Grading PolitiFact:: Mitt Romney and free hospital care

Does PolitiFact feel that it must equivocate on the statements of Republicans as a service to its readers?

Sometimes it seems that way.

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Dan Gorenstein:  writer, researcher
Bill Adair:  editor

Analysis:

PolitiFact claims among its principles the standard practice of considering a claim in its original context.  Truth-O-Meter ratings take into consideration, we are told, the point the claimant had in mind.

Judge for yourself.

PolitiFact:

Responding to a question about health care at a Wolfeboro, N.H., town hall, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney defended the health care law he signed in Massachusetts, saying it was partly a response to people who took advantage of a federal law that allows them to get free emergency coverage.

Emergency coverage?

PolitiFact makes it sound like Romney is saying that the federal government has obligated itself to provide insurance coverage to at least some people in Massachusetts.  But Romney was talking about the well-known, if poorly understood, provision in federal law that requires most hospitals to provide emergency room treatment regardless of patients' ability to pay.

PolitiFact quotes Romney:

"We found that because of federal law, federal law requires that hospitals treat people whether or not they can pay. So someone (who) doesn’t have health insurance -- they can go to the hospital and get free care. And we found a growing number of people were dropping their insurance and going to the hospital if they got real sick."

Romney's point?  A growing number of people in Massachusetts were using the federal law as a free insurance policy.

So ... where should PolitiFact put its focus?

In this case, we wondered if Romney was accurately describing the federal law and whether it truly equates with free care.

There's still time at this point in the story for PolitiFact to properly consider the context along with Romney's point.  But the phrase "truly equates with free care" puts up a bit of a red flag.  The term "truly" often occurs in the company of a fallacy of equivocation.

PolitiFact proceeds to describe how the law works.  Yes, hospitals receiving funding through Medicare must "'provide a medical screening examination' for an emergency condition 'regardless of an individual's ability to pay.'"

PolitiFact adds:

If the patient’s symptoms qualify as an emergency, the law says "hospitals are required to provide stabilizing treatment for patients."

So what does "stabilizing treatment for patients" mean in practice?

Matt Fenwick with the American Hospital Association says it means "your condition has been stabilized. (Medical providers) have done everything they can do to make sure your condition is not getting any worse."

Some of our gentle readers may think that receiving a medical screening examination and/or stabilizing treatment as described above reasonably qualifies as "free care."  But PolitiFact would not have Romney mislead you like that:

Our ruling

Romney said that federal law "requires that hospitals treat people whether or not they can pay. So someone doesn’t have health insurance they can go to the hospital and get free care."

Experts told us that one aspect of Romney's argument has some validity: Many people rely on emergency rooms for care when they have nowhere else to go, which is expensive and a burden on the health care system and the larger society. And hospitals sometimes provide more free care than the law requires.

But Romney is wrongly suggesting more extensive treatment is required by federal law. He implies that hospitals are required to provide more free care than is actually mandated. In fact, the law just requires stabilizing treatment in an emergency. We rate his claim Barely True.

Romney "is wrongly suggesting more extensive treatment is required by federal law"?  No, there's nothing in the context to suggest that.  Romney's statement is ambiguous about the extent of free care mandated through Medicare hospitals by the federal government, and that ambiguity is appropriate for two reasons.   First, Romney doesn't need specificity in order to make his point about the costs to taxpayers.  Any degree of free care that constitutes the financial impact he pictures in his statement makes his statement true.  Second, people understand that free emergency room care does not cover every medical problem.  Probably nobody in Romney's audience was misled on that point apart from any journalists present.

Romney is correct that federal law requires hospitals to offer health care regardless of the patient's ability to pay.  If PolitiFact wants to fill in the details of law to clarify what Romney's talking about, that's fine.  But Romney's point does not require that type of detail.  Nor does Romney say anything to imply a level of free care beyond what exists in fact.  Again, we have PolitiFact seizing on an ambiguity and socking it to the Republican based on an uncharitable (and unreasonable) interpretation.


