@willpayton said:
@saren:
I dont see how. If there's specific criticisms of the site and their methodology, lets see them. Vague criticisms about being "mocked and derided by all sides" are not meaningful, and only suggests that they're calling out all sides equally. Criticisms of specific fact checks are fine and all, but only meaningful if they show a systemic and widespread fault. That is to say, that when you check as much stuff as they do, some of it will obviously not be perfect.
From what I've seen, they've been accused of having both a liberal AND conservative bias. And, for all the criticism, there's also been plenty of praise. In 2009 they won a Pulitzer Price for their efforts. I have little doubt that if I wait around for Fox News to win a Pulitzer, I'll die of old age waiting.
Ok.....
The Wall Street Journal has 30 ---- count 'em, thirty --- Pulitzer Prizes, and they've described PolitiFact as slaves of power pretending to be seekers of truth. Paul Krugman has a Pulitzer Prize and a Nobel medal to boot, and he's taken issue with PolitiFact's claim of being unbiased, pointing out that they primarily stick to one side of the political spectrum and occasionally venture out to maintain the appearance of balance. Glenn Greenwald is one of the most highly decorated journalists in all of Western media, his work has won a Pulitzer as well, and he's written several articles describing how PolitiFact frequently just picks an opinion they agree with, find an expert to support it, and present that as objective neutral truth instead of an opinion. When Ron Paul criticized the Obama administration for altering the definition of "terrorist organization" in such a broad and unspecific way that American non-combatants could easily be classified as terrorist associates, PolitiFact quoted liberals and Obama supporters to describe his fears as "preposterous" and "nonsense" (this after Obama directed the Department of Justice to devise a legal way for him to kill Anwar al-Awlaki without a trial), even though the ACLU had raised an even bigger ruckus over the same issue and with the same criticism as Paul. Greenwald and Brad DeLong pointed out that PolitiFact just found two experts and passed their subjective opinion on a subjective matter off as objective truth, disregarding the fact that both experts were die-hard supporters of the War on Terror and that one of them, whom PolitiFact had claimed was a lawyer, had never been to law school in his life.
When Lawrence O'Donnell defended the GI Bill and said its opponents, historically, had opposed it as an expansion of the welfare state, PolitiFact categorized his claim as false and said that no politician had ever described the GI Bill in such a way.......this after PolitiFact themselves produced a statement from the Chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee condemning the GI bill as an expansion of the dole system. The dole system and the welfare state are literally exactly the same thing, one being what the British call it and the other being what the Americans call it, and PolitiFact presented evidence that Lawrence O'Donnell was telling the truth shortly before calling him a liar. This allegedly authoritative organization called someone a liar because its staff could not understand simple English; coincidentally, a few weeks prior PolitiFact had bragged about the fact that a large proportion of their staff were college students. It was such a ridiculous f**k up that Rachel Maddow, who's about as left as they come, went on the air and said PolitiFact should just shut down because of how terrible they are at their jobs.
PolitiFact's split of "Mostly False/Pants on Fire" categorizations goes 80% to Republican statements and 20% to Democrat statements --- and several people across the political spectrum have pointed out this is largely because they pick and choose what they want to analyze, disproportionately selecting the most dubious conservative statements to highlight. But even so, the majority of the most vociferous criticisms of PolitiFact have come from the left, indicating that there is, in fact, a pan-ideological consensus that PolitiFact is garbage. And the most enduring criticism has always been that there is a systemic and widespread problem with their methodology. A lot of the statements they analyze deal with subjective issues and are context -laden, meaning that most regular human beings accept that they are largely matters of opinion. PolitiFact brings in experts who take a stance based on their own values, and then analyze the issue from the benchmark of that stance and pretend to come out with an objective truth. That these experts and their stances predominantly tend to veer left has not escaped notice. Their falsehood categories are objective ways of trying to categorize subjective issues. It's a recipe for disaster right from the beginning.
They won the Pulitzer for covering the 2008 election. I'm not sure what that has to do with analyzing their counterparts in the media. Sure, you can call out all sides equally, but it doesn't mean anything if the quality of your call-outs is complete horse manure.
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