GaiusBaltar -
I think everyone here knwos how biased PolitiFact has become. I just found this the other day while trying to find some balance in their reporting (there isn't any unfortuantely.).
Really?! Just take a look at PolitiFact any given day and you'll find a bunch of debunked claims from liberals. The article I am currently working on will show some key examples. I wonder where he was looking....
GaiusBaltar -Notice how he never even comments on whether PolitiFact has ever called Fox a "Conservative News Outlet" before. In fact a simple google search shows many cases where Fox News is mentioned and not referred to this way. So why has Politifact not labeled MSNBC this way before? I dunno... Probably for the SAME REASON they haven't labeled FOX news in that way before; because there has been no context in which that fact is appropriate. It is appropriate in this context because it related to the poll cited by Armey. It sounds like GaiusBaltar doesn't research his own claims. It's okay Gaius, I'll do it for you!
Take a look at this article: Armey says Tea Party is more popular than Democrats, Republicans
The author is: Catharine Richert.
One of the paragraphs:
"But some political analysts have questioned whether the [NBC/WSJ] poll exaggerated the Tea Party's favorable ratings because the group is not well known and because of the heavy coverage it gets from Fox News, a conservative news outlet. About 76 percent of those who see the Tea Party movement favorably also said they get their news from Fox, according to an analysis on MSNBC's First Read."
PolitiFact has gone and labeled FoxNews as a "conservative" news outlet. But has no problem listing MSNBC with the opposite "liberal" news outlet.
Note: Recently, Politifact has called MSNBC a "liberal counterpoint to Fox."
GaiusBaltar -
Futhermore, the straw argument the author uses in her reporting is not against Dick Armey, but the poll itself. While two polls (WSJ-NBC and Rasmussen) confirm Armey's statement, the author argues that because the Tea Party gets coverage from Fox, that the polls cannot be credible because Fox bumps up their numbers
First off, The Rasmussen Poll CONTRADICTS Armey's statement! Second, I'm not sure what "Straw Argument" she is making... In fact, it seems as though he has made a straw man argument of his own. PolitiFact did not reject the NBC/WSJ poll just because of the FOX news factor, they rejected the poll because of a few caveats that contradict Armey's statement. As PolitiFact mentions, "Jay Campbell, vice president for Hart McInturff, the firm that conducted the [NBC-Wall Street Journal] poll... told [PolitiFact] Armey's comments were not an accurate representation of the poll's findings." Even a polling expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute agreed that Armey's interpretation of the poll was questionable. She mentioned, "only 7 percent of respondents [to that poll] know a great deal about the Tea Party and 22 percent know a fair amount." At the very least, the poll does not sound very reliable.
GaiusBaltar -Since he is quoting the last paragraph of this article, is it safe to assume he read, you know, the PARAGRAPH RIGHT BEFORE IT...
And now look at how the article closes. She wants to make sure that Democrats stand in some good light, so she throws something in there to help her own party out:
"So Armey is drastically overstating the group's standing. Yes, the Tea Party is viewed favorably by people who know about the group (particularly those who get their news from Fox), but the pollsters who conducted the survey say it's not accurate to say that the party is more popular than Democrats or Republicans. Also, other polls contradict Armey's statement and indicate that Democrats are more popular than Tea Party candidates. So we find Armey's claim to be False."
Where are these other polls? She had no problem calling people up to check the data, but can't link to polls that she talks about in her article.
Politifact -
A December 2009 Rasmussen poll also contradicts Armey's statement. It found that in a three-way generic ballot, Democrats attracted 36% of the vote. The Tea Party candidate picked up 23%, and Republicans finished third with 18% of the vote. Another 22% are undecided. And a Fox News poll released Jan. 21, 2010, demonstrated that President Barack Obama would beat a potential Tea Party candidate in a White House run.
(emphasis added)
Sounds like he missed this paragraph... I'm not quite sure why. You would think that someone going through the effort to write a criticism to an article would have at least READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE. And notice the article lists the links to these polls. It takes talent to pack so many painfully obvious falsehoods into two sentences.
GaiusBaltar -
Any why would this be false. Armey's says something that the polls prove. WHat's more absurd is that the author even links to those two polls on the right hand column. So even with the staw argument, and by Politifact's past rulings like this, shouldn't this be considered "Half True."
...because the one poll that agreed with them was questionable due to to how the poll was worded (with a highly favorable description of the TEA Party), as well as the fact that the respondents knew so little of the TEA Party outside the description in that same poll. Even the people who conducted the poll do not think it actually supports Armey's claim! Due to the many problems with the poll, it does not suffice as acceptable evidence. In addition to that, other polls mentioned in the article contradict Armey's claim (each without questionable wording). So with no good evidence to support the claim, but instead evidence against the claim, an honest objective observer SHOULD consider the claim "false.".
Note: PolitiFact could have given it a "Half True" because at least one of the polls that said Democrats were more popular than members of the Tea Part Movement also put the Tea Party above Republicans, making that part of his statement "True" or "Mostly True." As a single statement, it is "False." However, it could be broken up and given "Half True". Of course that would look worse for Republicans. PolitiFact ignoring that part of the statement could only hint at conservative bias, which is also equally absurd.
So it seems that this entire article could have easily been avoided if GaiusBaltar had taken a second to ACTUALLY read the article in which he criticizes. I do admit this article was pretty easy to debunk... I will be looking around for a challenge, if one exists. These fact-checking sites are human and may be prone to a mistake here and there. So I expect there should be some good articles criticizing Politifact. However, I find that an honest mistake is often misdiagnosed as bias. These fact checking sites make these mistakes on both sides of the political spectrum. I just thought it would be good to start off easy, especially since this article was near the top of a google search of "politifact bias." I'll probably tackle a few articles from the blog, "PolitiFact Bias," as well as a few more in my google searches. Please comment on this article and give me any pointers you can think of.
Anyway, I won't touch the last paragraph of this article because it should sound ridiculous knowing all the blunders he made in this article. So I leave you with the final piece of this gem:
I hope Newsbusters takes a stance against this biased machien PolitiFact and call them out for the leftists that they are. Too many news organizations are using PolitiFact as a "objective" "nonpartisian" source--when truly, we know its now. This must be pursued so that PolitiFact is known as a "liberal" "fact"-check machine---similar to what MediaMatters has become.
Update 9/1/11: I have made a few minor changes to this post, mainly in how it was worded.
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