Grading PolitiFact: Newt Gingrich and space mirrors

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

I thought about doing a comparison piece instead of a "Grading PolitiFact" evaluation of this next item.  I decided to do the normal evaluation, but we'll be doing a comparison to PolitiFact's check of a chain email about the Obama administration's Cass Sunstein.


The issue:

clipped from PolitiFact.com

For comparison:

clipped from PolitiFact.com

The fact checkers:

Louis Jacobson: writer, researcher
Martha Hamilton: editor

Robert Farley and Bill Adair filled the corresponding roles for the Sunstein item.


 Analysis:

Before examining the text of PolitiFact's fact check, let's take a moment to look at the initial presentation of the two items we're comparing.

The top portions seem very comparable.  Gingrich is said to have "suggested" something and Sunstein is said to have "advocated" something.

The middle portions differ.  In Brooks' case, the headline material stick with the narrow description of Brooks, claim, paraphrasing "has suggested" with "once proposed."  The nearby "Truth-O-Meter tells readers what to think of Brooks' claim ("True").  PolitiFact handles the chain email differently.  Instead of paraphrasing the material just above, PolitiFact includes its assessment in the statement.  And we get the "Half True" graphic.  The "then thought better of it" part ends up justifying a rating other than "True."

Now let's follow PolitiFact's little tale about Brooks and Gingrich--both conservatives, so there's something for everyone to like on both sides of the partisan divide.

PolitiFact:

Brooks cites negatively what he considered half-baked ideas by Gingrich. "For example, he has called for ‘a massive new program to build a permanent lunar colony to exploit the moon’s resources.’ He has suggested that ‘a mirror system in space could provide the light equivalent of many full moons so that there would be no need for nighttime lighting of the highways.’"

The space-mirror system seemed so outlandish that we felt compelled to check whether Gingrich really suggested it.

So that's the issue: Did Gingrich suggest the space mirror system Brooks mentions?

In the item we're using for comparison, PolitiFact was checking the claim (quoting PolitiFact) that "President Barack Obama's nominee to be the administration's regulatory czar once advocated a "Fairness Doctrine" of sorts for the Internet, one that would require partisan sites to link to sites with opposing viewpoints."

PolitiFact did not receive a response from Brooks asking for the source of his claim.  PolitiFact surmised the source was Andrew Ferguson in the New York Times magazine.  But Ferguson's account only hints at the notion that the space mirrors were Gingrich's suggestion.  As PolitiFact presented it:

Here’s a portion of what Ferguson wrote:

"Gingrich’s first book, Window of Opportunity: A Blueprint for the Future, came out in 1984 and contained the seeds of much of what was to follow. Beneath its cover image — a flag-draped eagle inexplicably threatening the space shuttle— the backbencher Gingrich was identified as chairman of the congressional Space Caucus, a position that inspired a series of ‘space cadet’ jokes that took years to die. Window of Opportunity was co-written by Gingrich’s second wife, Marianne, and a science-fiction writer called David Drake.  ...

"In Window of Opportunity, Gingrich introduced himself as a futurist, a role he has played off and on throughout his career. There are problems inherent in futurism, most of them involving the future, which the futurist is obliged to predict (it’s his job) and which seldom cooperates as he would hope. Gingrich has called some and missed some. In 1984, he saw more clearly than most that computers would touch every aspect of commercial and private life, but nobody any longer wants to build ‘a large array of mirrors [that] could affect the earth’s climate,’ warming it up so farmers could extend the growing season."

Because the quotes from Brooks and Ferguson are slightly different, we wanted to look directly at the book ourselves before making our judgment.

It isn't that what Brooks and Ferguson wrote is simply "slightly different."  That's fairly normal with a paraphrase.  The problem that invites deeper investigation is the uncertainty as to whether Gingrich advocated a system of space mirrors.  So it apparently comes down to the book.

PolitiFact:

In the book, Gingrich proposes (among many other ideas) "five simple steps to a bold future" in space, most unusually a lottery in which randomly selected taxpayers would win a spot on a space shuttle flight. But the floating mirror idea isn’t on this list. Instead, it’s included in Gingrich's recap of a June 1979, NASA-sponsored new concepts symposium in Woods Hole, Mass., "where 30 experts brainstormed a range of pioneering options for NASA worthy of Lewis and Clark."