The grades:

Dan Gorenstein:  F
Bill Adair:  F

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.

Grading PolitiFact (New Jersey): Burying Michael Doherty's underlying point

To assess the truth for a numbers claim, the biggest factor is the underlying message.
--PolitiFact editor Bill Adair

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Bill Wichert:  writer, researcher
Caryn Shinske:  editor

Analysis:

PolitiFact appears to have the goods on Doherty.  It sure seems like he got the numbers wrong:

Doherty referred us to a fact sheet prepared by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc., showing that 7,021 prenatal clients were served nationwide in 2009. Based on that figure, Doherty determined there were, on average, about 140 prenatal patients per state.

Here’s the problem: the fact sheet said "clients," but Doherty referred to "visits" on the Senate floor.

Oops.  Big mistake.  One client might have more than one visit.

PolitiFact:

When we checked with Michele Jaker, executive director of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of New Jersey, she said Planned Parenthood centers provided a total of 40,489 prenatal visits across the country in 2009, which is the latest data available.

That's 5.77 visits per client, for those who like to see the numbers crunched.  And Doherty ends up underestimating the correct number by a walloping 83 percent.  What can save Doherty from receiving a "Truth-O-Meter" grade of "False" or worse?

The underlying point, maybe?  PolitiFact editor Bill Adair does call the underlying point the most important thing about a numbers claim, after all.  And there's some good news for Doherty in this fact check.  He's pretty much on target with the underlying point:

But for his overall argument that Planned Parenthood sees few prenatal patients, Doherty is right.

According to the same fact sheet, "other women’s health services," which includes prenatal care, only accounted for 10 percent of all services provided by Planned Parenthood nationwide in 2009.

According to figures provided by Jaker, prenatal clients represented about 0.6 percent of the 91,617 patients served by New Jersey centers in 2009.

In the context of overall services provided by Planned Parenthood, in fact, Doherty's error would shrink to a negligible level.  And since "the biggest factor" in grading a numbers claim is the underlying point, Doherty should fare okay.

Eh.  Not so much, as it turns out.

PolitiFact:

The senator said Planned Parenthood doesn’t provide many prenatal visits, saying the figure was "about 140 visits for each state in the entire country." That figure is way off, because Doherty was using the number of clients. The actual number would be more like 800 visits per state.

Figures provided by Planned Parenthood confirm that prenatal care represents a small part of the services offered, but since the senator’s figures were inaccurate to such a large degree, we rate the statement False.

Depending on the subject and/or the PolitiFact team doing the evaluation, the underlying point isn't always the most important thing.  Sometimes the underlying point doesn't appear to matter at all to the Truth-O-Meter's mighty objective needle.

Fancy that.

The grades:

Bill Wichert:  F
Caryn Shinske:  F

PolitiFact needs to decide as an organization what role the underlying point plays in a fact check.  And then stick to it.

PolitiFlub: Effortless promise-keeping by the president

Sometimes I can't believe my eyes when I read various PolitiFact stories.

Today provided a great example. PolitiFact rated as "Promise Kept" President Obama's pledge to require 10 percent of U.S. electicity is comes from renewable energy sources by 2012:

"Barack Obama and Joe Biden will establish a 10 percent federal Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) to require that 10 percent of electricity consumed in the U.S. is derived from clean, sustainable energy sources, like solar, wind and geothermal by 2012."

PolitiFacter Catharine Richert updated the item in 2009, noting that the House version of the cap and trade bill might end up fulfilling the president's promise.

Which brings us to 2011 and a new update by intern David G. Taylor.

Taylor informs us that the president has kept his promise.  If that seems against all odds given the eventual fate of any and all cap and trade bills recently, hang on for Taylor's explanation:

We spoke with the Christina Kielich of the U.S. Department of Energy press office. She told us that the United States receives approximately 11 percent of its electricity from renewable sources. This breaks down to about 6 percent from hydroelectricity, 3 percent from wind, and approximately 1% each from solar, biomass, and geothermal. Thus, in 2011 - one year head of Obama"s promise, the United States has already reached more than the 10 percent renewable level.

