Another truth-hustler: Eric Alterman

What is a "truth-hustler"?

I've defined it as one who writes on the issue of truth while spinning on behalf of a partisan agenda.

Eric Alterman, formerly part of the left's media influence machine Media Matters for America, comes to our attention as another example of a truth-hustler via his "As a Matter of Fact" entry in his "Think Again" series at the Center for American Progress.

I'm skipping the portion dedicated to Alterman's obsession with Koch Industries.  That leaves us plenty to work on.

Reality-biased?

Alterman presents us with the proposition that "reality has a liberal bias" may serve as a valuable device in explaining (or at least describing) a supposed tendency for conservatives to favor ideology over fact.  The trick, of course, is for Alterman to make his case without favoring his ideology over the facts (hat tip to Dr. Sanity, who is among those to beat me to coining the term "reality-biased" as a play on Left's "reality-based" mantra). 

Does he have good evidence?

Working the refs?

Without seeming self-conscious about either the aim of his column or his history with Media Matters, Alterman tells us that conservatives are effectively working the media referees.  Instead of providing any example in support of his claim, Alterman offers up this odd portrayal of Mark Hemingway's critique of media fact checking:

As The Weekly Standard online editor Mark Hemingway complains, when such fact-checking organizations tend to find many more conservative lies than liberal ones, rather than respond that conservatives tell far more lies, the fact-checkers go looking for liberal fabrications and find them whether they exist or not. How else could the priests of false equivalence maintain their law that "both sides do it" -- what I call "on-the-one-handism" -- which has proven to be a fundamental tenet of Beltway faith?

Somebody please read Hemingway's article and find the complaint described by Alterman, for I can find no evidence of it, unless Alterman only intended the "such fact-checking organizations tend to find more conservative lies than liberal ones" to represent the entirety of Hemingway's relevant complaint.


The refs want to look fair!

Before we know it, Alterman has drifted from conservatives supposedly working the refs to the fact-checkers' attempts to appear fair (Alterman, of course, isn't working the refs!):

The American Prospect's Paul Waldman discerned this dynamic at work in 2011, when he bravely predicted that yet another of these fact-checking organizations, PolitiFact, would choose as its (gimmicky) lie of the year a "'lie' told by Democrats, even if the one it picks is far from the most egregious lie told this year, or even really a lie at all" -- owing to the fact that the previous two years, Republicans had been caught fibbing. Three times in a row is enough to cry partisanship whether it exists or not, so Waldman was on pretty strong ground despite the damage that such a strategy might do to the organization's reputation for intellectual integrity.

I'll partially grant Alterman's point with this example, except it doesn't appear to serve as an example of  "working the refs."  And if predicting the award would go to a Democrat indicates bravery then pin a medal on my co-editor at PolitiFact Bias, Jeff Dyberg, who confidently predicted an Obama win in 2011 for the "Lie of the Year."  On the other hand, the "Lie of the Year" isn't a typical fact check so it doesn't serve Alterman as a particularly strong example, particularly when every past "Lie of the Year" was prone to the same types of criticisms about its legitimacy.

Alterman's subsequent example, Jon Stewart's claim about Fox News viewers being the most misinformed, fares worse if anything.

Alterman's examples actually suggest that some on the Left take poorly-supported propositions as truth and count against others the failure to equally subscribe to those dubious propositions.

The truth, no spin

Alterman's right that fact checkers want to appear fair, and I would grant that PolitiFact's 2011 "Lie of the Year" may reflect an influence from that motivation.  But studies show that referees are biased.  For example, referees working home games tend to favor the home team.  Is that relevant when audience feedback for fact check stories comes primarily from the political left?  And when journalists as a group tend well left of the general population?

Simply in terms of science, we can't accept without good evidence a narrative from liberals that liberals have a better handle on the truth.  We clearly can't just take their word for it.  We shouldn't accept as evidence studies with rampant selection bias problems.  And we should view with suspicion writers such as Alterman who trumpet the high value of dubious evidence.

PolitiFact picks surprise winner for its 2011 "Lie of the Year" award

The claim that Republicans voted to end Medicare receives PolitiFact's Lie of the Year for 2011.

I'm calling it a surprise, given my effort to handicap the selection back in early December.

I reasoned that PolitiFact would have some impulse to choose a "lie" from the Democrats to help preserve the impression of nonpartisanship, and I discounted statements likely to harm President Obama in the coming election.

Unfortunately, I did a poor job of distinguishing between the result of a poll for readers and PolitiFact's selection for Lie of the Year.  PolitiFact doesn't publish the ordering of its 10 finalists.  It simply announces the winner.

I chose Debbie Wasserman Schultz as the likely winner for Democrats, and I chose the eventual winner to vie with Schultz's statement.  And there was an interesting wrinkle in PolitiFact's reasoning:

As we were concluding our reporting for our Lie of the Year story last week, Ryan announced that he was altering his plan and would retain an option for people to stay in traditional Medicare if they want.

His announcement of a bipartisan effort with Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., changes the dynamic in the polarized debate and could increase the likelihood that Congress adopts his approach.
Matt Miller, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, wrote that Ryan "has plausibly inoculated his party against a full-frontal Mediscare campaign. Or at least he gives Republicans a credible rebuttal to neutralize it."

But Ryan's latest tactic doesn't affect our decision on Lie of the Year. The statements made about his original plan were clearly inaccurate, they were repeated by many Democrats and they perpetuated a 60-year tactic in using false claims to scare seniors.

Ryan's "latest tactic" (intriguing choice of words, that) decreases the chance that PolitiFact's selection will affect the coming election.  That aspect of the outcome matches the thinking I used in handicapping the selection.

PolitiFact surprises, however, by choosing an item that many on the political left continue to regard as a perfectly true claim.  And that claim, like the two LOTY winners that preceded it, does have a little more truth to it than PolitiFact's  rating might suggest.  PolitiFact, after all, has never revealed an objective criterion for ruling a statement "Pants on Fire."

The decision is likely to decrease public trust in PolitiFact's findings, particularly for PolitiFact's most devoted fans.

As for the reader vote, there was only one surprise:  that the statement PolitiFact editors chose as their winner finished as high as it did.  I was correct that only one statement from a Democrat finished in the top five.


Dec. 22, 2011:  Corrected link in final paragraph.  Hat tip to Jeff Dyberg for catching the broken link.

The chutzpah of Bill Adair

Despite the detailed and voluminous criticism of PolitiFact's "Lie of the Year" for 2010, PolitiFact continues to assert that the PPACA does not represent a government takeover of health care.  Not even a little bit of a government takeover of healthcare.

A story about Mitt Romney using the phrase "government takeover" from last week again rated the claim "Pants on Fire," and though the story noted the criticism the rating received, the story does not address the criticism.

This morning PolitiFact editor Bill Adair wrote a brief story decrying the brazenness of those who repeat the suppose lie, and his story doesn't even bother to acknowledge the past criticism:

PolitiFact has repeatedly rated that False or Pants on Fire and selected it as our 2010 Lie of the Year. But the line still gets repeated, most recently by likely presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

The rationale PolitiFact placed behind its ruling was always flawed, and the failure to address criticism only magnifies the failure.

For the umpteenth time, people understand "government takeover" to mean increased federal government control of health care.  PPACA clearly increases federal government control of health care. 

Get a clue, PolitiFact.