Just in case the paragraph above obscures PolitiFact's findings, they did not find Gingrich mentioning mirrors when he gave recommendations.  They found the mirrors mentioned when he presented some ideas from a NASA-sponsored brainstorming session. 

Where's the advocacy?

PolitiFact (bold emphasis added):

Here’s how Gingrich summarized the idea:

"The climate group at the Woods Hole conference suggested that a large array of mirrors could affect the earth’s climate by increasing the amount of sunlight received by particular areas, citing recent feasibility studies exploring the possibilities of preventing frosts in Florida or enabling farmers in high altitudes to plant their wheat earlier.

"A mirror system in space could provide the light equivalent of many full moons so that there would be no need for nighttime lighting of the highways. Ambient light covering entire areas could reduce the current danger of criminals lurking in the darkness. Mirrors could be arranged to light given metropolitan areas only during particular periods, so there would be darkness late at night for sleeping."

Brooks’ portrayal glosses over the fact that Gingrich was primarily reciting proposals made by participants at a NASA-sponsored forum. Still, Gingrich cited them approvingly.

I have Gingrich's book before me as I write.  The relevant passage occurs in Chapter 2:  "Americans and the Greatest Frontier."  PolitiFact's reporting about the book is perfectly accurate and complete, except I can't figure out the justification for the claim "Gingrich cited them approvingly." Clearly Gingrich found the ideas coming out of the brainstorm session exciting.  That's reason enough to put them in a book.  But can we justify an equivalency between that and specific advocacy of the space mirror idea?

Where's the advocacy?  PolitiFact admits that Gingrich was "primarily" citing the proposals of others.  We get no objective evidence of the type of advocacy Brooks suggests.

PolitiFact:

Still, we didn’t want to stop with a look at whether Brooks framed the issue fairly. We also wanted to know whether this was ever a mainstream idea -- and whether it’s technologically feasible.

These issues are irrelevant to whether Brooks' claim is true.  They are relevant to Brooks' apparent underlying argument that Gingrich's supposed suggestion of putting mirrors in space is crazy.

Of course, that kind of sidesteps the concept of a brainstorming session (come up with ideas regardless of merit) and ignores the prestige, if any, of the participants at NASA's symposium.  Apparently the space mirror idea came from climate scientists.  Some people have suggested space mirrors could help alleviate problems associated with global climate change.

PolitiFact's story acknowledges the global warming connection through the testimony of one science expert, though it concludes with a kicker quotation from another supposedly neutral expert:

Raymond S. Bradley, a geoscientist at the University of Massachusetts, put it simply: "This is not a mainstream idea. It is one of the dumbest ideas I have heard of."

Bradley doesn't sound like the sort of person who would fit in well at a brainstorming session.

But all this window dressing aside, where's the advocacy?

PolitiFact:

Our ruling
Gingrich co-wrote his book more than a quarter century ago, and since he doesn’t appear to have reiterated the call for floating mirrors in recent years, we can safely assume the idea is no longer at the top of his policy agenda. But did cite the idea approvingly in his book, so we rate Brooks’ statement True.

Funny.  The gracious snarkmeisters at PolitiFact can assume the idea is "no longer at the top of Gingrich's policy agenda."  This after their story failed to turn up any evidence that the idea had ever been anywhere on Gingrich's policy agenda.

We reach the end of PolitiFact's analysis without any solid evidence that Gingrich ever advocated the idea of placing giant mirrors in space for any reason at all, yet David Brooks warrants a "True" rating?

No, I haven't forgotten the comparison to Cass Sunstein:

Yes, Sunstein acknowledges this was an idea he once threw out there — albeit, in his words, "tentatively." But he now thinks it's a bad idea. So the chain e-mail/article is correct that Sunstein once suggested it. But contrary to the headline, it's a position he no longer holds, as he has since said strongly and repeatedly. Once true. No longer. That leaves us at Half True.

Readers may notice a discordant thread in the above conclusion.  PolitiFact's own headline material does not match in substance the World Net Daily headline associated with the story about Sunstein.  The fact check was of the chain email.  While PolitiFact did not provide a copy of the email, it's at least clear that the claim PolitiFact highlighted in its headline material is a true claim.  The entire justification for dropping the chain email claim apparently comes from the World Net Daily headline.  Applying that standard to PolitiFact, their story fact checking the claim about Sunstein is "Half True."

PolitiFact provided no evidence that Gingrich had advocated a system of space mirrors.

