Can you link or cite where you saw this?
I think that was a Republican idea floated a bit ago. You know, to stop Trump from unilaterally nuking someone.
So, are you saying that Thompson was correct? There were two groups, one a bipartisan congressional panel, and the other, led by the CIA. They had different motives, means, and conclusions. It may have been a slip of the tongue, but it could still be misleading, even if the intent was not to mislead, which is arguable. How would you have rated this? If it is not false, what is it? It wasn’t
The Planned Parenthood comment was true, if misleading. I will agree that the cynical among the campaign staff probably came up with the phrasing to make people think that the woman would be held criminally liable, but that is also not what a straight reading says. So, the statement is true, if misleading. How would you have rated this? It’s not false, because it’s true, but you should give politifact some credit for still calling them on their implication and giving them a half-true.
We have one non-factual and potentially misleading statement, and one true, but misleading statement. Are you saying they should have gotten the same rating? The only bias I have seen you show so far is that you are more critical of when they are critical of republicans than when they are critical of democrats.
See? It’s not so hard to create a cite! Did you phrase yours as almost a hypothetical, hoping you could play a “Gotcha!”? I notice Thompson said “designs”, stronger than the Survey Group’s “aspired” but will concede that Politifact blundered. (Considering this ape said “Sarah Palin has more experience than Barack Obama” Politifact may not have considered it worth their time to fact-check their own fact-checking! 
)
Out of curiosity, what is the reported score of D Lies vs R Lies? What do you think it would be from an objective fact-checker (if such a thing is imaginable)?
The statement was “Joe Heck voted to criminalize abortion for rape victims.” And he did - abortions procured by rape victims would be criminal acts under the legislation he voted for. They just wouldn’t be criminal acts as to the victims themselves. “For rape victims” in the sentence may be modifying “criminalize” or “abortion.”
Consider the identically-structured hypothetical, “Joe Heck voted to criminalize gun sales to felons.” Can you tell from that sentence whether it is the felon or the seller who would be criminally culpable?
I do think the PP statement is misleading, since I assume PP meant to imply that it is the victims who would be prosecuted. But it is technically true in one perfectly valid construction.
I haven’t seen very much from PF that suggests to me that they are biased. Indeed, they gave Trump a pass on his statement that he would consider renegotiating the national debt. He did actually say that, but also issued an almost immediate retraction and said he didn’t mean renegotiate at all.
I’d certainly want to correct the misinformation, but I’d be unlikely to call it a lie, since the incorrect assertion was so vocally close to the true one.
Remember, though, that I’m arguing for consistency. So what I’d do in this particular case isn’t as important as the approach I’d take to EVERY case: decide in advance if my raison d’etre is to strictly police all inaccuracy, or correct misleading information.
And then follow that template no matter whose ox was gored.
OK.
I’ll give you another specific example. In this one, a political attack ad said that Democratic Candidate X “…was named one of America’s least effective congressmen.”
Politifact rated this statement “Mostly False,” explaining that the rating system relied upon for the ranking did not take enough factors into account; the system looked only at the percentage of bills sponsored by each member over their time in office that went on to pass committee.
However, during the primary, a Democratic opponent of Candidate X leveled precisely the same attack, also citing the InsideGov ranking. Politifact declined to rate it Mostly False, or False in any way. They declined to rate the statement at all, claiming that such claims are too subjective to be rated true or false.
So if a Republican interest accuses a Democrat, it’s Mostly False. But if a Democrat accuses a Democrat – the SAME Democrat, the SAME accusation, and the SAME source for the claim – it’s “too subjective to rate.”
The ineffective candidate was Florida Democrat Patrick Murphy. The original “Mostly False” ad came from conservative PAC American Future Fund. Murphy’s primary Democratic opponent was Alan Grayson.
Well?
What is your source that Politifact claimed that such claims are too subjective to be rated true or false?
These guys, but what do they know?
Precisely the same, huh?
