As Fiveyearlurker points out politics is mostly a matter of opinion, but when politics runs into subjects were science has an input then politics should yield to science. In those cases I do recommend to check people like science writer Peter Hadfield (AKA Potholer54)
He has taken liberals to task when exaggerating some scientific issues, but even he does notice how the Republicans are the ones becoming more willful ignorants and that will eventually have a negative effect on our economy because we do need to use the best tools we have to deal with issues like biology, medicine or climate change were science is a big part of the solution.
The important lesson is to realize that even mainstream sources of information will get the science wrong on occasion, but less reliable ones will make a sport of being wrong because they have an agenda. But the tools to help us identify if the information is a valid one is not beyond the capability of the majority or viewers or readers of the Internet. And many of the lessons there apply to other subjects. Identifying bad sources of information can be done because many times the original sources show up as not supporting the spin that the sites or blogs claimed that the original source did.
How about tax cuts? It seems to be Republican gospel that tax cuts (especially for “job creators”) pay for themselves because of the increased economic activity that is supposed to inevitably follow. The matter may not be quite as scientifically determined as evolution and climate change, but we can go back and run the numbers on previous tax cuts. Everything I’ve read is that the revenue did not recover, and yet the gospel remains unchanged.
Same old Republican bait-and-switch. Mouth the benefits that could possibly maybe happen in an alternate universe on a Tuesday of the full moon, while business and the wealthy get the actual benefits. And they will continue to do so until their supporters stop buying into it, which won’t happen until the overall average IQ of the populace increases by a few points.
The latest election made Hadfield put a new video that shows again the lesson that we all have the tools to check just a bit more to see who is giving us proper information:
From the last minutes of the short video that shows the steps taken to deal with one virulent bit of fake news:
The characterization that this difference in outcome is merely a nitpick is part of the problem with Politifact. This is not to say that places like infowars are better, or even in the same league, but the item identified above is not a nitpick. It’s also not about getting things exactly perfectly correct. They essentially took the same claim and concluded in the opposite. That’s a complete failure. Now you may say this failure is rare but mischaracterizing it as a nitpick or as not exactly perfectly correct is part of the problem.
I’m reminded of a time way back in highschool where I cheated on an English assignment. We were supposed to read Billy Budd and write an essay on it. Suffice to say I did not complete the assignment, but a friend who had the exact same assignment in the previous year did. He was well liked by the teacher, and on his paper, he received an A with positive comments about the work. I took his essay word for word, put my name on it, and submitted it. The teacher didn’t care for me very much and I got a grade of a D. Sure maybe it’s an isolated incident where the teacher let her personal feelings influence her assessment, but as far as I’m concerned one incident was sufficient to be suspicious about all of her grading processes.
So here Congresswoman Speier references Sandy Hook in which tragically elementary school children and staff were killed, and makes a claim about the number of children killed each day. But in her claim, the only way it is remotely true is if adults aged 18 and 19 are included. And Politifact rates it as mostly true.
Again, such poor evaluations may be rare. The rarity seems to be slanted in one direction.
To use another example of Politifact’s unreliability: they rated the FACTUAL assertion that Planned Parenthood doesn’t offer mammograms as “Half True.”
Look, you can make all the arguments you like in favor abortion, but one fact remains: Planned Parenthood does NOT provide mammogram. Supporters who claimed they do were, at best, misinformed.
In this case, ALL the facts went against Planned Parenthood , but Politifact tried to decrease words and create middle ground that didn’t exist.
No way I’ll ever treat them as neutral, honest impartial judges of truth.
Not the whole story, one reason why they reached for the half true rating was this:
I would also do not think qualifying something half true would make it the truth as you are trying to claim Politifact did.
Once one realizes that the context was to counter this absolutist line from the opponents of Planned Parenthood:
One has to realize that it is not only some misguided defenders of PP who got it wrong, it was also that opponents also are resorting to even deny that PP does examinations that lead to referrals for mammograms.
Yeah, not seeing it. “Half true” is exactly the right answer here.
If the examples of “bias” in this thread (fewer than five rulings in question, as I’m seeing) are the absolute best examples of the thousands of Politifact’s rulings, then I think we answered the OP’s question and the answer is that Politifact is damn good at what they do.
Meh, unemployment figures and real unemployment figures are two separate statistics, U-3 and U-6 as defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That one word addition by Bernie Sanders changes the entire statement and can easily be the difference between Mostly False and Mostly True.
The main problem with Politifact and Factcheck is that both will select quotes which usually further a certain agenda and they can’t see the forest for the trees when they start parsing words. And it just so happens that Republicans have more Pants of Fire ratings.
If Senator X votes for a policy because it will do A, and Senator Y votes for the same policy because he believes it will do B, and Senator Z votes for the same policy because it is supposed to do C, how does the neutral watchdog determine which outcomes the policy was “supposed” to have? And if Senator W voted against the policy, but now that it has been in place a few years, he agrees with it and believes it caused D, how does that jibe with goals A, B and C, and who decides which goal is the “real” goal of the policy and whether it worked as designed for some or any of them?
The quip “who is checking Fact Check?” is cited by some on social media. My answer is everyone. The good thing about Polifact, Fact Check and Snopes is not their absolute evaluation. It is that they usually list their sources. You can go read the actual statements in most cases. You can evaluate how they decided if something was mostly true or mostly false. I doubt that many people who care enough to fact check are going to just look at the summary icon.
I know people like to cheerlead for or deride Politifact around here but it really isn’t in the realm that the OP was describing. They don’t evaluate the effects of policy. That requires a heck of a lot more research and expertise than what they provide whether you like or distrust them.