ISTM that as fact-checking has become a more prominent part of the election campaign coverage, the fact-checkers have veered further away from checking facts and more and more into inserting their own opinions and spins on things, under the guise of fact-checking. Two common versions of this are 1) presenting opinions - whether their own or those of other experts as “facts”, and 2) acknowledging that the facts offered by the candidate are correct but presenting other facts that supposedly give a better context to the situation. Both of these were on display in the the Associated Press fact check of the first Republican debate: FACT CHECK: Republican candidates veer from the truth in 1st presidential primary debate
Example:
Now I myself wouldn’t take Bush’s claim seriously (though I don’t see it as being any different than the self-promoting balderdash served up by every single other political candidate that I can recall), but that’s opinion. It’s not a fact that can be checked, and even if “most economists” don’t agree that Bush can accomplish what he claims, that does not amount to him contradicting “THE FACTS”.
Example 2:
Leaving aside whether Bush’s claim included the job killing being “major”, and even leaving aside that whatever job-killing features the ACA might have didn’t take effect in “March 2010 when Obama signed the Affordable Care Act”, you can’t look at the total jobs number or unemployment rate and attribute the entire gain or loss to any one factor. Trying to tease out whatever the impact is of one factor out of the myriad of factors which influence jobs is a very complex matter and generally the subject of considerable disagreement among economists. (One FACT that this fact-checker did not mention is that as recoveries go this particular one has been relatively light on the jobs - a FACT that he would probably have trotted out if it happened to fit his agenda.) I’m sure you can dispute Bush’s claim about the effects of the ACA on jobs. But that’s not a fact-check. That’s opinion.
Example 3:
This is an example of both types of phony fat-checking, 1) in the assertion that the jobs created during Bush’s tenure were due to a housing bubble and he does not deserve credit, and 2) that most of those jobs were lost after Bush left office.
Again, these are valid points for debate and discussion, but they are not fact-checks.
The problem here is that these people are masquerading their opinions and interpretations as facts, thus giving them undue weight with their readership.
And it’s a particularly difficult issue for Republican candidates (in the general election) because the opinions and interpretations of news media people tends to be more aligned with those of the Democratic candidate. So Republicans are virtually guaranteed to be found more egregious at the hands of the “fact-checkers”.
[Note: I put this is GD because it’s about elections in general versus any specific election, but the mods can obviously do as they see fit.]
I haven’t read the US News article, but I hope they included the ridiculous “US Navy is smaller than its been since 1917, and the Air Force since 1940” claim by Carson (I think). That is complete BS.
I share your opinion that an awful lot of fact-checking is nothing of the sort. And these are good examples.
I suspect that the same forces that make it easy for a politician to misstate facts also make fact-checking a profitless endeavor–principally, no one actually cares whether the Navy is smaller now than in 1917 or whether 40% of small and mid-size banks were wiped out by Dodd-Frank. So for-profit media isn’t going to do it because people don’t want to read it. People want to read about the issues they care about, so “fact-checkers” will find something to “fact-check” about about those issues.
I have to disagree about your first example – if he throws out a number like 4 per cent job growth, that’s a checkable figure. You’d have to be inert not to investigate such a definite assertion. And 4% turns out to be a surprisingly large claim. You can say that it’s ambitious (which it certainly is), but the fact that it is so big – and that most people, unaware of the sizes of typical growth figures will not know how this stands in relation to the growth in other periods – essentially demands an evaluation.
This isn’t partisan or opinion – this is what fact-checking is all about. The candidate has given his goal in the form of a definite figure. As a typical voter, I don’t know a damned thing about what we can expect in terms of growth. Is this reasonable? Is it high? Is it low? This is precisely the sort of thing a fact-checker is expected to look into.
That’s nothing. US cavalry forces are smaller than they’ve ever been since the Civil War, too (not counting armoured cav, obviously) !
Also there *was *no Air Force back in 1940, so it’s tricky to have fewer planes and/or personnel than that. Doable with some creative paperwork, but tricky :).
