:popcorn:




Associated Press Rebukes Politifact (Indirectly) (http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/05/26/AP-Rebukes-Politifact-Indirectly?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BigJournalism+%28Big+Journalism%29)



After getting caught with its pants down with a wholly dishonest fact-check backing up and attempting to legitimize the absurd claim that Obama is some sort of thrifty spender of historic proportions, Politifact's public humiliation is now complete. Though the Associated Press doesn't mention Politifact directly, it does completely and effectively undermine Politifact's "mostly true" rating:

The White House is aggressively pushing the idea that, contrary to widespread belief, President Barack Obama is tightfisted with taxpayer dollars. To back it up, the administration cites a media report that claims federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since the Eisenhower years.

"Federal spending since I took office has risen at the slowest pace of any president in almost 60 years," Obama said at a campaign rally Thursday in Des Moines, Iowa.

The problem with that rosy claim is that the Wall Street bailout is part of the calculation. The bailout ballooned the 2009 budget just before Obama took office, making Obama's 2010 results look smaller in comparison. And as almost $150 billion of the bailout was paid back during Obama's watch, the analysis counted them as government spending cuts.

It also assumes Obama had less of a role setting the budget for 2009 than he really did.

since when is intuition FACT ?





PolitiFact Bases Entire Fact Check on Author's Intuition (http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/05/28/Politifact-Bases-Entire-Fact-Check-on-Author-s-Intuition)



PolitiFact, the fact-checking arm of the Tampa Bay Times, has really outdone itself with this check of a recent Crossroads GPS ad. Their 1,100 word fact check focuses in on just 14 words and still manages to completely confuse the issue. It winds up judging a completely true statement "False" based on nothing but the author's intuition of the advertiser's bad intentions.

This certainly looks like an egregious example of political bias, but rather than assume the worst of the author, I emailed her and her editor to see if they would agree to explain themselves. After a back and forth with PolitiFact's senior editor, which I'll share below, my efforts led to the addition of an update which does absolutely nothing to address the problem. So, is this rampant bias or just incompetence? I'll let you be the judge.

Here's the Crossroads GPS ad which is the focus of PolitiFact's attention:


NT8xAlxKV-w