PolitiFact found that Sunstein definitely had advocated a type of fairness doctrine for the Internet.

Gingrich did not write to withdraw his space mirror proposal as Sunstein did with his Internet fairness doctrine, but the most obvious explanation for that comes from the fact that Gingrich didn't advocate putting up space mirrors in the first place.

Yet the claim about Gingrich received a "True" rating ("The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing.") while the claim about Sunstein received a rating of "Half True" ("The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.")

It isn't relevant that Gingrich never specifically advocated the idea right through to the present day?

Seriously?


The grades:

Louis Jacobson:  F
Martha Hamilton:  F

Robert Farley and Bill Adair receive honorary failing grades for the bait-and-switch technique they used to justify the "Half True" rating on the Sunstein claim.  People in glass houses ...

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: Newt Gingrich and the "food stamp president"

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
Bill Adair:  editor

Analysis:

This fact check reminds me of the job the same PolitiFact team (Jacobson, Adair) did on conservative pundit Laura Ingraham on the same day.

Sometimes it doesn't matter what you say.  It just matters what fact PolitiFact wants to check.

Here we go again:

On the May 15, 2011, edition of NBC’s Meet the Press, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich defended his earlier characterization of President Barack Obama as "the most successful food stamp president in American history."

Host David Gregory first showed a clip of Gingrich’s earlier comment, made at a Georgia Republican Party dinner.

As with the Ingraham fact check, the beginning's not half bad.  And the similarity persists with the subsequent decline:

"You want to be a country that creates food stamps, in which case frankly Obama's is an enormous success," Gingrich said in the recorded excerpt. "The most successful food stamp president in American history.  Or do you want to be a country that creates paychecks?"

Gregory went on to ask Gingrich if his statement had "racist overtones."  Journalists are great.

Gingrich waved off that question.

PolitiFact:

Gregory responded, "What did you mean? What was the point?"

Gingrich replied, "That's, that's bizarre. That -- this kind of automatic reference to racism, this is the president of the United States. The president of the United States has to be held accountable. Now, the idea that -- and what I said is factually true.  Forty-seven million Americans are on food stamps.  One out of every six Americans is on food stamps."

From there, PolitiFact zeroed in the the 47 million figure and went about its fact check.  This time they remembered to check the underlying point, which they identified as Gingrich blaming Obama for the record number of people receiving food stamps.

I wish I was kidding.

PolitiFact's approach to the fact check is profoundly wrongheaded.  Note the exchange between Gregory and Gingrich immediately subsequent to the portion PolitiFact used:

MR. GREGORY:  Well, what did you mean?

REP. GINGRICH:  Well, it's very simple.  He has policies--and I used a very direct analogy.  He follows the same destructive political model that destroyed the city of Detroit.  I follow the model that Rick Perry and others have used to create more jobs in Texas.  You know, Texas two out of the last four years created more jobs than the other 49 states combined.  I'm suggesting we know how to create jobs.  Ronald Reagan did it.  I was part of that.  We know how to create jobs.  We did it when I was speaker.  And, and the way you create jobs is you have lower taxes, you have less regulation, you have litigation reform.  When the New York Stock Exchange puts its headquarters at Amsterdam, Holland and, by the way, follows 40 other companies in the last year; when General Electric pays zero in taxes; there's something fundamentally wrong with the current system.  The Obama system of the National Labor Relations Board basically breaking the law to try to punish Boeing and to threaten every right-to-work state.  The Environmental Protection Agency trying to control the entire American economy by bureaucratic fiat.  The Obama system's going to lead us down the path to Detroit and destruction.  I think we need a brand-new path.  It's a path of job creation.  And one of the central themes of this campaign is going to be paychecks vs. food stamps.

msnbc transcript

If PolitiFact paid attention to "the full context, the comments made before and after it, the question that prompted it, and the point the person was trying to make," it's certainly difficult to tell from the finished work.  The PolitiFact story offers no hint of Gingrich's full answer to Gregory's repeat of the question.


PolitiFact:

We're not going to address the racial implications but decided to check Gingrich's main comment. We see two points to investigate. First, are Gingrich’s numbers accurate? And second, is it fair to blame Obama for today's high use of food stamps?

PolitiFact does not address the racial implications.  I'm speechless.

It's fair to check Gingrich's figure of 47 million on food stamps.  But Gingrich does not blame Obama for the number of people on food stamps.  Rather, he used food stamps as an "analogy" (metaphor's more like it) to Obama's approach of relying on government action rather than private initiative.  It isn't that Obama gave out food stamps, it's that he did not pursue successful job-creating policies.  PolitiFact somehow must have missed Gingrich's explanation while hastening to figure out if Obama is to blame for the number of food stamp recipients.

As it turns out, the SNAP program has 44.2 million beneficiaries, so Gingrich was a bit high with his number.  Gingrich likely conflated food stamps with poverty, since the numbers he used match the numbers used in news reports for the latter.  Be that as it may, the number of recipients Gingrich mentioned represents an inflation of 6.3 percent and PolitiFact makes no big deal of that degree of inaccuracy.

PolitiFact's subsequent foray into the blame game misses the point, as noted above, so we'll skip to the end to see how it turns out:

Gingrich was close on the numbers of Americans receiving SNAP benefits. In addition, the number of beneficiaries is at a record level, and it has risen every month of the Obama presidency. On the other hand, Gingrich oversimplifies when he suggests that Obama should be considered "the most successful food stamp president in American history," because much -- though probably not all -- of the reason for the increase was a combination of the economic problems Obama inherited and a longstanding upward trend from policy changes. On balance, we rate Gingrich’s statement Half True.

One cannot rightly rate something "on balance" when the evaluation itself is unbalanced.

Gingrich's analogy does not even require record-setting numbers of food-stamp recipients.  His point, as he stated, was the nature of Obama's approach to job creation.

(chart clipped from data.bls.gov)

With the unemployment rate high along with the number of food stamp recipients, it's hard to argue with Gingrich's point.  Calling it "racist" might be the most effective defense.

The grades:

Louis Jacobson:  F
Bill Adair:  F

If this PolitiFact team could miss the obvious context of Gingrich's statement, I have even more confidence that they succeeded in similarly botching the Ingraham fact check.  In the latter case I have yet to locate the missing context.


May 18, 2011:  Went with "Gingrich waved off that question" rather than "Gingrich waved off that comment" and altered tense in a number of places.  Restored the gone-missing quote of the final paragraph from the PolitiFact story and added a hotlink to my review of the Ingraham story.

Grading PolitiFact: Speaker Gingrich shrinks unemployment?

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

The issue:

The fact checkers:

Louis Jacobson:  writer, researcher
Eric Stirgus:  writer, researcher
Martha Hamilton:  editor


Analysis:

The same old story just keeps getting older with PolitiFact, namely a failure to offer charitable interpretation and an inconsistent commitment to evaluating numbers claims primarily in relation to the underlying point.

Here we go again:

The former Georgia congressman made it official in a campaign video on his website, as he had signaled earlier in the week. Gingrich promoted his credentials by touting a list of accomplishments in his four years as House Speaker, which began in January 1995 and ended in January 1999.

Those accomplishments included cutting unemployment, which was at 9 percent in April 2011 and one of the nation’s biggest problems.

"Unemployment came down from 5.6 percent to under 4," Gingrich, a Republican who now lives in Virginia, said in the video.

Viewing Gingrich's statement in context places it in a slightly different light (yellow highlights indicate portion quoted in the PolitiFact story):

As Speaker of the House, I worked to reform welfare, balance the budget, control spending, to cut taxes to create economic growth – unemployment came down from 5.6% to under 4. 

Grammar time:  "unemployment came down from 5.6 percent to under 4" is not subordinate to "As Speaker of the House."  Rather, the finishing clause is constructed to imply an effect from the things Gingrich claims to have done "as Speaker of the House":  working to reform welfare, balance the budget, control spending and cut taxes to create economic growth.  It's certainly possible to question the implied cause and effect relationship, but it is unfair to Gingrich to mangle the understanding of his syntax.

Yet PolitiFact does exactly that without apparently blinking an eye.

The facts as PolitiFact gives them support the charitable and reasonable understanding of Gingrich's claim, though he is vulnerable to the charge of employing a mild ambiguity and for making a dubious argument via implication.

The underlying point also relates to that implication:  The things Gingrich did as Speaker of the House helped the economy.  The PolitiFact trio of Jacobson, Stirgus and Hamilton ignores the underlying point.