I disagree. It absolutely demands “an evaluation”, as you say. And if you’re “a typical voter who doesn’t know a damned thing about what we can expect” then it’s the job of media people to help you understand the context.
But none of that is the same thing as a fact-check.
[QUOTE=Jas09]
I haven’t read the US News article, but I hope they included the ridiculous “US Navy is smaller than its been since 1917, and the Air Force since 1940” claim by Carson (I think). That is complete BS.
[/QUOTE]
The Navy IS smaller, in terms of the number of hulls. But it’s a pointless comparison, since the size of the Navy depends on it’s mission and how able it is to fulfill it with the number of hulls it has. I’d say that, since this will be the first time in a LONG time we don’t have a carrier to cover the ME that, regardless of how big or small the Navy was in 1917, the current Navy is stretched too thin, especially with ramping up missions in our Pivot to Asia™. We’ve run the ships we have too long and too hard, and there are too few of them for all of the missions they are being given. Either we need to spin down the missions or, if those missions are critical then we need to stop cutting the Navy’s funding and get them what they need to fulfill the missions including time for maintenance and refit cycles.
(There wasn’t an Air Force in 1940 btw, so that one is certainly complete BS)
If someone says “I think the Mets will win the World Series this year” and someone else responds “no, they have a weak offense, and the oddmakers have them as long shots”, that is not a fact check.
And it’s not a semantic difference either. A “fact-check” implies something which can be and has been objectively determined to be true or false. This is just an opinion (however valid it may be).
A better way to respond would be to show the historical rates of growth and what is typical in different time periods. That would be fact based context.
But it could be an opinion based on trend data. If, say, the average US economic growth for the last 5 years is 2.4%, with the high being 2.5%, then saying that 4% growth is unrealistic has at least a basis in fact…and one can certainly fact-check the trend, as well as consult with economic experts to determine how realistic such a proposition would be. Yes…we don’t know if next year or the year after the US economy will explode suddenly and unexpectedly upward and we will achieve growth not seen in over a decade and that runs counter to most economists predictions as well as current world economic trends. That’s why it’s kind of a gray area, since some of this CAN be checked, while other is speculation. But I think it’s reasonable to question such an assertion and ask what basis is being used to project such growth.
I absolutely agree that it’s reasonable to question such an assertion. But that’s not the same thing as a fact check, which implies that the guy has said something either factual or counterfactual. He hasn’t. He has only offered an opinion which can be said to be reasonable or unreasonable.
If that guy thinks the Mets are going to win the world series, he might be a bit of a fool or a die-hard fan, and it’s certainly reasonable to question such an assertion. But he’s not lying or twisting any facts or otherwise misrepresenting anything - which is what’s implied when you contradict something in a “fact check”.
The stuff you quoted gives the context very well. You seem to want to limit “fact checking” to basic statements of facts - which makes it useless in ferreting out absurd claims. Say Jeb claimed that as president his economic policy would result in a median income of $500K in 2015 dollars. Is your position that a fact checking service isn’t allowed to refute this? The average person probably thinks that since 4% is close to 2.5% Bush’s claim is nothing radical - and it is useful to note that it is radical.
Your ACA example is even more accurate. We all know that Republicans made predictions of how ACA would crash the economy - which have not come true. Bush (and others) is pretending that these predictions did come true without the slightest support. Job growth has been slow - but has accelerated after ACA (not that ACA is the cause. If I claimed it was a fact checker should shoot that claim down.) Since we know that any claim about cause and effect in the economy is hard to prove, you seem to be saying that any bullshit claim from anyone in any party can’t be fact checked.
Fact-checking is not about “ferreting out absurd claims”. It’s about verifying the facts being claimed. Ferreting out absurd claims is also important, but it’s a different matter.
You need to distinguish between supposed “Republican” claims that “ACA would crash the economy”, and the specific statement from Bush that this fact checker was checking.
To the extent that any particular claim is “hard to prove”, then it’s not a matter for fact-checkers and needs to be dealt with via the assessments of economists and other experts.