Obama kept his 10 percent promise because the U.S. exceeded 10 percent in fact.

In case it isn't clear what is going on here, Taylor is substituting a new promise for the old promise.  The old promise was that the president would require 10 percent of U.S. energy to come from renewable sources.  The new promise is that the U.S. will produce at least 10 percent of its energy from renewable sources.  The latter promise is a tad like my personal promise that the sun will come up tomorrow.  When the sun appears, my promise is kept.  Did I do anything to help it along?  Not at all.

As bad as it would be to credit the president with keeping a promise which required nothing of him, the real problem stems from the fact that Obama's promise was one of action.  He would establish a requirement.  Taylor's story provides no evidence of the establishment of any sort of requirement.

The promise was not kept, yet PolitiFact counts it otherwise.


Afters:

This is at least the second time that PolitiFact editors have failed interns by not catching fairly obvious flaws in their stories.  The other I have in mind was Lukas Pleva.  Both interns are doubtless talented otherwise the plum internship opportunity would not fall within their respective grasps.  Both deserve better from PolitiFact.

As both Taylor and Pleva doubtless have too much class to blast their gift-horse to its teeth, I'll be happy to do so on their behalf from my less-beholden position:  PolitiFact, you blew it and you've harmed these interns with your lapse in oversight.

Grading PolitiFact: Tim Pawlenty and the Iowa Marriage Pledge or something

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:

Louis Jacobson:  writer, researcher
Martha Hamilton:  editor


Analysis:

This piece by PolitiFact serves well to illustrate the liberal bias of the media with respect to social issues.

PolitiFact:

During a July 10, 2011, appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, host David Gregory asked Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty about the origins of homosexuality.

So far, so good.  The origins of homosexuality constituted the topic.  And PolitiFact delivered in presenting Pawlenty's remarks in the company of their surrounding context:

MR. GREGORY:  Let me ask you about social policy.  You've notably said that you're a big fan of Lady Gaga, and even the song "Born This Way." There's a lot of debate about a gay marriage pledge in Iowa.  And related to that, I wonder, do you agree with some of those who are behind that, that being gay is a choice?

GOV. PAWLENTY:  Well, I have two teenage daughters who listen to Lady Gaga, so I'm subjected to it.  And it has some good qualities to it.  But as to, as to gay marriage, I'm in support of traditional marriage as between a man and a woman.  I have not supported the issues of allowing gay couples to have the same benefits and public employment as traditional couples.  And so this is an issue in Iowa and across the whole country.  But I've stood in favor or traditional marriage and traditional relationships in that regard.

MR. GREGORY:  Is being gay a choice?

GOV. PAWLENTY:  Well, the science in that regard is in dispute.  I mean, the scientists work on that and try to figure out if it's behavioral...

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

GOV. PAWLENTY:  ...of if it's partly genetic.

MR. GREGORY:  What do you think?

GOV. PAWLENTY:  Well, I defer to the scientists in that regard.

MR. GREGORY:  So you, you think it's not a choice.

GOV. PAWLENTY:  Well, there is no...

MR. GREGORY:  That you are, as Lady Gaga says, you're born that way.

GOV. PAWLENTY:  There's no scientific conclusion that it's genetic.  We don't know that.  So we don't know to what extent, you know, it's behavioral, and that's something that's been debated by scientists for a long time.  But as I understand the science, there's no current conclusion that it's genetic.

MSNBC transcript

PolitiFact reproduced as much of the context as I provided above, and that's commendable.  Unfortunately, the PolitiFact team proceeded to ignore the context for purposes of the fact check.

Before examining PolitiFact's failures in that respect, however, we will benefit from teasing apart David Gregory's interview questions along with Pawlenty's responses.

Note that Gregory asks his initial question in this section by saying it relates to the Iowa marriage pledge.  The marriage pledge has nothing in it about homosexuals choosing their orientation.  If Pawlenty takes Gregory seriously that his question relates to the marriage pledge then the question does not have to do with homosexuals choosing their sexual orientation.

Gregory also stipulates that "some" of those behind the marriage pledge think homosexuality is a choice, and that is the immediate lead-in as he asks Pawlenty if he agrees with those unnamed persons.  But if Gregory means to ask that question then it relates to the marriage pledge only tangentially.  That would mean that Gregory told a half-truth in saying his question related to the marriage pledge.

As a result, Pawlenty finds himself in the position of trying to figure out what Gregory is really asking him.  Does the question relate directly to the marriage pledge or is Gregory asking him say whether he thinks people choose their sexual orientation?

In the end, Pawlenty's answer is about as clear as Gregory's question.  But PolitiFact never bothers with the ambiguity even though some of their expert sources point it out:

...Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council -- a leading think tank for social conservatives -- agreed with the distinction between orientation and behavior. He suggested that fuzzy definitions of "sexual orientation" explain why the two camps sometimes talk past each other.

"Part of the problem is that the term ‘sexual orientation’ is somewhat ambiguous," Sprigg said. He suggests that it is sometimes used to cover three separate elements -- attractions, behaviors and self-identification.

"What I generally say is that I don‘t believe that same-sex attractions are a choice, but behaviors and self-identification are," he said. "If Pawlenty had wanted to be more subtle, he could have asked Gregory what he meant" by being gay.

Indeed, Gregory's question was ambiguous.  And Pawlenty compounded the problem with his reference to the potential "behavioral" origins of homosexual orientation.

In addition to confusing his question by claiming it related to the Iowa marriage pledge, Gregory repeatedly presented Pawlenty with a false dilemma.  Science and logic do not force any choice between genetics and choice with respect to homosexual orientation.  The choice, at worst, is between genetics and other factors such as environment and personal choice.  This is not to say, as Pawlenty points out, that genetics can't play a role that is less than absolute in determining sexual orientation.

I don't know what Pawlenty had in mind when he talked of "behavioral" factors.  PolitiFact assumed he meant that homosexuals choose their sexual orientation.  Such assumptions are not the stuff of objective journalism.  The objective journalist tries to clear up the ambiguity in order to render a judgment as to the facts.  Failing that, the objective journalist declines to rule on the facts.

We end up with a situation where Gregory failed in his role as a journalist to obtain an unambiguous answer to his question.  And PolitiFact pretended otherwise.

We're not fact checking whether being gay is a choice, but whether scientists are "in dispute" over whether it is or is not.

Pawlenty repeatedly emphasized the dispute over whether homosexual orientation arises from genetics.  Despite his references to "behavioral" factors it simply isn't clear that Pawlenty buys the dilemma sold to him by Gregory.

The fact check from this juncture probably misses the point.  One can take Pawlenty out of context to interpret him as saying that scientist are in dispute whether homosexuals choose their sexual orientation.  But considering the context, Pawlenty is more likely saying that scientists dispute the role of genetics in determining sexual orientation.

If one supposed that journalists serve their ideological agenda, this case fits right in.  David Gregory hammers Pawlenty with a false dilemma.  Pawlenty resists the false dilemma but approaches the appearance of accepting it through his choice (two times) of the term "behavioral."  PolitiFact jumps on the ambiguity and has Pawlenty claiming that scientists dispute whether homosexual orientation is a choice.

The context argues against PolitiFact.  PolitiFact has again sacrificed its principles to its ideology.

The grades:

Louis Jacobson:  F
Martha Hamilton:  F

Try to stick to objective judgment next time, you two.  Do some follow up with the speaker when ambiguity lingers.


Afters:

David Gregory:  F

Objective journalists avoid confronting their interview subjects with questions that represent a false dilemma.

Grading PolitiFact: Sarah Palin and snack inflation

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:

Louis Jacobson:  writer, researcher
Martha Hamilton:  editor

Analysis:

During her recent interview with Newsweek, definite maybe Republican presidential candidate Sarah Palin talked inflation.  And PolitiFact was there:

The article explained that Palin has "become conversant on the subject of quantitative easing" -- a Federal Reserve bond-buying plan. The effort was designed to bolster a weak economy, but critics say it risks encouraging inflation. (We rated her on a related statement last November.)

In the July 10, 2011 Newsweek interview, Palin illustrated the issue with an anecdote about her husband: "I was ticked off at Todd yesterday," she said. "He walks into a gas station as we’re driving over from Minnesota. He buys a Slim Jim—we’re always eating that jerky stuff—for $2.69. I said, 'Todd, those used to be 99 cents, just recently!' And he says, 'Man, the dollar’s worth nothing anymore.' A jug of milk and a loaf of bread and a dozen eggs—every time I walk into that grocery store, a couple of pennies more."

Indeed, it's about inflation.  What fact are we checking, PolitiFact?

A reader asked us to look into whether Slim Jims have, in fact, been swept up in a huge inflationary spiral recently.

Uh, what?  A reader decided which fact to check?

We’ll start by noting that Palin used an anecdote to draw broader conclusions. That’s not necessarily a no-no, but it should be taken with a grain of salt. (Or, perhaps, 430 mg of salt, the amount of sodium in a 0.97-ounce original Slim Jim.) Even if Palin’s anecdote is true, it may not support her larger points about food inflation and the dangers thereof.

I encourage the reader to go back and review Palin's statement.  Do it.  I'll wait.

Done?  Good.  It isn't at all necessary to take Palin's Slim Jim story as an illustration of inflation.  The main reason for doing that, in fact, comes from context provided by the Newsweek reporter.  The reporter appears to have provided a skewed take on Palin's words.

Think about the story seriously for a moment.  She's mad at her husband.  That has a great deal to do with inflation, right?  Even though the pair eats "that jerky stuff" fairly routinely, Palin doesn't realize that prices vary depending on where the purchase is made?  Seriously?  I suppose that could fit with a preconceived narrative that Palin is a dunce, but bear with me.  The key, I think, is the punch line the story, provided by Todd Palin.

That's right.  I said punch line.

I think the story is pretty obviously humorous.  Sarah's mad at Todd and gets on him for spending over two dollars for a Slim Jim.  The high price is plausible, as the PolitiFact story appears to allow.  Todd's excuse?  The shrinking dollar.  The story was probably intended as a humorous and personal way to get to Palin's observations about inflation.  Not Slim Jim prices, but the upward creep for basics like milk, bread and eggs.  I count it as a misinterpretation to think Palin was suggesting the high price Mr. Palin paid for his Slim Jim snack was representative of food inflation.

But let's look at Slim Jim prices anyway:

"Our iconic Slim Jim Giant Sticks are priced around $1.30," Paulsen said.

That seems up a bit from the traditional $0.99 price.

Why would that be?

ConAgra and other food producers have had to raise prices as higher costs for ingredients and other raw materials cut into profits. This quarter, the company's consumer foods segment saw costs rise 9 percent.

ConAgra said it expects higher costs to remain a challenge and will raise prices further. The company said those moves will begin to pay off in the second half of the year.

"We have made it crystal-clear that we are serious about increasing our net pricing to help mitigate this much higher input cost inflation," ConAgra CEO Gary Rodkin told investors Thursday. "We have made it very clear that we are not going to go backwards on pricing and if that means that we need to make some modest tradeoff on the volume in the near term, we are willing to do that."

That item was dated toward the middle of last month.  ConAgra makes the Slim Jim product line.

Rewind:

Teresa Paulsen, a ConAgra spokeswoman, said that "we admire Mr. Palin’s taste and appreciate his support," but added that "we haven’t raised the price significantly on any Slim Jim products."

Huh.  Do you think we're getting the whole story from Paulsen?

ConAgra, General Mills, Kellogg’s and Kraft recently raised prices for many of their wares. In December ConAgra, which makes Slim Jim meat snacks, among other delicacies, reported a 16% decline in second-quarter profits. Like other food makers, ConAgra is experimenting with smaller packages sold at the same price.

Jan 20, 2011

It's surprisingly hard to pin down the suggested retail price history for Slim Jim snacks.  But it does appear that Slim Jim has adjusted prices upward and that Paulsen weasels a bit on the term "significantly"--perhaps using it relative to the price increase implied by an uncharitable interpretation of Palin's story.

Cut to the bottom line:  The difference between 99 cents and $2.69 need not represent an inflationary difference for Palin's husband's comment about the weak dollar.  From there the story segues to serious talk of inflation on everyday items.  The evidence suggests that inflation has affected the prices of Slim Jim products, the comments of its spokesperson notwithstanding.

Not too surprisingly, PolitiFact fails to see i that way:

So where does this leave us? Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the Palins are correct and they recently paid two and a half times more for a Slim Jim than they used to. If that’s the case, it wasn’t because ConAgra raised the suggested price. It could have been because they bought from a particularly expensive retailer, or they could have been choosing a different and more expensive flavor of Slim Jim without realizing it.

Rather, if the Palins paid what they claimed for a Slim Jim it wasn't entirely because of a rise in the suggested retail price.  It is likely that ConAgra has increased the price during the past year.  Thus, Palin's statement would be partly true and in line with PolitiFact's description of its "Barely True" rating or the more recent flavor of its "Half True" rating--especially since the underlying point about rising food costs is accurate.

Again, PolitiFact doesn't see it that way:

Still, even if Todd Palin paid more for his snack food fix, it doesn’t support Sarah Palin’s argument that food prices are skyrocketing. Food prices -- an always-volatile sector -- are indeed going up, and that may or may not be a worry for the longer term. However, food prices are not rising by anything approaching 169 percent. Her anecdote offers spice, but not a lot of meat. We rate it False.

PolitiFact sees an argument implied in Palin's anecdote.  PolitiFact ignores alternate interpretations such as the one I've suggested that make the implied argument irrelevant to Palin's point.

PolitiFact's approach is hardly objective.  Rather, it fits the pattern often seen in skeptical arguments where a statement is attacked according to its weakest interpretation--a form of the straw man fallacy.

In this case I cheerfully admit that I do not know for sure what Palin intended to say.  The evidence, in conjunction with the principle of charitable interpretation, suggests the explanation I put forward.  The best practice for fact checking, I believe, will always involve consideration of a plausible charitable interpretation along with offering the benefit of the doubt.  It would be just as consistent, admittedly, to always opt for the uncharitable interpretation.  PolitiFact chooses the mushy middle ground, setting itself up again to having its ratings swayed by the subjectivity of its team members.  Bottom line, the "False" rating can only stand by unfairly ignoring Palin's underlying point.  Food prices are going up because of inflation.

The grades:

Louis Jacobson:  F
Martha Hamilton:  F

The failing grades follow from the failure to employ the principle of charitable interpretation along with an apparent failure to research product pricing by ConAgra (other than perhaps accepting a spokesperson's ambiguous statement as an assurance that Slim Jim prices did not change).  Slim Jim prices probably went up during the past year, and that information should have appeared in the story.

In this case, PolitiFact appeared to go along with the agenda of the reader who asked for the fact check.  The person requesting the fact check shalt not narrow the focus to the point of excluding the point the person was trying to make, or else PolitiFact is compromising its standards (see epigraph above).

Afters:

The price of milk, graphically presented.

"Shadowy" Crossroads GPS PAC

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) recently sent me a message warning me about an ad campaign rolled out by the Crossroads GPS PAC.  Crossroads GPS is Karl Rove's baby.  You know, Darth Vader.  That makes Crossroads GPS a sort of Luke Skywalker, I suppose.

Anyhow, here's the ad:




And here's what Nelson says about it:

As part of a series of $20-million in TV attack ads, I have been targeted by Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS. Their ad is a total distortion of my record. But I'm trusting Floridians will see this attack for what it is: rubbish paid for by a shadowy, partisan front group funded by just a handful of billionaires.

"Total distortion."  Hmmm.  It's a pity Nelson wasn't more specific.  Most if not all the factoids in the ad appear plainly true at first blush.  Nelson might have a point that the conclusions drawn from the factoids paint him in an unnecessarily negative light.  But isn't Nelson doing the same thing or worse by calling the ad a "total distortion"?

This much is true, at least:  Nelson's would-be Republican replacement will serve as a more fiscally restrained member of the Senate than Nelson.  "Total distortion" that, Mr. Nelson.

Bwahahahaha

Yes, I'm on record describing Paul Krugman (economist, New York Times op-ed hack) as a partisan hack.  Sorry for any redundancy.

If we need another reminder as to why that epithet sticks, check out the Kaus Files (at the Daily Caller):

Paul Krugman now says that some kinds of Keynesian stimulus spending just aren’t as effective as other kinds. Specifically, he suggests, aid to state and local governments (to enable them to keep government workers in their jobs) is a sort of second-class stimulus:

So what happened to the stimulus? Much of it consisted of tax cuts, not spending. Most of the rest consisted either of aid to distressed families or aid to hard-pressed state and local governments. This aid may have mitigated the slump, but it wasn’t the kind of job-creation program we could and should have had. [E.A.]

Hmm. That’s not what I remember him saying back in 2009. In 2009, if I remember right, job-preserving aid to state and local governments was almost the most important thing in the world.

What.  A.  Great.  Economist.

Be sure to follow the link and read Kaus' post in its entirety, as it provides the evidence in support of the finding that Krugman reversed himself.

Hat tip to Hot Air.

Grading PolitiFact (Virginia): Bob McDonnell and job creation in Texas

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:

Jacob Geiger:  writer, researcher
Warren Fiske:  editor


Analysis:

Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) of Virginia wouldn't mind if his state could emulate the jobs record of Texas.  McDonnell, in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, made a recent statement praising Texas on that point.

"Under Gov. Rick Perry’s leadership [Texas] has created more jobs over the last decade than the rest of the states combined," McDonnell wrote.

And PolitiFact was there:

We wondered if Perry’s record on creating jobs matched McDonnell’s claim.

With the fact check identified, it is research time. PolitiFact contacted McDonnell's office for backing information before launching its own survey:

Our research took us down a road traveled by PolitiFact Texas in examining various claims from Perry that most of the jobs created in the U.S. are in the Lone Star State.

PolitiFact Texas has debunked several of these eye-popping claims, noting that they are based on statistics from a minority of states that have had overall job gains in recent years.

Though PolitiFact Virginia mentions "several" claims debunked by PolitiFact Texas, we have but one represented in the list of references.  PolitiFact Texas debunked Governor Perry to the tune of "Half True" in that case, and that story contained a link to another story featuring a claim similar to the current subject where the claim received a "False" rating.

PolitiFact, you see, pays special attention to the words politicians use.  If they say "we created x jobs" it does not necessarily mean net jobs.  And that's misleading.

Unless you're Rick Perry:

"Gov. Rick Perry says Texas has created more than 850,000 jobs, more than the other states combined" ("True")

Or Joe Biden:

"Vice President Joe Biden says more jobs were created in the last year than in all eight years under George Bush" ("MostlyTrue")

Or Mitt Romney:

"Mitt Romney tells CPAC that Canada created more jobs in January than the U.S. did" ("True")

Or Debbie Wasserman Schultz:

"Debbie Wasserman Schultz says job creation in 2010 on pace to eclipse growth during George W. Bush's entire administration" ("Half True)

You get the idea, after noting that Wasserman Schultz's "Half True" had nothing at all to do with gross job creation as opposed to net job creation.  The fact is that "job creation" is a statistic that we normally take to mean net job creation.  Yet PolitiFact applies an uncharitable interpretation to job creation statements from governors McDonnell and Perry with no apparent justification from the context.

PolitiFact Texas:

Veronica Sanchez Downey, who analyzes data for the commission, said she'd feel comfortable summarizing the commission's conclusion about Texas job gains this way: "Of all the states that gained jobs in the U.S. including the District of Columbia, Texas accounted for" 67.2 percent of the added jobs from November 2007 to November 2008. The 67.2-percent figure reflects adjustments of the data since the initial research.

Perry, of course, didn't say it that way.

Right.  Perry did not mention the term "net" while talking about job gains.  He just talked about job gains, which people tend to understand as net job gains.  That interpretation is so ubiquitous that PolitiFact typically favors it without discussion, as shown by the preceding examples.  So Perry gets "debunked" by making an exception to the normal conventions of English interpretation.

You might get more consistent results using the "Magic 8 Ball" instead of PolitiFact.

Let's get this over with:

Let’s review. 

McDonnell wrote that under Gov. Perry, Texas "has created more jobs over the last decade than the rest of the states combined."

But the Virginia governor used net job numbers. Those are different from job creation figures, which are not compiled by the BLS or other national authority. So using net job numbers and calling them job creation figures is a case of comparing apples to oranges.

We rate McDonnell’s claim Barely True.

It's just too bad for McDonnell that PolitiFact Virginia failed to take note of the several PolitiFact items that treated job creation claims in terms of net jobs, with ratings ranging from as low as "Half True" to as high as "True."

Reply hazy.  Try again.

The grades:

Jacob Geiger:  F
Warren Fiske:  F

Fiske and Geiger had the opportunity to notice PolitiFact's disgraceful inconsistency in its treatment of job creation claims.  The team somehow failed to notice PolitiFact's history of (appropriately) treating job creation claims as dealing with net job creation where the context warrants taking them that way.  The PolitiFact Virginia team instead zeroed in on a handful of bizarre cases where the obvious intent was ignored.

Afters:

What if we were to look at cases where PolitiFact has ruled on jobs claims and where considering the jobs claims in terms of gross jobs rather than net jobs might have affected the ruling?

Tweaking the PolitiFact machine

Major changes afoot?  PolitiFact asks:

 Should Barely True be changed to Mostly False?

Excuse me while I laugh.

PolitiFact suffers from longstanding problems with selection bias, uneven application of standards and even lapses in basic reporting skills.  And editor Bill Adair is focused on changing "Barely True" to "Mostly False"?

Adair's story explaining PolitiFact's consideration of the change provides yet more evidence of the organization's difficulty in following its own standards.  PolitiFact Ohio graded a statement by a conservative group "Barely True."  The group reacted with a story proclaiming that PolitiFact had rated its claim true.  So PolitiFact rated that claim "Pants on Fire."

But according to PolitiFact's rating system--if we pretend for a moment that it's supposed to be an objective system and not a facade for subjective declarations--there was an element of truth to the conservative group's original claim, so it follows that an element of truth existed in the second claim as well.

After hearing so many complaints about Barely True over the years, that episode was a key moment in our thinking about Barely True. We think it might be time for a change.

My take:  PolitiFact keeps receiving messages from its predominantly liberal readership expressing various forms of outrage over "Barely True" claims, including various repetitions of the claim that "Barely True" means "Mostly False."  So PolitiFact mulls the change as a sop to its liberal audience.

It's ridiculous.  PolitiFact could call the category "Penfold" and it shouldn't matter.  The key to the proper understanding of the ratings emerges from the definitions, not from the terms themselves.  And PolitiFact can't keep the definitions straight to begin with, so this proposed cosmetic change amounts to a farce.

If you want to make PolitiFact better, Mr. Adair, then start with an objectively justifiable rating system and follow that up with consistent application of the system.

If, on the other hand, you want to play to your predominantly liberal audience then changing "Barely True" to "Mostly False" stands as a fine idea.  Go for it.