Politifact tries to stay neutral but don't always manage to do so. It's not like they are a wing of the democrat party or are hell bent on destroying all things Republican but yes they ARE left of center. First off they are part of the Tampa Bays Times and yes, the Times is a "liberal" newspaper. Secondly, it is staffed by reporters and reporters are overwhelmingly liberal, they try to be unbiased but they just can't hide their stripes all the time.

They are a decent resource but to insist they are completely unbiased is sticking your head in the sand a bit now isn't it?

Oh, I am sure they are liberal. Reporters are generally pretty smart...

You jest but the fact remains, reporters (who staff politifact) are indeed a liberal lot. The very nature of the group is skewed left in who staff it to who owns it, it would be incredibly difficult for them to even realize they are being partisan even while really trying to stay neutral.

Again, I agree they do try to stay neutral and they are a decent group that does a good job but let's not kid ourselves into thinking they are completely non-biased. Only a bleeding heart liberal would assume so. It's like trying to say (with a straight face) that Fox News is neutral. Or, if you agree Fox is not neutral, then you need to accept the overwhelming majority of main stream media is left leaning as well. Most TV is left, most radio is right. Simply look at what is being reported, look at both sides and evaluate things for yourself. SOME (on both sides) simply regurgitate what the party line wants them to say with no real mind of their own, these simple fools can't help themselves.

What you say is reasonable as a general point, Tom. My only quibble with the story was the contention that there was objective evidence that Politifacts was biased. And maybe if you examined in detail all of Politifacts ratings you would find objective evidence that they are biased against Republicans. When they do their ratings they do an analysis, as well. I think it would be possible to do an exhaustive study of Politifacts analyses and see if their interpretations betray a liberal slant. It's just it had not been in this instance.

Of course what sources are we going to rely on? Even to critique Politifacts we would have to rely on some other sources of information to do it. The thing about Fox News is that there is a conscious bias there. And to a lesser extent the same could be said of MSNBC. But other media may not be consciously biased, but just have the normal biases that come from interpreting the world in a certain way based on their core beliefs and experiences. But I think it is important to look try to find objective evidence where msinstream media betrays a liberal bias. Because if whatever the media is just liberal spin what sources of information are reliable at that point? With those against global warming scientists are biased because they get money for grants; with evolution, I suppose the contention would be that most scientists are not religious. We don't have to blindly accept what the media says, we should compare it with other sources of information to see that it is reliable and/or not biased, but I think blanketly disregarding mainstream media because of purported unconscious biases takes us down a rabbit hole where nothing can be generally agreed upon, where we all have our own truths.

freeman3 wrote:I'm sorry...do you make an argument as to why my argument is laughable? Nope. Did you answer any one of my criticisms? Nope. Then you go off a tangent. You cited to an article that supposedly showed liberal bias and I showed that the so-called study was full of holes and the columnist was trying to mislead, himself. The only thing he showed was his own bias. Seeing as how you made no actual arguments with regard to the points I made I am assuming you conceded and are now just throwing up red herrings.

No, you *said* the study was flawed--based on your own personal feeling. You've offered nothing substantive.

Steve wrote....

Most TV is left, most radio is right.

I think this is a very fair statement and agree.

What I've noticed (and I'm stating the obvious) is that the internet is emerging in such a way that alternative reporting is coming to the fore in new and refreshing ways. I believe that within the next 20 years television news will become redundant, having been replaced by internet news programs. What I love about this is that mainstream television will begin to lose its monopoly of control more and more. We've seen glimpses of this change with the introduction of cable TV already. Of course this emerging vehicle for news will be accompanied with cons as well but I believe those negatives will be outweighed by the positives.

Actually, I did make some substantive arguments about the study but I would prefer not to argue about it any further--if anyone cares (doubtful), they can make up their own minds about that.

As to Dags' comments it's great to have alternative news. But newspapers and major newspapers have been able to direct significant resources to reporting that are not likely to happen with internet sources. Internet sources are not well-suited to investigative series, international reporting, coverage of wars or anything that requires people to get out from behind their computer. Internet sources can supplement but we are losing something significant with the decline of newspaper and major network coverage of news that will not be replaced by other sources of news on the internet. Internet sources are better to supplement and critique major news coverage--not replace it.

freeman3 wrote:Actually, I did make some substantive arguments about the study but I would prefer not to argue about it any further--if anyone cares (doubtful), they can make up their own minds about that.

As to Dags' comments it's great to have alternative news. But newspapers and major newspapers have been able to direct significant resources to reporting that are not likely to happen with internet sources. Internet sources are not well-suited to investigative series, international reporting, coverage of wars or anything that requires people to get out from behind their computer. Internet sources can supplement but we are losing something significant with the decline of newspaper and major network coverage of news that will not be replaced by other sources of news on the internet. Internet sources are better to supplement and critique major news coverage--not replace it.

There's also more fact and source checking with newspapers and network news since they have institutional concerns. I'm not saying they are always accurate, just more likely to not make stuff up.

Yep, good point.

Like stuff on Twitter?

Are you referencing my post about the New York Times article about Twitter? I don't get it.

freeman3 wrote:Are you referencing my post about the New York Times article about Twitter? I don't get it.

Yep.

