Romney Puts Politifact on Ropes

Romney Puts Politifact on Ropes

In two separate instances, Politifact has contradicted itself with its rating of the accurate claim made by the Romney campaign that women account for 92.3 percent of the jobs lost under President Obama.

The “fact checking” organization, which the mainstream media treats as an unbiased and neutral arbiter, showed how much it is willing to stretch the truth to support Obama and undermine Republicans.

On April 5, Politifact conceded that the 92.3 percent figure cited by the Romney campaign was accurate and, then, promptly -- and unbelievably -- said that the claims made by the Romney campaign were “mostly false.”

Politifact’s report left many scratching their heads, and one such person was Lanhee Chen, Romney’s Policy Director, who fired off an e-mail that eviscerated Politifact’s analysis point by point.

“Putting aside the obvious problems with rating an accurate statement mostly false, your analysis in this instance was so inadequate that the piece ended up being little more than Obama for America spin,” Chen wrote.

Chen then noted that Politifact had an “embarrassing bias and lack of journalistic standards” but “far more troubling were the selection of your two experts” and rightfully called Politifact out on its blatant biases.

Chen was referring to Gary Burtlett and Betsey Stevenson, the two experts Politifact cited in its takedown of Romney.

As Chen noted, “Gary Burtless has already donated twice to President Obama’s campaign this cycle” and, “much more inexplicably, Bestey (sic) Stevenson, who you identify simply as ‘a business and public policy professor at Princeton University,‘ was until recently the chief economist for Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis.”

When Republicans come up with valid, factual points that threaten to undermine liberal talking points and memes, Politifact has too often gone out of its way, as it did in this case, to collude with the mainstream media to squash and proverbially kill those points in the cradle, before those arguments are able to get into the broader political bloodstream.

Conservatives need to confront and challenge Politifact as fiercely as Chen and the Romney campaign did to try and preempt future acts of dishonesty even, if it may be difficult.

By fabricating ratings when fact-checking Republicans, Politifact has shown that its own pants have been on fire quite often, and it may be more accurate to refer to them as a subsidiary of the Democratic National Committee and the Obama campaign.

[SamSpade]

There's usually two red flags about Politifact (and FactCheck, another self-proclaimed neutral organization) that make me doubt their fairness.

One is obvious - any search of the different political figures always shows a spectrum leaning towards falsehood for EVERY REPUBLICAN and a spectrum leaning towards truthfullness for EVERY DEMOCRAT. Just look at the breakdown for the statements as a sideways bell curve - Republicans always have a mean in the lie category, and Democrats, the opposite. The only way this can be "fair" is if a Republican just tends to lie more often - no matter who they are, heck, even if they just became a Republican. Seriously, I don't care what you think of their politics, you just can't rate a thousand or more statements by dozens of figures and always show one side is lying. Even when I'm dishonest, I don't lie that much.

But the other is much more subtle and it takes a bit of reading. See, I read it even if I think it's crap, but what I find is they're decidedly biased in terms of just HOW MUCH of a lie something is. And they tend to slam Republicans more often for being off by a decimal place but are gracious to Democrats for more egregious mistakes.

So I don't go to them for "facts" - I go to find their sources and read for myself. They are certainly not unbiased - or fair.

Originally Posted by SamSpade

So I don't go to them for "facts" - I go to find their sources and read for myself. They are certainly not unbiased - or fair.

like Politico ...... the longer they operate, the more obvious their stripes become





but of course the left holds them up as Gospel ..........