The dark cloud of their collaboration did produce a silver lining, however:  We have more data with which to reconstruct the PolitiMath theorem of mathematical accuracy.  Ignoring PolitiFact's uncharitable assumption that Gingrich used the wrong figure and the possibility that PolitiFact punished Gingrich based on the judgment that he could have easily used the correct figure, Gingrich received a "False" rating for a figure that was off by about 10 percent.  (Update:  It occurred to me belatedly that the reduction number--not the destination number--is probably the better one to represent Gingrich's supposed imprecision.  That figure was off by about 33 percent)

Recall that Barack Obama once received a "Mostly True" rating for a figure that was off by over 80 percent, albeit the president was substantially rescued through an appeal to his underlying point.

The underlying point, after all, is the most important aspect of a numbers claim.  Sometimes.

The grades:

Louis Jacobson:  F
Eric Stirgus:  F
Martha Hamilton:  F

All three flunk for failing to recognize the most likely interpretation of Gingrich's statement while also failing to pay attention to the most important aspect of a numbers claim.

Grading PolitiFact: Flopping on Gingrich's Libya flip

The writing, editing and rating process for Flip-O-Meter items is the same as the process for Truth-O-Meter items.
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

The issue:

The fact checkers:

Louis Jacobson:  writer, researcher
Martha Hamilton:  editor


Analysis:

Let's allow PolitiFact to set the stage:

Seemingly contradictory comments by Gingrich about the wisdom of imposing a no-fly zone prompted a flurry of commentary on the Internet and on cable news shows. It got to the point where Gingrich felt he needed to address his apparent rhetorical contradiction in a Facebook post titled, "My position on Libya."

PolitiFact quotes two Gingrich responses to questions about the Libya situation.  As I often do during analysis, I'll use an expanded context and indicate the portions PolitiFact chose to quote by using yellow highlights.

The first statement occurred when Gingrich appeared on the Fox News Channel's On the Record w/Greta Van Susteren show on March 7, 2011:

VAN SUSTEREN: Which is not insignificant, and I'll get to that in a moment. But first let me ask you about Libya. It's in the news. The president has said that military options with NATO are not off the table. What would you do about Libya?

GINGRICH: Exercise a no-fly zone this evening, communicate to the Libyan military that Qaddafi was gone and that the sooner they switch sides, the more like they were to survive, provided help to the rebels to replace him. I mean, the idea that we're confused about a man who has been an anti-American dictator since 1969 just tells you how inept this administration is. They were very quick to jump on Mubarak, who was their ally for 30 years, and they were confused about getting rid of Qaddafi. This is a moment to get rid of him. Do it. Get it over with. 

VAN SUSTEREN: And why do you think -- you say you think it's ineptitude is why the pause or there's different political... 

GINGRICH: Look... 

VAN SUSTEREN: ... or different diplomacy? 

GINGRICH: I think the most generous comment would be ineptitude. It's also an ideological problem. The United States doesn't need anybody's permission. We don't need to have NATO, who frankly, won't bring much to the fight. We don't need to have the United Nations. All we have to say is that we think that slaughtering your own citizens is unacceptable and that we're intervening. And we don't have to send troops. All we have to do is suppress his air force, which we could do in minutes. And then we have to say publicly that he is gone, that the military should switch sides now, and we should help the rebels. And if that means getting them weapons or whatever it means, the fact that there's no more Libyan air power and the fact that the United States has publicly come out for decisively replacing him, I suspect the military will dump him.

PolitiFact appropriately used an ellipsis in joining Gingrich's two separate passages, unlike a recent case involving PolitiFact Ohio.  But I digress.  Susteren asks Gingrich what he would do ("What would you do about Libya?"), not what he would have done, and Gingrich answers that he would immediately institute a no-fly zone and work until Qaddafi is gone from power.

The second statement occurred  on the Today show on NBC with Matt Lauer from March 23 (transcript mine, based partly on closed caption version):

LAUER:

Over the weekend you said you wanted the president to answer four questions so you could understand why he committed military resources to Libya.  The first of those questions, what is Obama's standard for deciding to intervene. Over the last couple of days have you been able to answer your own question?

GINGRICH: 

No.  I mean, the standard he has fallen back to, of humanitarian intervention, could apply to Sudan, uh, to North Korea, to Zimbabwe, uh, to Syria this week, uh, to Yemen, to Bahrain.  I mean, this isn't a serious standard.  This is a public relations conversation.

LAUER: 

But on Thursday of last week, Mr. Gingrich, Moammar Gadhafi said publicly that his troops were headed to Benghazi and that he was going to, uh, basically go into closets and find people.  And, and, basically it sounded like he was promising some kind of real slaughter.  Should the president have stood by and done nothing during that moment? The UN asked for help.

GINGRICH: 

Well, first of all, the president of the United States doesn't report to the United Nations.  He works with the U.S. Congress.  I think the fact that this president has not, in a serious way, consulted Congress, is not looking at American interests. Uh, the Arab League wanted us to do something. The minute we did, (suddenly?) the Arab League began criticizing us doing it.  I, I think that two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is a lot.  I think that the problems we have in Pakistan, Egypt, uh, Yemen go, go around the region.  We, we could get engaged by this standard in all sorts of places.  Sudan has been killing--the Sudanese government has been killing people in Darfur for years and years and somehow all the major powers avoided thinking about it.  I'm just suggesting to you there's no standard here.  The president said on March 3 Gadhafi has to go. Well, they're now saying this is a humanitarian intervention, which is nonsense.  If this, if this is not designed to get rid of Gadhafi then this, this makes no sense at all.

LAUER: 

Well, let me ask you this.  The other two questions, or twoMoammar Gadhafi be the definition of success, and what should we be willing to do to accomplish it?

GINGRICH: 

Well. given this president who has said publicly Gadhafi should go, it seems to me, I, I--it's his decision.  That he's the one who said that.

LAUER: 

But are you in favor of that?  Do you think Moammar Gadhafi has to go as a result of this military intervention ?

GINGRICH:
I think that now -- let me draw a distinction.  I would not have intervened.  I think there were a lot of other ways to affect Gadhafi.  I think there are a lot of allies in the region we could have worked with.  I would not have used American and European forces.

(crosstalk)

 

LAUER:

Well you can't put that genie back in the bottle. We are there now.  Should that now be part of the mission?

GINGRICH: 

Having decided to go there, if Gadhafi does not leave power, it will be a defeat for the United States, it will lengthen our engagement, it will increase our costs. And notice, by the way, at least according to this morning's papers, the White House refuses to even tell Congress whether they're gonna ask for supplemental to pay for the war.  So, I'm just suggesting to you, they currently are in an argument with our allies over who runs the war.  They are currently not willing to tell Congress how it's going to cost or who's going to pay for it.  They can't agree internally on what their goals are.  Uh, this is about as badly run as any foreign operation we have seen in our lifetime.

LAUER: 

Let me take it one step further.  If you think that now success has to be determined by the removal of Gadhafi, how far should we be willing to go?  He stood on a balcony last night, apparently at his residence in Tripoli and said to his supporters below "I am here, I am here, I am here." Based on that information it would only take a matter of seconds for a cruise missile to join him there.  Should we kill Moammar Gadhafi ?

GINGRICH: 

I think when you are facing an enemy who is trying to kill your people you should take whatever steps are necessary to defeat him.  We had no compunction about trying to target Saddam Hussein.  Uh, I think the idea--we should be very clear to the, to the Libyans that Gadhafi is going to go.  We should, uh, obviously we're now in this.  That doesn't mean we should put in ground forces.  We should help equip the Libyan rebels.  It means that they ought to have coordinated air strikes.  They ought to do what is necessary to win.  I would let the military determine what is necessary to win, the CIA and others help engage in it, I'd try to get Arab allies in the fight as fast as possible.

Contradiction, juxtaposed with the statement to Van Susteren?  Flip-flop?  Many seemed to think so.

PolitiFact:

In the blogosphere, critics on both the left and the right charged that Gingrich had flip-flopped. The liberal blog ThinkProgress wrote that "there is no other reasonable explanation for Gingrich’s complete flip-flop" than "opportunism and news media publicity." At the conservative blog site Hot Air, the anonymous AllahPundit suggested that Gingrich’s comments amounted to a flip-flop and asked, "Is this anti-Obama pandering or just a big misunderstanding?"

That's two votes for calling it a flip-flop from opposite ends of the political spectrum.  But are they correct?

PolitiFact acknowledges that Gingrich eventually made a statement to clarify his remarks, saying that after President Obama said Gadhafi must go that the United States limited its viable options.  Failing to oust Gadhafi after declaring that he had to go would amount to a defeat in the eyes of the world.  Hot Air's Allahpundit found Gingrich's explanation lacking but did not provide much of an argument in support of his skepticism.

PolitiFact concurred with Allahpundit and tried to make the case:

Gingrich has not persuaded us that his comments were consistent. The best evidence supporting Gingrich’s explanation is that he did raise some of the themes from his Facebook post during the interview with Today. Gingrich reminded Lauer that "the president said on March 3rd Gadhafi has to go," and he raised the possibility that a  failure could be harmful to the United States’ standing. "Having decided to go there, if Gadhafi does not leave power it will be a defeat for the United States," Gingrich told Lauer. "It will lengthen our engagement, it will increase our costs."

However, if Gingrich’s position is that he was making two separate arguments -- a hypothetical one about what he would have done prior to Obama’s March 3 statement, and a practical one about what he would do once the U.S. had crossed the Rubicon of advocating Gadhafi’s ouster -- he didn’t do a very clear job of explaining himself. In neither interview did he frame the arguments in that fashion. So we think it’s reasonable for viewers to conclude that he’d flip-flopped on the issue of imposing a no-fly zone.

It's fair for PolitiFact to charge Gingrich with a failure to achieve crystalline clarity with his remarks.  On the other hand, to whatever extent Gingrich's remarks were ambiguous rather than logically self-contradictory he is reasonably entitled to that important principle of literary interpretation that PolitiFact often neglects to employ:  the principle of charitable interpretation.  If Gingrich explains himself plausibly then he earns the benefit of the doubt via that principle.  And then there's PolitiFact's own principle of the burden of proof.  If PolitiFact is to claim that Gingrich flip-flopped then it bears the responsibility for making the demonstration--and mere skepticism of Gingrich's claim will not support that burden.

How did PolitiFact do with respect to the evidence?

Not so good.  PolitiFact charged Gingrich with failing to frame his arguments in terms of scenarios before and after March 3.  But the context in both instances supports Gingrich to the point that he shouldn't need to be specific.  As noted above, Van Susteren asked Gingrich what he would do (as of March 7), not what he would have done if presented with the Libyan rebellion from scratch.  And during the interview with Lauer, the context likewise makes clear that Gingrich referred to differing scenarios contingent on the stated need to remove Gadhafi.  When Gingrich starts by saying "I think that now--" prior to saying he would not have intervened, he makes it sufficiently clear that his subsequent distinction ("I would not have intervened") creates the two scenarios PolitiFact fails to find obvious.  Lauer's followup, "you can't put that genie back in the bottle" brings Gingrich back to the explanation of what he would do now (as of  the date of the interview).

It really isn't that complicated.  Sure, mere anonymous conservative blogger Allahpundit had the same trouble, but PolitiFact is staffed by professional journalists.  No comparison, right?

PolitiFact's conclusion:

Gingrich has a point that Obama’s March 3 declaration about Gadhafi had consequences, and if Gingrich had provided that context of his thinking in both interviews, he could have made a reasonable argument that the two statements were consistent. However, Gingrich didn’t clarify his comments in that way until after he started taking heat for having flip-flopped. Because he didn’t, we give him a Full Flop.

The conclusion represents yet another example of PolitiFallacious reasoning, if we apply to PolitiFact the principles it would apply to others.  Gingrich bore his burden of proof by providing a logically consistent method of understanding his remarks.   PolitiFact, failing to find Gingrich's explanation clear in his original statements, concludes that the statements represent a 180 degree change in stance.  It is a form of the fallacy of the appeal to ignorance.  If PolitiFact's fails to detect evidence showing the statements are consistent then PolitiFact concludes that they are not consistent.

Argumentum ad Ignorantiam: (appeal to ignorance) the fallacy that a proposition is true simply on the basis that it has not been proved false or that it is false simply because it has not been proved true. This error in reasoning is often expressed with influential rhetoric.

lander.philosophy.edu

The fallacy is compounded, of course, by the fact that PolitiFact did detect evidence in support of Gingrich's explanation.  It wasn't as much evidence as PolitiFact should have found, but it certainly ought to have discouraged PolitiFact from committing an informal fallacy.

The grades:

Louis Jacobson:  F
Martha Hamilton:  F

Conclusions based jointly on the failure to pay proper attention to context and commission of informal fallacies will not result in passing grades.


Afters:

Just to reinforce for the reader PolitiFact's failure according to its own standards:

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?  


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.


Burden of proof -- People who make factual claims are accountable for their words and should be able to provide evidence to back them up. We will try to verify their statements, but we believe the burden of proof is on the person making the statement.
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

PolitiFact is people who make factual claims, such as "Pants on Fire" and "Full Flop."  Any time the final "Truth-O-Meter" rating is based on the subject's failure to bear the burden of proof, PolitiFact is engaged in rank hypocrisy.


March 29, 2011:  Moved the word "clear" to a better spot in one of the sentences in the paragraph preceding the definition of "argumentum ad ignorantiam."   Sentences what makes sense is gooder than the others.

Grading PolitiFact: Newt Gingrich and Interpol

The issue:

The fact checkers:

Kevin Robillard:  writer, researcher
Greg Joyce:  editor

Analysis:

Do we need additional evidence that PolitiFact routinely disregards standards for objective reporting?  Have a look at Robillard's first two paragraphs:

Conservatives have long feared that America is losing its sovereignty to international organizations, dating back to the John Birch Society issuing warnings about "one world government" in the 1950s.

And perhaps nothing evokes this fear more than the possibility of an international police or military force with power over American citizens. A recent executive order signed by President Barack Obama dealing with the International Criminal Police Organization, or Interpol, has reignited those fears.

Robillard is not reporting.  He has presented an argument, an argumentum ad hominem (argument to the person), suggesting that his subject is motivated by fear.  It is the stuff of editorial journalism.  I checked for any conspicuous sign from PolitiFact that might, for the reader's sake, distinguish Robillard's piece from objective journalism.  I failed to find one.

Now that we are suitably primed with the expectation that Newt Gingrich will offer his statement out of fear,

Grading PolitiFact: If only Newt Gingrich had been "artful" like Obama

Truth-O-Meter, Flip-O-Meter. Might as well use a dousing rod.

PolitiFact somehow caught word that Keith Olbermann thinks that Newt Gingrich is a hypocrite. But this is not a situation where Keith Olbermann will get rated regarding the truth of his statement. Rather, it is time to judge Newt Gingrich.

To make the long story short, PolitiFact finds Gingrich guilty of a half flip.

But I wondered what the rating would have been if PolitiFact considered Gingrich to be "artful" as with Barack Obama?

Writer-researcher Angie Drobnic Holan took Gingrich's statements on China and political dissidents as absolute statements. And here is what Gingrich said:

Republican leaders made explicitly clear our unwavering commitment to human rights and individual liberty. I believe it was vitally important that we used this opportunity to address the basic lack of freedom -- speech, liberty, assembly, the press -- in China. ... As I said in China this spring, there is no place for abuse in what must be considered the family of man. There is no place for torture and arbitrary detention. There is no place for forced confessions. There is no place for intolerance of dissent.

Now, of course it is Gingrich talking and Gingrich is a mere Republican. But just imagine that gifted orator Barack Obama is the one talking.

I think once we do that, it becomes possible to see that the subject was really the political situation in China ("the basic lack of freedom ... in China"). Hmmm. Surely Obama is talking about civil society and not war and international relations, in spite of the "no place for torture and arbitrary detention" remarks? After all, Obama (for the sake of argument) artfully stipulated that he was talking about "what must be considered the family of man" in the context of politics and civil society.

But obviously Gingrich is not artful like Obama, so this entire post of mine is surely a waste of time. Gingrich might as well be every bit the hypocrite that Olbermann claims.

But just one more thing:

Mr. Gingrich chose Hong Kong as his platform to warn Chinese leaders that attempts to confine freedom to economic issues while refusing to allow it in politics would surely fail. He referred explicitly to ''the lack of basic freedom -- speech, religion, assembly, the press'' in China today. The Speaker maintained this same blunt tone in his talks with Chinese leaders. It would not be a bad idea if Administration officials adopted the same straight-speaking approach.
(The New York Times)

The Grade:

PolitiFact: D-

I'm skipping the individual grades this time in favor of a corporate grade, though I suppose I'll simply mention that Angie Drobnic Holan and Bill Adair worked on this piece. This PolitiFact entry, in conjunction with a recent one about Michelle Bachmann, suggests that this fact-checking organization takes its cues from the left. Why is Keith Olberamann on the PolitiFact radar? Why did Michelle Bachmann's comments on a relatively obscure Internet television channel (PJTV) cause a blip? And why is there relatively little interest in big politics, like artful Obama's recent speech? The one where the president apparently made up some history on Winston Churchill?