Freeman wrote:

As to Dags' comments it's great to have alternative news. But newspapers and major newspapers have been able to direct significant resources to reporting that are not likely to happen with internet sources. Internet sources are not well-suited to investigative series, international reporting, coverage of wars or anything that requires people to get out from behind their computer. Internet sources can supplement but we are losing something significant with the decline of newspaper and major network coverage of news that will not be replaced by other sources of news on the internet. Internet sources are better to supplement and critique major news coverage--not replace it.

Good shout and I agree with every point you raise here of course but think about where internet news could potentially go in 20 years. That's what is interesting to me.

freeman3 wrote:Actually, I did make some substantive arguments about the study but I would prefer not to argue about it any further--if anyone cares (doubtful), they can make up their own minds about that.

Yeah, politifact is soooo unbiased.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapotheca ... a6a5a6316a

On October 9, 2008, Angie Drobnic Holan of PolitiFact published an article using the site’s “Truth-O-Meter” to evaluate this claim: “Under Barack Obama’s health care proposal, ‘if you’ve got a health care plan that you like, you can keep it.’” The article assures us in its headline that “Obama’s plan expands [the] existing system,” and continues that “Obama is accurately describing his health care plan here…It remains to be seen whether Obama’s plan will actually be able to achieve the cost savings it promises for the health care system. But people who want to keep their current insurance should be able to do that under Obama’s plan. His description of his plan is accurate, and we rate his statement True.”

There was no way they could have known that. That is pure political bias. And, it was wrong.

There are many more.

PolitiFact’s Gardner Selby tells us Ted Cruz recently “stirred” an Austin crowd at the Texas Tribune Festival by factually describing Hillary Clinton’s position as favoring “abortion without limit.” PolitiFact, in fact, rates Cruz’s assertion is completely “false.” We give PolitiFact a flaming giant liar rating on the Truth-O-Gauge.

Actually, it’s unclear to us if Cruz’s assertions are even pretend-debunked in this piece. To be precise, Cruz said Clinton “supports unlimited abortion on demand up until the moment of birth, including partial-birth abortion, with taxpayer funding.” Even when we set aside the hyper-literalism PolitiFact selectively deploys when shielding its favorite politicians, this statement is accurate.

We know politifact was wrong--Clinton didn't even deny it when asked during the third debate.

Well since you are not going to leave it alone I'll point out that I made substantive points about the study: (1) it was only 100 statements over a four-month period of time, (2) there was no attempt to analyze each individual rating to see if it contained bias, and (3) the article buried the fact that it only a limited analysis. So my critique was not based on personal feeling but on an analysis of the article. I made points; you may disagree with them--although in fact you did not answer them--but they were substantive, legitimate points.

Now as to your further posts on Politifacts, the guy who did the Forbes article wrote a book about how Medicaid is failing the poor. How else are the poor going to be treated but for government subsidized health-care? The writer is clearly on the far-right fringe.

Anyway, he claims that Politifacts' rating as true with regard to Obama's claim that people could keep their health care under his health care plan "had a meaningful impact on the election." He could not possibly know this. That is just made up.

With regard to Politifacts' rating itself clearly such ratings are more problematic with regard to complex health care laws than with regard to other kinds of statements from politicians. We're just talking about a plan that has not even been written into law, yet. So if you want to make the point that any kind of fact-checking with regard to complex policy proposals may be problematic, that's a fair point.

But the guy makes a big deal that Politifacts' rating changed from true to half true once the bill was written. He contends the law was essentially the same as the plan so why the rating should not have changed. I think it is reasonable to think that once the details of the plan are written into law it's a lot easier to assess what is going to happen. Believe me if it is was that easy to see Republicans would have had an effective way to destroy that interpretation of Obama's plan in 2008

Finally, the writer really gets on Politifacts for in 2013 now saying that the plan was now a lie. Well, now that the actual law was put into practice and people could see what would happen.

Probably, Politifacts should have stayed out of rating this particular fact without having more certainly. I think it is understandable why they got it wrong but they should realize that this was a likelihood given the nature of a complex policy proposal that has not written into law, yet. But the writer also suggests that this is what Politifacts typically does. He claims that it "routines evaluates predictions about the future as facts." He cites no evidence in support of that contention. He tries to suggest that Politfacts is not very good in doing this sub-set of fact-checking , particularly with regard to complex issues like health care. But other than one example he does not prove his assertion that Politfacts does this sort of thing a lot or that it does badly. He just takes one example and tries to smear everything Politifacts does that with one example, and even that example really isn't that bad.

If you want to make the assertion that Politifacts is biased then you need to look at more than one fact. Taking issue with one fact check out of thousands is not very convincing.

What Cruz said was a lie. Hillary Clinton has never said that she supports women being able to have an abortion for any reason up to the point of birth. She has repeatedly said that late-term abortions may be allowed for the health of the mother. That is a limit. It is not upon demand. Sorry. The suggestion that she supports aborting the child as the mother is giving birth is awful hyperbole. Her support of getting rid of the Hyde Amendment simply has to do with allowing poor women to get an abortion if they cannot afford it; it has nothing to do with having the federal government pay for abortions of people who can afford them. So Polifacts was spot on in that rating.