Even if true, that just means that the thin red line between Trump and nuclear war is a like-minded toady appointed by Trump. :eek:
Oops. Read your cite, bro. They did give an overall rating for the ad. Want to know what it was? “False”. In other words, they were harder on the liberal attack ad than they were on the conservative one (which got “Mostly False”). There is actually a nuance that accounts for this, but you don’t seem like you’re in the mood for reading your own cites today.
Gotcha!
DEFENSE SECRETARY: “Mister President, I can not and will not second your order.”
DONALD TRUMP: <purses lips, makes vaguely cobra-like gesture> “You’re fired.”
Well? could you linky please. If you are going to ask opinion on such matters, it would behoove to provide what it is you would like an opinion upon.
I see where politifact is defending murphy against grayson’s claims, but not where you are talking about. Could you be more specific?
Man, ninja’d again, if only it didn’t take me hours to get to these posts…
To be fair, the rating was hidden in the headline at the top of the article, where it was hard to see. And the point where they said that they rate it as false was at the bottom of the article, once again, not exactly where one would look.
See if Bricker wants to try again? This time, maybe he will read the article he feels is a good example of bias this time. Third time’s a charm an’ all.
I am annoyed that I spent quite a bit of time trying to find an article on politifact that was rated as “unrateable” or something like that. Turns out Bricker put me on a snipe hunt. This time, my origami master, please cite the example you are complaining about. Thank you.
Ooops back at you. Read my cite, bro:
THAT was the reason the ad was false. They specifically declined to address whether the more general claim of “ineffective,” was false, on the grounds that it was subjective.
Nonethless, when American Future Fund ran an ad with the same claim, they were able to rate it false.
And for those that delight in pointing out how, hypertechnically, a statement was true, I invite you to consider that American Future Fund’s ad said, “Patrick Murphy was named one of America’s least effective congressmen.” That statement is absolutely true: he was rated, by InsideGov, as one of the least effective. Politifact chose to evaluate InsideGov’s rating, not AFF’s factual statement, and evaluated the InsideGov rating as False, because it relied on only one metric. Bot when they discussed Grayson’s use of the InsideGov rating they declined to call it false.
As I explained above, the rating for Grayson was false, but NOT because of his reliance on InsideGov, but because of his specific claim that Murphy “hasn’t passed a single bill out of committee.”
The differing treatment I am complaining of relates to whether the claim "“Patrick Murphy was named one of America’s least effective congressmen,” is False, or too subjective to rate. Which is it?
… and called the statement by his Democratic opponent false instead. Hardly an indicator that they were trying to protect Grayson. And they heavily criticized the InsideGov analysis in the article on the PAC too claims too. This is a really, really bad example.
The whole ad was rated as false. I am not sure what you are getting at here. The “too subjective to rate” statement was in support of saying that the claim was false.
What is it you wanted them to rate? If you felt it shoulda been a “pants on fire”, I don’t know that I disagree, but that doesn’t seem to be your issue here.
Here are what I believe are the example Bricker is referring to;
Grayson says Murphy ‘hasn’t passed a single bill out of committee’ (which Bricker did link to, after being asked)
Ad attacking Patrick Murphy as among ‘least effective’ in Congress misses the mark (I’m guessing for this one, Bricker, if this isn’t right, please say so. And provide links in the future, please. I haven’t noticed this as being a flaw of yours before.)
[QUOTE=Bricker]
The differing treatment I am complaining of relates to whether the claim "“Patrick Murphy was named one of America’s least effective congressmen,” is False, or too subjective to rate. Which is it?
[/QUOTE]
Hang on a mo - you’re conflating two statements, I think. There’s a big difference between “Murphy is one of the least effective congressmen” and “Murphy was named one of the least effective congressmen.”
Also I asked a question back in #160 which I think you missed.
No prob, he’s got bunches of them, he just grabbed that one because it was on top of the pile. The bigly, bigly pile.