.

So back to our analogy, somebody definitely broke the window with a rock.  Beavis did it, but Butt-head could have prevented it.  So, when somebody says "Butt-head broke the window with a rock" it is (by analogy) a small but important detail that Beavis was the one who broke the window with the rock.  Which brings us to "Half True," apparently.  Perhaps a larger and even more important detail might have caused the claim to drop as low as "Mostly False," such as Daria breaking the window with a baseball bat instead of Beavis breaking it with a rock.

PolitiFact:

Our ruling

Obama’s ad charges that "Romney outsourced call center jobs to India."

The Obama campaign's wording suggests a broader, more deliberate policy when the state was sending some work overseas. But in choosing to veto the bill, Romney let the arrangement continue. The statement leaves out important information. We rate it Half True.

The barely coherent summary matches the barely coherent logic preceding it.

PolitiFact ends up drawing a very rough sketch of its reasoning, but apparently the writer and editor was misled by placing an improper emphasis on the fact that jobs were outsourced to India.  The point of the ad is not that jobs were outsourced to India.  The ad stresses Romney's responsibility for that outsourcing.  If Romney had outsourced jobs to China rather than India then one could reasonably take the original claim as "Half True" since the point of the ad holds true:  Romney did the outsourcing.

Unfortunately for PolitiFact, the "small but important" detail is big and very important in this case.  It's very misleading to use language depicting Romney as directly responsible for outsourcing jobs when in fact he simply left intact a policy permitting contracting parties to outsource jobs.  The claim of the ad is literally false but with a germ of truth:  Jobs were outsourced and Romney could have prevented it by signing the legislation.  The closely related underlying argument that Romney outsourced jobs is likewise only supported by a germ of truth.

For comparison:

MOSTLY FALSE – The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.

Even if one thinks of Romney as a butt-head, he didn't break the window.  The greater part of the ad's message is false.


The grades:

Molly Moorhead:  F
Bill Adair:  F

 
June 15, 2012: Thanks to Matthew Hoy for highlighting this story on Twitter and via his Hoystory blog.  Hoy adds to the story with a eye-opening parallel.

Grading PolitiFact (Georgia): Rick Santorum and Ruth Bader Ginsburg's constitutional preferences

Sometimes I lead with an epigraph from PolitiFact's statement of principles.  It's hard to choose one in this case, since PolitiFact Georgia may have violated all of them.


The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Willoughby Mariano: writer, researcher
Jim Denery: editor
Jim Tharpe: editor


Analysis:

PolitiFact Georgia notably neglects the real context of Rick Santorum's speech, substituting in its stead an economical and prejudicial summary:

A political rally drew Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum to First Redeemer Church in Forsyth County, not Sunday services.

So instead of teaching the Bible on Feb. 19, he preached on the U.S. Constitution and what he thinks is an effort by liberals to push it aside.

Santorum spoke for over an hour.  The PolitiFact summary barely hints at the content of his speech.


Comments referencing Justice Ginsburg start at about 25:00

PolitiFact:

Santorum’s example was U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is widely considered among the most liberal justices. He asked his audience of 3,000 whether they heard what she said the other day, and they erupted into boos and guffaws.

PolitiFact's reporting is mostly inaccurate.  It's true that the audience reacted to the statement about Ginsburg's statement--before its content was described--with a smattering of boos, changing to laughter when Santurm said "Well I guess you did hear that."  But Ginsburg wasn't Santorum's example of the left trying to push the Constitution aside.  Rather, it was his example of the left preferring a constitution where rights have a different foundation than in the U.S. system of government.  Santorum previously spoke at some length about the foundation for rights laid out in the Declaration of Independence.

PolitiFact:

"So she prefers the South African Constitution over the United States Constitution. A Supreme Court justice says we should be recommending to the world a South African view," Santorum told them.

More boos.

Did she really say that?

Are we going to try to answer the question without putting Santorum's comments in proper context?

PolitiFact:

We found she said no such thing.

First, some context.

After a popular uprising and the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, Egypt is in the midst of writing a new constitution. Ginsburg went to Egypt in January to meet with Egyptian judges and legal experts, and while there gave an interview to Al Hayat TV.

Context is a good thing.  But why all the focus on the context of Ginsburg's interview statements in contrast to a one-sentence distillation of Santorum's remarks?

Ginsburg’s lengthy, nuanced responses repeatedly praised the values, concepts and language of the U.S. Constitution and called the people who wrote it "some of the most brilliant minds of the day "

Ginsburg warned that a constitution means "nothing unless the people are yearning for liberty and freedom." She emphasized the importance of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment and of the separation of powers between Congress, the president and the judiciary that it created.

Ginsburg also pointed out that a long time had passed between the passage of the U.S. Constitution and Egypt’s current efforts.

All true, though I'm not sure what business an objective reporter has calling Ginsburg's statements nuanced (when does Politifact drop the pretext of objectivity?).  But what did Ginsburg say about basic rights other than mentioning the importance of the First Amendment?

PolitiFact (bold emphasis added):

South Africa came up when Al Hayat asked whether Egypt should incorporate parts of other countries’ constitutions in its draft constitution.

"Would your honor’s advice be that a society like ours, with what we call -- what we like to call  -- a transition to the second republic, would your honor’s advice be to get part or use other countries’ constitutions?

"Maybe the United States or other countries as a model? Or [that] we come up with our own methods and our own draft?" the interviewer asked.

Ginsburg replied:

"You should certainly be aided by all the constitution writing that has gone on since the end of World War II. I would not look to the U.S. Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the constitution of South Africa.

"That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights [and] had an independent judiciary. It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done.

"Much more recently than the U.S. Constitution is Canada, [which] has a charter of rights and freedoms [and] dates from 1982. You would almost certainly look at the European Convention on Human Rights. … I'm a very strong believer in listening and learning from others.''

How is one supposed to escape the conclusion that Ginsburg would prefer the South African constitution to the U.S. Constitution as a model for a contemporary effort to draft a constitution?    Ginsburg very clearly expressed a preference in the above.  The remaining question is whether Santorum's use of her statement adequately respects the context.

I guess there's still the question of this:

At no point during the interview did Ginsburg say that she prefers the South African Constitution to the U.S. one. Her point was that it’s better for Egypt to base its constitution on more recent ones written after Word War II [sic].

What a load of manure.  As noted above, Ginsburg very clearly preferred the South African Constitution over the U.S. Constitution as a contemporary model for Egypt.

As for Ginsburg's supposed point, Ginsburg did recommend using as models constitutions more recent than World War II.  The specified date range excludes the U.S. Constitution.  Ginsburg mentions the constitution of South Africa by name.  That's a preference.

From this point, PolitiFact Georgia displays no concern over whether Santorum's remarks respected the context of Ginsburg's interview statements.  That's unsurprising given PolitiFact's disregard for the context of Santorum's speech as well as for the plain text of Ginbsurg's interview.


The grades:

Willoughby Mariano:  F
Jim Denery:  F
Jim Tharpe:  F


Afters: