Grading PolitiFact: Paul Krugman compares Massachusetts with the U.S. of A

PolitiFact recognizes that there is a difference between the truth of a literal statement and the truth of the underlying argument.  But the fact check operation routinely ignores one in favor of the other or applies differing standards to each depending on the case.

The issue:

The fact checkers:

Louis Jacobson:  writer, researcher
Greg Joyce:  editor


Analysis:

It isn't hard to obtain a clue that PolitiFact will give Krugman a break on his literal statement.  Krugman says the Senate plan is "identical" to the one passed in Massachusetts.  PolitiFact goes for an underlying argument to the effect that the plans are merely similar.

Jacobson provides some background:

Grading PolitiFact: President Obama and what happened before he walked in the door

Obama's Jedi mind-trick ability comes to the fore nearly to the point of "Simon says."

The issue:

The fact checkers:

Catharine Richert:  writer, researcher
Greg Joyce:  editor

Analysis:

PolitiFact usually treats truth claims one of three ways.  One, rate the literal truth of a statement.  Two, rate the underlying argument.  Three, do a little of both.  But sometimes PolitiFact takes the fourth option.

To be sure, Catharine Richert's story sets out to rate the literal truth of this Obaman utterance.  As to whether she hit that mark, read on and judge for yourself.

As usual we emphasize the context of the statement in question. Curiously, in this case Richert failed to list a source.  I write that confidently, given that all save one of the referenced sources was dated in the year 2009, before President Obama gave his first State of the Union address.  The other one was written in 2001.

In any case, here is the version of Obama's speech from whitehouse.gov:

At the beginning of the last decade, the year 2000, America had a budget surplus of over $200 billion.  (Applause.)  By the time I took office, we had a one-year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade.  Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program.  On top of that, the effects of the recession put a $3 trillion hole in our budget.  All this was before I walked in the door.  (Laughter and applause.)

Now -- just stating the facts.  Now, if we had taken office in ordinary times, I would have liked nothing more than to start bringing down the deficit.  But we took office amid a crisis.  And our efforts to prevent a second depression have added another $1 trillion to our national debt.
(yellow highlights added)

The president said quite a bit within the space of those two paragraphs, and it would be fair to summarize it as "to whatever degree the state of the union is a fiscal nightmare, it is the fault of Bush (or the Republicans)."  But this is another of those times where PolitiFact shows little interest in the underlying argument.

Grading PolitiFact: Donna Brazile and Obama approval

Meh.  They're doing it all wrong.  Fact checking, that is.


The issue:

The fact checkers:

Catharine Richert:  writer, researcher
Greg Joyce:  editor

Analysis:

The headline and deck make this issue appear deceptively simple.  But as PolitiFact notes from time to time, many statements come with an implicit underlying argument.  But don't expect PolitiFact to find one of those this time out.

Grading PolitiFact:: Karl Rove and President Obama's approval rating

The issue:

Take careful note of the way PolitiFact potrays Karl Rove's statement:

The fact checkers:

Louis Jacobson:  writer, researcher
Greg Joyce:  editor

Analysis:

Regular readers know by now that establishing the context of the claim in question stands as a chief priority:

Barack Obama has won a place in history with the worst ratings of any president at the end of his first year: 49% approve and 46% disapprove of his job performance in the latest USA Today/Gallup Poll.

Rove's statement, as noted in the story, came from an op-ed appearing in the Wall Street Journal.  The paragraph occurs at the start of his column, and sets the stage for Rove to analyze the reasons behind President Obama's historic slide.  Where PolitiFact paraphrases Rove to the effect that Obama's approval ratings are the worst, PolitiFact introduces an ambiguity later exploited by author Louis Jacobson.

We'll turn our attention now to Jacobson and his account of Rove's statement:

We'll begin by clarifying a few points.

First, we should note that Rove was guilty of rhetorical excess when he said that Obama's numbers are the worst of "any president" at this point. Gallup's historical data -- the longest-running of the major polling firms -- dates back to Harry Truman, who was the first president whose entire tenure was polled in a fashion that modern experts would consider scientific. So Rove should have argued that Obama's numbers were the worst of any post-World War II president at this point in his term.

Jacobson's first point is fair.  The distinction between a vice president elevated to the presidency by circumstances compared to elected presidents certainly affects any comparison such as the one Rove would undertake.  Charitable reading would encourage the interpreter to consider that point assumed in Rove's writing.  After all, it followed from the publication of a USA Today/Gallup poll that included that observation in specific terms:

In comparison to the approval ratings for modern elected presidents in December of their first year in office, Obama's standing is the worst, though he's close to Ronald Reagan.

Rove did not take the same care in explaining himself.  And though that should not be enough to significantly fault Rove in terms of normal communication, it is the sort of omission that PolitiFact often uses to justify a "Mostly True" rating.

Jacobson's next point:

Second, Rove misspoke when he referred to measuring Obama's ratings at the end of his first year. By definition, those numbers won't be available until late January. But in assessing his statement, we've sidestepped that problem by asking Gallup to provide us the approval ratings for December of the first year in office of the postwar presidents, so that the ratings for each can be compared more directly with the figures we have for Obama.

This objection is essentially like the first.  It is charitable to take as understood in Rove's writing what USA Today made more explicit in its presentation of the data.

Jacobson's third objection treads similar territory by noting that some presidents were not elected to office, such as Nixon's successor, President Ford.

I note with approval that PolitiFact, with some apparent encouragement from pollsters--elected not to count the above three objections against Rove.  That is in keeping with the practice of charitable interpretation, though I would have been OK with PolitiFact using its "Mostly True" rating based on the three objections.  I do fault PolitiFact slightly for using some prejudicial language, however.  Rove was "guilty of rhetorical excess" and "misspoke" with respect to the first two points.  Those terms offer a grudging version of interpretive charity.

Those observations out of the way, how does Jacobson evaluate Rove's claim?

• Eisenhower, 69-22
• Kennedy, 77-11
• Nixon, 59-23
• Carter, 57-27
• Reagan, 49-41
• George H.W. Bush, 71-20
• Clinton, 53-39
• George W. Bush, 86-11
• Obama, 49-46

Compared to these predecessors, Obama's numbers are indeed the weakest -- but he's tied with Reagan in that unflattering achievement.

Note that Jacobson finds Obama "tied" with Reagan, whereas USA Today found Obama "worst" but close to Reagan.  The difference comes from the ambiguity I mentioned earlier.

There are at least two ways to understand "approval ratings."  One puts the focus squarely on the approval number.  The other considers both approval and disapproval numbers.  Jacobson used the former method, while USA Today/Gallup and Rove used the latter.

Obama only warrants a tie with Reagan if the disapproval number is thrown out.  Otherwise it serves as a definitive tiebreaker, and would fully justify Rove's statement with other considerations set aside.

PolitiFact's final assessment of Rove ("Mostly True") is fair  for the wrong reasons.

The grades:

Louis Jacobson:  F
Greg Joyce:  F

I was so pleased with PolitiFact appearing to use a reasonable semblance of charitable interpretation that I wrestled with giving Jacobson and Joyce passing grades.  The PolitiFact effort in this instance has some very positive features, and it seems only fair to credit both men on that point.

But PolitiFact claims to be in the business of fact-checking.  And dropping the disapproval number for the sake of slipping Obama into a tie with Reagan so that Rove gets dropped to "Mostly True" cannot be accepted in fact-checking.

Grading PolitiFact: James Inhofe and the science of climate change

The issue:

The fact checkers:

Catharine Richert:  writer, researcher
Greg Joyce:  editor

Analysis:

I admit it.  I do not trust the newspapers.  And that distrust spills over to fact check operations run by newspapers.  And when I see a key citation missing from a citation list, it immediately plays on that mistrust.

The missing citation?  The quotation of Sen. James Inhofe (R, Okla.) about which Catharine Richert was writing.

CNN had the transcript.  PolitiFact has little excuse.

Senator Inhofe, let me start with you because the EPA administrator Lisa Jackson today she said this in announcing the steps the Obama administration wants to advance.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LISA JACKSON, EPA ADMINISTRATOR: There is nothing in the hacked e-mails that undermines the science upon which this decision is based.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Is she right?

SEN. JAMES INHOFE (R), OKLAHOMA: Oh, no. She's not right. We had Lisa Jackson before my committee, oh, not more than a week, maybe a week and a half ago. She said that they relied upon the IPCC for the science that came to this decision to have the endangerment finding. And actually, I have a letter from her in writing saying that's where they get their science.

Now we see that that science has been pretty well debunked. And one thing interesting about this, Wolf, is that I remember a long time ago on your program -- four years ago -- I made a speech on the Senate floor where I talked about all these scientists coming in, talking about how they can't get their side on there and the science is all rigged.

And so I gave a speech on the floor that lasted about an hour on the floor and sure enough, what is happening today in this whole debate is just what we said was happening four years ago.

The PolitiFact deck reproduced above portrays Inhofe as saying that the e-mails undermine the science of "climate change" generally.
Richert provides an infinitely better account of Inhofe's statement:

Specifically, Inhofe was talking about data that the EPA used to form its decision. It came from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a scientific body that "reviews and assesses the most recent scientific, technical and socioeconomic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change." Thousands of scientists contribute data to the organization voluntarily, including scientists at CRU, the group whose e-mails were hacked.

Got that?  Data that contributed to the EPA decision came from CRU, the organization facing questions because of the e-mails.

Richert continues:

We've been following the complicated e-mail controversy for weeks, but there have been a number of issues that make fact-checking claims about the issue difficult. To start, the e-mails were obtained illegally, which raises questions about their validity.

If the Times and PolitiFact have been following the controversy for weeks, they sure kept it a secret for a good while, but Richert makes an admirable admission regarding the difficulty of fact-checking the issue.  The problems with the validity of the e-mails would seem like the least of the problems, since CRU staffers admitted very early on that at least the majority of the documents were the real McCoy.  I suppose it makes a handy excuse for a reluctance to publish, however.  I'll note that the Times has a stricter-than-average policy on publishing anonymous reports and the like, so allowing some leeway on this point seems reasonable.

Some e-mails simply demonstrate a professional rivalry between scientists, a phenomenon that's nothing new to the profession.

"(P)rofessional rivalry" seems like a euphemistic way to refer to efforts made to prevent dissenting scientists from getting their work published in peer-reviewed journals.  Richert ought to blush at the cover she is providing on this point.  Thomas Fuller sums up the problem:

I think that they had an informal conspiracy going to pump each others' careers up, peer review each others' papers, and slam any skeptics or lukewarmers who wandered within punching range--and later, after they realised how badly they had acted, they conspired to evade the Freedom of Information Act.

And back to Richert:

Scientists are disputing the meaning of some of the language in the e-mails.

Right.  Some scientists advocating global warming, including scientists implicated in the scandal, insist that performing a "trick" to "hide the decline" is an essentially scientific practice.

Mann said the "trick" Jones referred to was placing a chart of proxy temperature records, which ended in 1980, next to a line showing the temperature record collected by instruments from that time onward. "It's hardly anything you would call a trick," Mann said, adding that both charts were differentiated and clearly marked.   (The Washington Post)

 "Mann" is Michael E. Mann, an American climate researcher with whom Jones had friendly correspondence.

Despite Mann's protestations, it is difficult to imagine how the harmless trick of putting clearly marked data on a chart would effectively "hide" anything, and equally difficult to imagine why scientists would want to hide an impression from the data, other than for nefarious reasons.  In short, it's a tough sell.

But Richert offers another difficulty with the journalistic investigation:

Finally, CRU has announced that it is conducting its own investigation into whether data were tossed out or otherwise manipulated unethically; that investigation is not complete.

Ah, what a great comfort!  If I'm ever accused of something suspicious I'll have to remember to appeal for the opportunity to conduct my own investigation as to whether I did wrong.  And let that be the end of it after I'm ready to release my findings to Ms. Richert.

From this point in the story, Richert goes on to list some of the other scientific resources that supposedly support climate change science.  This focus of her story misses the point.

Sen. Inhofe was addressing Jackson's claim that there was nothing in the e-mails that undermined the science behind the EPA's policy proposals.  Those proposals are fixated on the effects caused by mankind such as carbon dioxide emissions, though I would anticipate that methane emissions will also receive attention.  Note the disconnect from the evidence Richert places on the "climate change" side of the ledger.  All of it concerns warming tendencies.  She offers nothing that directly concerns greenhouse gases.  That constitutes a hole in this story.

Despite her earlier fair accounting of what Inhofe said, Richert matches the misleading text from the deck as she moves to conclude:

So, to say that the CRU e-mails debunk the science supporting climate change leaves out the important point that CRU isn't the only organization looking at the issue. Indeed, there are reams of data that show temperatures are increasing and that greater concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are largely to blame. On this one, Inhofe is False.

In logical terms, Richert has committed a straw man fallacy.  She misrepresents what Inhofe said and proceeds to attack the position she invented for Inhofe.  Though she mentions "greater concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases" in her conclusion, that claim appears out of the blue and lacks any support whatever in the remainder of her text.

The grades:

Catharine Richert:  F
Greg Joyce:  F

Straw men ought to be strictly forbidden in fact checking.  And key claims such as that appearing in Richert's final paragraph ought to receive evidential support.


Afters:

I sympathize with the difficulty journalists experience in covering the climate change issue.  Not only does the science present an intellectual challenge, but the hacked e-mails badly fray the journalists' traditional safety net:  expert sources such as scientists and peer-reviewed journals.

I would hesitate to offer a grade on the issue Richert tried to cover.  Interpreted charitably, Jackson may have a reasonable claim to the effect that the EPA policies have solid support apart from the CRU data.  Likewise, Sen. Inhofe may have a reasonable claim in challenging a less charitable way of interpreting Jackson.  That is not to say that either one is necessarily correct even given the most charitable interpretation.

For what it's worth, I do count myself as a skeptic of anthropogenic global warming.  I do not find the current science convincing, and the protective attitude of global warming scientists/advocates toward their data sets doesn't help.

A fact check performed without the proper tools is hardly worth the time.

Grading PolitiFact: Bobby Jindal and a national record for the New Orleans Saints (Updated)

Do we really need to check politicians' conversational statements about football?

The issue:

"I'm predicting (the Saints) will go not only undefeated, but all the way through the Super Bowl -- something that's never been done before."
Bobby Jindal on Monday, December 7th, 2009 in a radio interview

Gov. Jindal predicts Saints will be first to go undefeated and win Super Bowl

The quotation of Gov. Jindal is accurate.  Nor was it taken out of context.



The fact checkers:

Robert Farley:  writer, researcher
Greg Joyce:  editor

Analysis:

We may never solve the mystery as to why this statement was of issue to PolitiFact.  Second-guessing PolitiFact's judgment, on the other hand ...

We already have a sufficient account of Jindal's statement above, so we merely need to let writer Robert Farley explain himself:

Clearly, Jindal, who has been talked about as a presidential contender, has not seen the annual -- some would say obnoxious -- champagne celebration by some members of the 1972 Dolphins after the last undefeated NFL team falls. Led by coach Don Shula and quarterback Bob Griese, that Dolphins team laid claim to the first and only "perfect season," going 14-0 in the regular season and then going on to win the Super Bowl.

Farley's initial statement seems to reveal the PolitiFact judgment at the outset.  "Clearly" Jindal has not seen the 1972 Dolphins toasting other teams' initial loss of the season.

But is that really the case?

Farley thinks so, and after a few comments about the Dolphins he executes summary judgment:

But with the Saints still only 12-0 (they'd need to win four more regular season games and three playoff games to finish perfect), we think this smack talk from former Dolphins running back Mercury Morris, uttered when the New England Patriots made a run at a perfect season in 2007, is perhaps more appropriate: "Like I said, don't call me when you're in my town, call me when you're on my block and I see you next door moving your furniture in."

We're all for hometown boostering, especially from a guy like Gov. Jindal who said he suffered through the Saints' many bad years too, but we're all about the facts here, and he fumbled this one. We rate his statement False.

Poor fumbling presidential hopeful Bobby Jindal!  Is that why this issue is important to PolitiFact?

But let's do some quick math with Farley's numbers.

The Saints have 12 wins as it stands.  Farley says with four more they will finish the regular season undefeated.  That makes a total of 16.  The Saints would have a bye for the first round of the playoffs, but would still have to win three more in the playoffs to take home the Super Bowl title.  That would make a total of 19 wins.  Farley's story fails to mention it explicitly, but the Dolphins journey to the Super Bowl consisted of a 17-0 record, including an undefeated 14 game regular season.

No NFL team has gone undefeated through the regular season and the playoffs since the regular season expanded to 16 games.  Jindal certainly failed to make that clear in his statement.  However, since the difference in the season totals is spectacularly obvious to pro football fans, shouldn't one consider that Jindal was implicitly talking about that unprecedented feat?

Consider the reaction of a fan to the PolitiFact story, posted at the MSN/FOX Sports site:

clipped from msn.foxsports.com

Report Abuse

Skinnerness
12/9/2009 8:26:03 PM

What a dou**e. What jyndal meant was that a perfect 19-0 season has yet to be reached. No offens to Dolphins fans but that team had less games to play....

I expect that reaction would typify the opinion of serious NFL fans, name-calling aside.

Farley's story gives the most reasonable explanation no apparent consideration.  That alone is sufficient to flunk the responsible staffers, even ignoring the grade they offered Jindal.

The grades:

Robert Farley:  F
Greg Joyce:  F



Update:

Snopes.com calls "the annual ... champagne celebration by some members of the 1972 Dolphins after the last undefeated NFL team falls" false.

Consider the "F" grades given to Farley and Joyce solidified.

Grading PolitiFact: Glenn Beck and the White House visits

Sometimes PolitiFact concerns itself with the literal truth of a statement.  Sometimes the focus falls on the underlying argument.  Sometimes both receive attention.  Perhaps a throw of the dice determines which happens.  Maybe it depends on whether the PolitiFact staffers like the person involved.

The issue:

The fact checkers:

Louis Jacobson:  writer, researcher
Greg Joyce:  editor

Analysis:

The problems started as soon as I began going through Louis Jacobson's source list.  I take it as the first order of business to establish the context of a quotation.  Note that the deck claims that Beck made the statement on "his Fox News Channel show."  The source list mentions "television":

clipped from www.politifact.com

Glenn Beck, comments on his television show, Dec. 3, 2009

The link led to a transcript of Beck's radio program, part of Premier Radio Networks set of syndicated programming.

Jacobson was a bit sloppy, then, but we are after the context.   First, the quotation as presented by Jacobson:

"You've got to ask yourself what the hell happened to this country," Beck said. "If I would have told you instead that the most frequent visitor of the White House, over the secretary of state and everybody else, is a labor union president [Stern] who has repeatedly said workers of the world unite ... would you have believed it?"

And here is the version from Jacobson's listed source (red emphasis added):

That I'm going to be one of the ten most fascinating people in 2009, you've got to ask yourself what the hell happened to this country. If I would have told you instead that the most frequent visitor of the White House, over the Secretary of State and everybody else, is a labor union president who has repeatedly said workers of the world unite; and we know we've got a lot of illegal members, illegal aliens in our membership, and who chief guy said, yeah, but we also represent American workers, end quote, that he would be the most frequent visitor at the White House, would you have believed it?

Jacobson appears to have taken some liberties with the quotation, but I'll save that issue for dessert.

The quoted portion occurs in the midst of an extended list of stories from 2009.  The Web page used by Jacobson featured an explanatory sidebar:

clipped from www.glennbeck.com

Glenn came up with a list of things that if he told you a year ago, you would never believe they'd ever come to fruition. The list is staggering, but it's only a partial list because it's what Glenn, Stu and Pat came up with just chatting in the office this morning. Listen to the list Glenn produced and help add to it by sending us any glaring omissions using the form below...

That, then, is the context.  Reading only the PolitiFact account would not impart this information.

Beck had followed the White House visitor log story at least since his Fox News television program on Nov. 3.  Though I cannot currently reproduce it, I received the impression that the Nov. 3 television appearance embed appeared on the page with the transcript of the Dec. 3 radio program, perhaps as background information.

Jacobson:

We found the source of Beck's claim. When the White House released its first batch of visitor logs on Oct. 30, 2009, as part of a pledge to bring more transparency to the White House, Stern's name did indeed appear 22 times, more than anyone else listed, including Clinton, who was listed three times.

Beck had made clear at least by Nov. 3 the source of his claim.  But despite finding that Beck's statement was true for the White House's initial release of visitor log material, PolitiFact gave Beck a "False" rating on the Truth-O-Meter.  What gives?

Stern led the pack for the first data release, which covered visits from Jan. 20, 2009 to July 31, 2009. But he was surpassed by several other individuals in the second release, which updates the data through Aug. 31, 2009 (and which was made public more than a week before Beck aired his comment).

Jacobson goes on to discuss a number of ways in which new data have placed the initial release in a proper context.  For example, Secretary of State Clinton had made many more visits to the White House than were reflected in the log.  Jacobson makes some good points, but how would any subsequent information reasonably make Beck's statement worse than barely true, based as it was on a fair summary of the first log release?

So, while Beck did pass along a widely reported finding as he made his point about Stern, the data it was based on was incomplete and out of date by the time of his show, and ultimately the conclusion he drew was incorrect. We rate his statement False.

 Not exactly a detailed explanation, is it?

And there is a deeper problem with Jacobson's assessment, leading us back to the context of Beck's remarks.

Beck was summarizing a list of stories from the past year.  In that context, it was fair for Beck to ignore subsequent data on the White House logs.  The story on Oct. 30 was the story on Oct. 30, and Beck's list simply pointed to various stories to provide historical perspective on the "change" wrought by the Obama administration.  In that context, Beck cannot be reasonably rated worse than "Mostly True."  Yet PolitiFact rated him "False."

As it happens, Beck has made similar statements about Stern's visits in a variety of other contexts.  Perhaps one of those contexts would support the Truth-O-Meter rating given to Beck.  But not this one.


The grades:

Louis Jacobson:  F
Greg Joyce:  F

The PolitiFact team did some good work providing context for the meaning of the White House visitor log data.  But flubbing the context of the Beck quotation forbids the granting of a passing grade.


*****

Dessert:

Time to toy with a couple of minor issues from the story.

I do not expect PolitiFact to provide an objective point of view for its fact checking.  But traditional journalistic standards ought to make the editors at least consider labeling their efforts to distinguish them from objective journalism.  Check out the first paragraph from Jacobson:

Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck recently found another rhetorical weapon to use against President Barack Obama: White House visitor logs.

That is not objective reporting.

Jacobson is establishing a narrative about Beck that provides a frame for the the subsequent story.  Beck, states the narrative, is a character who seeks rhetorical weapons "to use against President Barack Obama."  That is an editorial opinion, and it has no business in objective news reporting.  Period.

I pointed out in the main text above how Jacobson took liberties with his quotation of Beck.  I had hoped to access the audio to help distinguish between the transcript from Beck's site and the way Jacobson chose to present it.  Alas, it is protected through the fact that Beck charges for archived material.

Though some doubt remains, Beck's version ought to receive the benefit of the doubt because Jacobson cited Beck's site as his source.  In addition, Jacobson offered no rationale for applying "you've got to ask yourself what the hell happened to this country" to the Stern quotation instead of to Beck's appearance on the cover of Time.

Grading PolitiFact: Ed Schultz and heathcare reform taxes

I wonder when PolitiFact will get serious about checking facts?


The issue:

"Ninety-eight percent of the American people will not see their taxes go up" due to the House health care bill.
Ed Schultz on Friday, November 20th, 2009 in MSNBC's the 'Ed Show'

Schultz says health care bill will only tax top 2 percent

The fact checkers:

Louis Jacobson: writer, researcher
Greg Joyce: editor


Analysis:

Though I maintain the belief that PolitiFact staffers go about their business in good faith, Louis Jacobson's effort could pass for a decent attempt at deliberate deception. The problems start in the first paragraph:

Republicans have frequently criticized the Democrats' health care bills by saying that they will make Americans pay more. On Nov. 20, 2009, MSNBC host Ed Schultz fired back, arguing that "98 percent of the American people will not see their taxes go up because of this bill."

The opening chosen by Jacobson immediately distances this project from fact checking. If Schultz was responding to the notion that Americans will pay more, then he was unforgivably deceptive by answering in terms of taxation. Fortunately for Schultz, Jacobson mostly created that impression out of whole cloth. Schultz's program had a Republican guest, Sen. John Barrasso (R, Wyo.), and the topic was the Sen. Harry Reid's version of the health care reform bill. Barrasso said the bill reduced the deficit through taxation rather than savings.

So, in context, Schultz as not "firing back" (great objective reporting, there, Jacobson!) at the claim that Americans would pay more, unless we slip the word "taxes" in there at the end.

Next paragraph from Jacobson:

On the show, Schultz didn't specify whether he was referring to the House or Senate health care reform bill. However, a spokeswoman contacted by PolitiFact said he was referring to the House bill, so we will judge him on that basis here.

How ridiculous. The entire segment was focused on the Reid version of the bill, including references to Sen. Reid, the CBO estimate of the costs and deficit reductions of the Senate bill, and to particulars included in the Senate bill such as limiting premium costs to 9.8 percent of income for up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level.

So, instead of figuring out from the context that the Senate bill was the topic, Jacobson asked Schultz's people and was told that Schultz referred to the House bill. If Schultz referred to the House bill then he was a perfect weasel.

Schultz's comments with some context (bold emphasis added):

SCHULTZ: They‘re going to raise taxes not on the middle class. They‘re going to raise taxes on - on the people that are making over $250,000 a year, and that‘s going to be a Medicare increase of a half a percent. A half a percent. It‘s going to take it to 1.95 percent, and you‘re squawking about that. OK.

BARRASSO: They‘re still cutting $500 billion from services for people on Medicare to start a whole new government program.

SCHULTZ: That‘s not what Senator Reid said last night. He said it strengthens Medicare. He says it strengthens Medicare and expands Medicaid, right?

BARRASSO: Well, expanding Medicaid, of course, as you know, is an unfunded mandate on the states which is why Democrat and Republican governors alike call it the mother of all unfunded mandates.

If you get people off of the federal part of it and then make the states pay for that money, it‘s a way to lower the cost to - to Washington, but I‘ll tell you, in terms of taxpayers across the states, it‘s going to still cost more and taxes are going to go up.

SCHULTZ: Premiums - premiums are going to go up between now and 2013. There‘s nothing reeling in the insurance companies there. There‘s nothing for small business between now and 2013 from what I can see. And they‘re getting 40 million new customers, which is a pretty good deal. Ninety-eight percent of the American people will not see their taxes go up because of this bill.

Jacobson conducts what I see as a worthless fact check of Schultz's claim as though it referred to the House bill. Jacobson and PolitiFact did find Schultz "Barely True" based on the House bill, but even that was probably generous. If Schultz did change the topic to the House version of the bill midstream then he deserves a "False" rating. And if he was talking about the Senate version then he's probably in deeper trouble. First, because his staffers would have falsely reported that he was talking about the House bill. Second, because the Senate bill taxes more heavily than the House bill:

1. 40% excise tax on health coverage in excess of $8,500 (individuals) / $23,000 (families). Amounts are indexed for inflation by CPI-U + 1% – begins in 2013 – $149 B tax increase
2. Additional 0.5% Medicare (Hospital Insurance) tax on wages in excess of $200,000 ($250,000 for joint filers) – begins in 2013 – $54 B tax increase
3. Impose annual fee on manufacturers and importers of branded drugs – begins in 2009 – $22 B tax increase
4. Impose annual fee on manufacturers and importers of certain medical devices – begins in 2009 – $19 B tax increase
5. Impose annual fee on manufacturers and importers of health insurance plans – begins in 2009 – $60 B tax increase
6. Cut in half (to $500K) the amount of an executive’s compensation that a health plan can deduct from its corporate income taxes – begins in 2013 – $600 million tax increase
7. Impose 5% excise tax on cosmetic surgery and similar procedures – begins for surgery in 2010 – $6 B tax increase!

In total the bill would raise taxes by $370 B over ten years.

(Keith Hennessey, sourced in turn from the Joint Tax Committee)

Smile, Mr. Schultz. Jacobson and his editor gave you a gift with that "Barely True" rating.


The grades:

Louis Jacobson: F
Greg Joyce: F

If it had been within the ballpark of reason to accept the notion that Schultz was talking about the House version of the bill without changing the subject on his guest, then both PolitiFact staffers might have earned passing grades.

Grading PolitiFact: Rep. Young and the Obama "go away" (Updated x3)

Another fact-check undermined by the failure to offer a charitable interpretation.


The issue:



I will place focus on the main issue first and deal with a couple of other problems after assigning grades to those responsible.


The fact checkers:

Aaron Sharockman: writer, researcher
Greg Joyce: editor


Analysis:

Charity serves as one of the very basic methods of fair interpretation. When President Obama says that something is less likely than a lightning strike, we give credit for hyperbole unless there is good reason to think otherwise. When Rush Limbaugh says something that might well be a joke, we allow that it may be a joke. PolitiFact has been excruciatingly slow in applying this basic principle.

Florida congressman C. W. "Bill" Young (R) is the latest to experience this amateurish treatment from PolitiFact.

Sharockman's account:

Taking the microphone at Monday's meeting of the Pinellas Republican Executive Committee, Young said that President Barack Obama, during a recent campaign rally for a Democratic candidate running in Virginia, told Republicans to "go away."

"He said, 'For those who oppose our policies, you should just shut up and go away,' " Young said to an overflowing crowd of Republican Party activists and insiders. "Well, we ain't gonna shut up and we ain't going away."

A journalist instantly ought to ask "Where do those quotation marks come from?" Sharockman offers us two separate cases that are presented as direct quotations, with the second one including the first. But what justifies the placement of the quotation marks? The first one we can ignore, since Sharockman may be quoting either Young or Obama and we can charitably assume that the quote is attributed to Young. But the second one is not so easy to explain away.

What about Sharockman's source?

That presents a bit of a problem, unfortunately. Sharockman provides no source. Perhaps he was on location when Young made his statement. In that case, Sharockman would own responsibility for placing the quotation marks.

Under ordinary circumstances, unless the quotation was a known match for something Obama had said, it would be natural to take Young's statement as a paraphrase. And I would expect any journalist to know the difference between a quotation and a paraphrase.

Assuming we have from Sharockman a verbatim quotation of Young, there is only one other way I can imagine justifying placement of quotation marks. They are justified if Young used his hands to signal that he was offering a direct quotation. Second and third digits of both hands extended then partially flexed twice in succession, that is.

Since the mysterious quotation marks have already appeared, let's see how PolitFact treats them:

Let's get one part out of the way: After an exhaustive review of transcripts, newspaper stories and videos of Obama's recent campaign speeches, Obama never said the sentence exactly as Young attributed it to him.

What a waste of time. Not to brag, but I knew exactly what Young was talking about. Note that Sharockman has strongly implied that Young indicated that his was a direct quotation ("as Young attributed it to him"). We still have absolutely no indication that the premise is justified.

Thankfully, Sharockman was able to locate the original statement from Obama via an op-ed from James Taranto. The statement came from a campaign stop in Virginia on behalf of Creigh Deeds.

The Virginia speech focused heavily on the economy and the president's support of a $787 stimulus package. He joked with the crowd that some Republicans are trying to blame him for the country's economic woes.

We've finally found a PolitiFact writer who can detect a joke.

"You've got folks on the other side of the aisle pointing at the federal budget and somehow trying to put that at our feet. Well, let's look at the history. When I walked in, we had a $1.3 trillion deficit. That was gift-wrapped and waiting for me when I walked in the Oval Office," Obama said. "Without my policies we'd have an even higher deficit going forward. The one exception is the recovery package that we had to do in order to get this economy moving again."

Sounds to me like the president admitted to having some responsibility for the federal budget, via the "one exception." Quite an exception, too. A billion times bigger than Sharockman reported it, actually. And enough to push a $1.3 trillion deficit all the way to $2 trillion.

I can't wait for the punch line to this joke.

Obama continued, "So you can't go out there and charge up the credit card, go on ... shopping sprees on things that didn't grow the economy, hand over the bill to us, and then say, 'Why haven't you paid it off yet?' I got that bill from (Republicans). So we've got some work to do. I don't mind, by the way, being responsible. I expect to be held responsible for these issues because I'm the president. But I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them just to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking. Am I wrong, Virginia?"

Some joke, eh? Watching the video will inform as to the president's tone.

The last half of the quote, the "get out of the way," was picked up by the local newspapers covering the speech and spread from there. Conservative commentators like Taranto said it showed Obama's unwillingness to work with Republicans on bipartisan solutions.

That along with further abandonment of the post-partisan leadership style he told voters he would employ. Sharockman continues:

But the broader context shows that Obama's

Chalk up another gaffe to Sharockman and his editor. It wasn't the economy he was talking about. It was the federal budget deficit in particular. And the president's own words acknowledge that he is responsible for adding over 30 percent to the deficit (see update, below). And he wants to spend more to "clean up the mess."

So let's grant that about 70 percent of the deficit was inherited, and forget that the Democrats controlled Congress dating from 2007 following the 2006 election. That leaves us with Obama criticizing Republicans who think he is inflating the deficit.

Sharockman has one paragraph left. Can he somehow apply this to Young's statement?

That's a far cry from Young's report of Obama's statement -- "For those who oppose our policies, you should just shut up and go away." Young's statement is much more sweeping and dismissive than anything the president said. We rate Young's claim False.

Sharockman offers us hogwash.

Young gave a fair paraphrase of Obama's statement. Republicans have particularly resisted policies that they believe will further increase the deficit. Obama has pointed to those policies--in spite of the price tags they bear--as the solution to present economic woes and as the long-term solution to the deficit problem.

It is utterly preposterous to rate Young false.


The grades:

Aaron Sharockman: F
Greg Joyce: F

The tag "journalists reporting badly" applies.


Update:

Additional analysis:

Doubtless The St. Petersburg Times styles itself as an objective news source, at least with respect to reporting not clearly labeled "opinion" or "news analysis."

And what of PolitiFact, which resides under the Times' wing?

Take another look at Sharockman's work:

Back in his Florida district, U.S. Rep. C.W. Bill Young decided to toss some red meat at the feet of a group of eager Republicans.

Is "red meat" drawn from an objective point of view? How about "eager Republicans"? This is the type of writing we normally see in an op/ed column.

More from Sharockman:

When Young relayed Obama's message, some people in the audience gasped.

Could the president have said that?

Sharockman creates the implication that people in the audience gasped in apparent disbelief that the president would say such a thing. But a gasp of outrage might be just as likely from Republicans eager for red meat. No?

Certainly Sharockman has some built-in plausible deniability on this one. He can claim that it was objectively observed that some in the audience gasped. And then claim that he tried to objectively address the question as to whether the president had spoken as Young claimed he did.

But the thing is, the gasp from the crowd is an irrelevant detail when it comes to evaluating the claim. And the juxtaposition of the two statements makes it appear that Sharockman has made an editorial judgment regarding the reason for the gasps.

This, over the long haul, represents one of the big problems at PolitiFact. The operation sits under an implied banner of objective journalism. On top of that, PolitiFact proclaims its interest in getting to the fact of the matter.

The uneasy mix of editorially loaded language and the public projection of objectivity partly explains why I regularly compare PolitiFact to the left-wing hacks at Media Matters. But Media Matters at least publishes the fact that it is a partisan operation. In contrast, PolitiFact improbably pretends to be in the business of objective journalism.

I don't see how PolitiFact can keep its current format--even with a tighter reign on editorializing--and rightly wear the "objective" label. The typical PolitiFact entry must be an editorial judgment because determining a "Truth-O-Meter" rating usually demands exactly that type of judgment.

PolitiFact should at least take to labeling its work something other than objective reporting.


Update 2:

Correction: My summary of the budget implications of the stimulus package was a bit off. The stimulus amount only impacts the deficit for the full $787 billion if that amount is spent during the same fiscal year. That will not be the case, despite Obama's claims that it had to be enacted without much delay.

It is also possible to claim that an effective stimulus bill would increase revenue and thus shrink the overall effect of stimulus spending on the deficit.

Bottom line, my initial summary was sufficiently accurate to drive the point that Obama's policies give him a substantial stake in the deficit.

One can reasonably quibble with my math in other respects as well, but the basic point stands.

Update 3:

At long last I have located a video of Rep. Young's speech.  The video does provide some justification for taking Young's statement as an attempt to quote the president--but not to the point of overlooking the fact that it was a fair paraphrase.

The video notably fails to provide support for Sharockman's editorial interpretations of the event.  The audience doesn't look "eager" for red meat.  They look like a Presbyterian church meeting of slightly above average enthusiasm.  The sounds made in response to Young's Obama tale don't sound particularly like gasps; they do convey the impression that the audience disdained the president's sentiment.

See for yourself:




Hat tip to TampaBLAB for posting the YouTube video.  That's where I found it, esconced in unsympathetic commentary.  TampaBLAB also posted Rep. Young's response to criticism:

Here we go again.

In a speech Monday discussing how President Obama’s policies were dividing the country, I referred to Obama’s political speech on behalf of his candidate for Governor in Virginia, who by the way lost in a major landslide, in which he said, those who disagree with his policies should “go away.” But the St. Petersburg Times Politifact with a large headline claimed my statement was false. They say that Obama actually said that we should “get out of the way.” But in my mind whether he said “go away” or “get out of the way,” his message to those who disagree with him is still the same. The Times Politifact even quotes a Wall Street Journal columnist who heard the same speech I heard and concluded “Obama’s petulant demand that his critics shut up and get out of the way.”

Either way, I meant what I said -- we’re not going to shut up and we’re not going to go away!

Kudos to TampaBLAB for putting all the evidence on the table, even if the analysis was predictably partisan.



Jan 27, 2011:  Corrected spelling of Aaron Sharockman's name in the paragraph preceding the video clip.  Also fixed a typo where I had substituted "they" for "that."

Grading PolitiFact: Limbaugh on Judge Sotomayor

"PolitOpinion" is more like it.

Fact-checking the fact checkers

The issue:

Was Rush Limbaugh making a statement of fact or stating an opinion? Does the St. Petersburg Times subject its own editorials to this type of fact-checking?


The fact checkers:

Robert Farley: writer, researcher
Greg Joyce: editor


Analysis:

In identifying the issue, above, I asked whether Limbaugh was stating fact or opinion. Even opinion journalism, of course, can typically get boiled down to fact through careful analysis. Has PolitiFact given us careful analysis?

While many Republican leaders have been publicly cautious with their opinions about President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh has been crystal clear about his opposition.

At a newspaper famous for its narrative leads, we should register no surprise that Farley takes some time in getting to the point. Limbaugh's opposition to the Sotomayor nomination is not particularly relevant to whether his statement is true or false.

In making his case, Limbaugh cited a Sotomayor ruling that has drawn scrutiny from critics this week.

"She ruled against the white firefighter - Ricci and other white firefighters - just on the basis that she thought women and minorities should be given a preference because of their skin color and because of the history of discrimination in the past," Limbaugh said. "The law was totally disregarded."

Limbaugh is referring to Ricci vs. DeStefano, a legal case involving firefighters in New Haven, Conn. A group of mostly white firefighters claimed reverse discrimination after the city threw out the results of promotional exams because white firefighters fared significantly better than black firefighters.

Farley just needed a few paragraphs to get rolling. Yes, Limbaugh's statement draws from the Ricci v. DeStefano decision.

Farley provides an account of the background, alluding to Sotomayor's role on the three judge panel that supported the original district court ruling. Farley's version of the dissent to Sotomayor's brief opinion from appeals court judge Jose Cabranes deserves special attention:

The brevity of that response, and its lack of analysis, rankled one dissenting appeals court judge, Jose Cabranes.

Farley goes on to quote Cabranes, but his version substantially downplays the weight of Cabranes' objection. Though Cabranes' withering dissent does suggest that he was "rankled," it is also true that five other judges joined in the dissent quoted by Farley. The district court voted narrowly to support Sotomayor and the three judge panel 7-6. If the other five dissenting judges were not similarly rankled then they would have done well not to add their names to the Cabranes-authored dissent.

One would never know this part of the story from Farley's account. Indeed, nothing apart from the mere word "dissenting" would suggest the Cabranes quotation came from a legal document. The average reader would engage in little more than blind supposition in guessing the truth of the matter.

Farley writes that the case subsequently ended up with the Supreme Court of the United States, but remains mum regarding that journey. ScotusBlog fills in the missing segment of the time line:

After the Second Circuit issued its initial summary order, the white firefighters filed a petition for certiorari. However, after the panel issued its per curiam opinion, the same firefighters, now represented by former Texas Solicitor General Greg Coleman, filed a second cert. petition, claiming that they feared the first petition had been rendered moot. The Court consolidated the cases and granted cert., largely using the questions presented by the first petition; however, because the second petition better tracks the counsel who wrote the merits briefs and will argue the case, this post focuses on that petition.

The grant of a writ of certiorari moves the case to the Supreme Court. The granting of the writ, on its face, helps validate objections from the dissenting opinion. Farley did not mention that, either.

Back to Farley:

That Sotomayor ruled against "white firefighter Ricci and other white firefighters" is undisputed. But this is a very complex legal case and Limbaugh misleads when he boils down the ruling by Sotomayor (and two other appeals court judges), saying it was made, "just on the basis that she thought women and minorities should be given a preference because of their skin color and because of the history of discrimination in the past. The law was totally disregarded."

This paragraph from Farley helps greatly in illustrating where his effort at fact-checking goes astray.

Supposedly Limbaugh misleads by oversimplifying the case. But Limbaugh was not trying to communicate the intricacies of the law involved. That type of detail has always been antithetical to high Arbitron ratings. It is also antithetical to print journalism, which carries over even to Internet formats. The Times would experience great difficulty in surpassing the "Half True" standard in the daily paper using the standard Farley would use to gauge Limbaugh.

Suppose we'll ever see this graphic permanently embedded in the Times' masthead?



Don't bet on it.

In my past assessments of PolitiFact, I have mentioned the principle of charitable interpretation. That principle comes into play in this case, partly owing to Limbaugh's chosen genre. He does opinion journalism. As such, a great deal of what he says on the air is an editorial opinion and not offered as a strictly factual account.

Following the aforementioned principle, the conscientious fact checker should assess the intent of the statement in question. Was Limbaugh, in fact, trying to communicate to his audience that Sotomayor literally employed absolutely no reference to any law? Farley seems to have taken it that way, judging from the path he took.

It is both more charitable and more likely that Limbaugh was communicating in the looser sense that most of us use conversationally. For example, his statement should be viewed as consistent with the view that Sotomayor's decision ignored significant portions of the law. And for that claim, Limbaugh would have the support of the six judges who dissented from the three judge panel--as well as potential support from the Supreme Court, pending its opinion on the case.

The rest of the PolitiFact piece, in effect, drags the aforementioned straw man into the arena and gives it a thorough trouncing.

We cite some of this not just to make your head hurt, or to make the case that the ruling was correct -- that will ultimately be up to the Supreme Court -- but to show the complicated legal issues involved, as well as the fact that the district court did, in fact, make reasoned legal arguments and cited numerous legal cases to underpin its decision. In other words, you may not agree with the conclusions, but it's wrong to suggest the judges "totally disregarded" the law. Nor did Sotomayor's panel or the district court ever suggest that the city ought to give preferential treatment to women and minorities. And so we rule Limbaugh's statement Barely True.

Certainly it would be wrong to suggest that the the panel "totally disregarded" the law in a literal and absolute sense. However, it is exceptionally doubtful that Limbaugh intended his statement in a literal and absolute sense.

As mentioned above, Limbaugh was doing what he normally does on his show: Offer editorial comment. PolitiFact misleads and offers its readers a disservice by ignoring the context (genre) of Limbaugh's statement. And by disagreeing with what was almost certainly an editorial opinion, PolitiFact joins Limbaugh in the opinion journalism game.

But at least Limbaugh is forthright in distinguishing his show from an attempt at objective journalism.

I see little point in giving a fact check rating to Limbaugh's claim. If the Supreme Court overrules Sotomayor, then Limbaugh may seem vindicated. If the opposite occurs then perhaps Sotomayor looks vindicated. But if there is an objective standard for judging this one, I doubt anyone can argue it without dissent in this life.

PolitiFact further besmirched itself by taking up this one.


The grades:

Robert Farley: F
Greg Joyce: F

Grading PolitiFact: The Judical Confirmation Network and Judge Sotomayor

Fact-checking the fact checkers

The issue:



Click to enlarge.


The fact checkers

Robert Farley: writer, researcher

Greg Joyce: editor


Analysis

Farley initially frames this issue as though the JCN statement rests on one particular claim from Sotomayor:

If you've been following the story of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor via cable news, you've undoubtedly heard this sound bite from a 2001 Sotomayor speech:

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

For many conservative detractors, the quote has formed the nexus of their opposition.

The story is not about "many conservative detractors," but about the statement from JCN.

A number of Republicans have expressed concern about the statement.

Any Democrats among them?

Asked repeatedly about Sotomayor's comments during the daily White House press briefing on May 27, 2009, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs admonished reporters not to make a judgment on an 8-second sound clip from a 40-minute speech. Gibbs said he was confident that when people looked at the totality of Sotomayor's speech, and the context of the comment in question, they would "come to a reasonable conclusion on this."

Was it Republican journalists asking repeatedly for Gibbs to address this issue? Does anyone get the sense that Gibbs was pawning off his answer to the question?

So we read the whole speech, titled "A Latina Judge's Voice," which was delivered by Sotomayor at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law in 2001, and was later published in the Spring 2002 issue of Berkeley La Raza Law Journal.

Good so far. What is the reasonable conclusion?

Farley notes Sotomayor's description of the purpose of her speech:

The purpose of the speech, she said, was to "talk to you about my Latina identity, where it came from, and the influence I perceive it has on my presence on the bench."

Then he prefaces some quotations of Sotomayer with the following:

She then begins to discuss what it will mean to have more women and people of color on the bench.

Farley is partly correct. Before Sotomayor went on to discuss what it would mean to have more women and people of color on the bench, however, she stated that it was a good thing. After noting a few statistics relating to the growth of representation of women and minorities in the federal court system, she said this:

These figures and appointments are heartwarming. Nevertheless, much still remains to happen.
(Sotomayor, from the Spring 2002 issue of Berkeley La Raza Law Journal via the New York Times)

If the reader was inclined to take Farley's description to mean that Sotomayer's speech was dispassionate with respect to the influence of ethnicity, gender and race, then the reader may have been misled. Sotomayor does not simply clinically observe the effects of minority representation on the court, she judges them, by implication, as good effects.

Back to Farley:

Sotomayor spoke briefly about the contributions of women judges and attorneys in race and sex discrimination cases, while acknowledging that Supreme Courts made up completely of white men have made seminal decisions on those issues. It's in that context that Sotomayor made the statement heard round the world via YouTube.

Again, Farley is partially correct. If the white men are doing OK with those "seminal decisions" then how are we to assess the particular importance of the contributions of women judges and attorneys? Farley offers the reader no assistance in gauging the contribution of the surrounding context. Rather, he faintly implies that the context renders Sotomayor's controversial claim less controversial, and we are left hoping for additional explanation.

Good luck to us on that one.

Sotomayor later concludes that "Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage...I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences but I accept my limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate."

I am certainly no expert on the law, but when are opinions, sympathies and prejudices appropriate in rendering judgment according to the law? It is difficult if not impossible to make sense of Sotomayor's statement minus that information.

Farley either knows the answer and isn't telling, or does not think it important. Perhaps it is so obvious that he feels no need to mention it. And if that is the case, then I am the one at fault for not knowing it.

Perhaps Farley's lone citation of an expert will clear things up:

Tom Goldstein, a partner at Washington law firm Akin Gump and the founder of ScotusBlog, a widely read blog on the Supreme Court, read the speech and concluded it amounted to little more than Sotomayor acknowledging that judges, like anyone, are products of where and how they grew up.

"Having that context can be valuable for a judge," Goldstein said. "There are some cases, like cases of discrimination, where if you have been in someone's shoes, you can better understand it."

Is that understanding with respect to the facts of the case, or with respect to a judge's feeling of empathy? If not the former, should the latter hold any sway at all? Goldstein's statement fails to offer us guidance as to which he thinks is valuable, much less how Sotomayor views it. I'd like to know the questions Farley asked of Goldstein.

By way of reminder, we are fact-checking the statement from the Judicial Confirmation Network that Sotomayor's statement shows that she thinks "that one’s sex, race, and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench."

An appropriate reminder. Unfortunately, it ought to remind us that Goldstein's contribution sheds no real light on the answer.

We think the key words in that sentence are "ought to."

Good call, Farley. So what is Sotomayor's view?

Sotomayor says several times that she agrees judges should aspire to "transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices." However, she acknowledges that we are all informed by our experiences and that "personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see." And, she concludes, when it comes to things like race and sex discrimination, that kind of diversity of experience can be an asset.

So transcending personal sympathies and prejudices is good. And not always transcending them can be an asset (also good). So is Sotomayor talking out of both sides of her mouth or what?

In context, it's clear that Sotomayor isn't suggesting the intellect of Latina women is superior to that of white men, only that a greater diversity of experience and thought would be a valuable addition to the court system.

Whoops. We have disconnect.

Who said anything about "intellect"? Racism is not limited to the measure of intellect. Thus, pinning the meaning of Sotomayor's statements on the absence of a specific reference to superior intellect is a distraction--a red herring fallacy. So let's toss the red herring and see what's left:

Sotomayor is ... suggesting ... only that a greater diversity of experience and thought would be a valuable addition to the court system.

Valuable in what way? Farley offered us a bunch of quotations of Sotomayor that show her straddling the fence but with a strong inclination to come down on one side. Farley's expert, Goldstein, failed to clarify the situation. We can beat around the bush all we like, but Sotomayor herself offered the least ambiguous take on her meaning via the very statement in question:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Contrary to the Farley whitewash, that statement cannot be reasonably taken to mean that it is merely good for the Supreme Court to have greater diversity of thought and experience. On the contrary, if it were true that a wise Latina "would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life" then let us have nine Latina women on the Supreme Court. Playing the odds, we'll have better supreme court decisions.

Farley's final word:

And so we rate the Judicial Confirmation Network's statement Half True.

PolitiFact defines "Half True" statements as "The statement is accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context."

What important details were left out? The statements from Sotomayor to the effect that she would try to set aside her prejudice? Fair enough--but this PolitiFact entry fails according to that standard, as I shall show.

Farley's fact-checking approach was wrongheaded. He spent virtually all of his time assessing the JCN claim in terms of its relationship to a Sotomayer quotation, but the JCN statement does not even mention that quotation. The URL provided by PolitiFact fails to specify the relevant statement. Here it is, in its entirety:

JCN Statement on nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court

May 26, 2009

Wendy E. Long, counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network, on nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court:

"Judge Sotomayor is a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important than the law as written. She thinks that judges should dictate policy, and that one's sex, race, and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench.

"She reads racial preferences and quotas into the Constitution, even to the point of dishonoring those who preserve our public safety. On September 11, America saw firsthand the vital role of America's firefighters in protecting our citizens. They put their lives on the line for her and the other citizens of New York and the nation. But Judge Sotomayor would sacrifice their claims to fair treatment in employment promotions to racial preferences and quotas. The Supreme Court is now reviewing that decision.

"She has an extremely high rate of her decisions being reversed, indicating that she is far more of a liberal activist than even the current liberal activist Supreme Court."
(judicialnetwork.com)

See? Not a word about the quotation. And Wendy Long's more detailed statement on JCN's behalf on Judge Sotomayor does not rest its case on that one quotation, instead belaboring the point based on Sotomayor's decision in the controversial Ricci v. DeStefano case.

It is appropriate to dock Long for leaving out the context of a quotation she did not even mention? I don't think so.

I would guess that Farley wanted to explain away the statement from Sotomayor, and the JCN statement was chosen as the vehicle for that defense.

Odd choice.


The grades:

Robert Farley: F
Greg Joyce: F

Probably the right finding on the "Truth-O-Meter," but the accompanying rationale will not remotely wash. Fact-checking is not like multiple choice where one can guess at the right answer and receive full credit. This is multiple choice where the answer does not count in the student's favor without the accompanying rationale ("Show your work").


Afterword:

About Sotomayor's speech: Contra (perhaps) Tom Goldstein, Sotomayor in her speech apparently sees judges as a product of the way they grew up only if that statement discounts much of the content of the speech based on its flirtings with self stultification.

Sotomayor aims for the ideal in judging, but appears to regard morality as relative.

What kind of judicial ideal, pray tell, stems from moral relativism?

I would have loved the role of fly-on-the-wall as President Obama and Judge Sotomayor discussed their common ground on constitutional interpretation. I hope the Senate will probe her judicial philosophy thoroughly. Perhaps it will open some eyes regarding the dangers of the "living Constitution."


June 2, 2009: Putting the second "I" in "judicial" since June 2, 2009. Also fixed a couple of other minor typos.