Politifact is biased

1. By Washington Post Standards, PolitiFact is biasedThe Washington Post is one of America's most reputable and prestigious newspapers. The Post's Fact Checker finds the amount of lies told by the two Parties to be about equal, while PolitiFact finds Republicans more than twice as likely to lie. For just major lies, Fact Checker finds Democrats to dish up whoppers slightly more than Republicans, while PolitiFact finds a preposterous nine times as big ones told by Republicans as Democrats. The Tampa Bay Times that runs Politifact is a minor far left publication that has never found a Florida Republican worth endorsing. Con has contested none of these basic facts, and that's all that's necessary to prove that PolitiFact is biased.Con's argument is that. unknown to virtually anyone but Con, the Post is really an ultra-conservative paper biased heavily in favor of Republicans. This would be a great surprise to, among others, the Washington Examiner, the Post's conservative news competitor. Con offered no studies or expert opinion or even inexpert opinion to support his argument. I provided both an objective peer-reviewed academic study and numerous expert opinions supporting the Post being left-of-center in it's politics. The Post is certainly not as far left as the Tampa Bay Times, but nonetheless to the left.Con made several arguments that attempt to somehow relate to the sample of 820 PolitiFact determinations being larger than the 267 by Fact Checker. First Con seemed to be arguing that a larger number was more likely to be unbiased on the grounds that larger organizations producing more output are more to be trusted. The massive and biased Chinese news organization People's Daily shows that to be untrue. Con then supposed the Post checks fewer facts because they are exercising selection bias in what they check, so they pick cases where Republicans look good. Con's claim is unsupported. Fact Checker has to consider all the main issues or their readers would lose interest and the major omission would be conspicuous. With 535 politicians in Congress alone, and most of them voluminous talkers, there are tens of thousands of opportunities to check statements. All the fact checkers have to cover the big issues, so if there is selection bias it is more likely with PolitiFact. Con's [R2-3], the Politifact web site, gives their staff as six. Con says Fact Checker has a staff of two. Con's [R2-7] also gives the PolitiFact staff as six and the Fact Checker staff as two. So six people at Politifact checked 820 items, 137 per staff member. Fact Checker did 290 items with two people, 145 per staff member. However, the Washington Post has a much larger staff of field reporters to call upon for support, a fact not denied. There's no reason to believe PolitiFact more accurate.In the last round, Con said PolitiFact had a staff of 100, which is wrong. Con previously claimed that Fact Checker considered more trivial issues than Politifact, but he could produce no evidence beyond his "quick glance" and dropped the point.2. The Washington Post is left-of-centerThe UCLA study established that the Washington Post is a moderately-left publication. Con claims that the UCLA study used circular reasoning, but they did not. Their starting point in determining what is liberal and what is conservative was the Americans for Democratic Acton, a self-described liberal organization, who rates lawmakers based upon voting records. The study followed directly from that. The study found 18 of 20 media outlets biased left of center, with the Post among the group of liberal publications nearer the center. Note that the UCLA study passed peer-review for publication, which it could not have done were it circular.Expert opinion claiming the Post to be left-of-center includes Deborah Howell, a Post ombudsman who said she voted for Obama twice and knew the Post staff was mostly liberal. Con argues that Howell must really be conservative because she erroneously claimed Jack Abramoff donated to Democrats when in fact Abramoff had only directed (about a third) of his client contributions to Democrats. She admitted the error in saying Abramoff donated directly. The Abramoff matter is minor in the overall scheme of things, and it is an impossible for a conservative to have voted for Obama twice. Con argues Howell might have voted for Bush. Sure, and she might be keeping slaves in the basement too, but it's unsupported speculation. No conservative is going to claim they voted for Obama.I pointed to an article that quotes a dozen well-place media liberals admitting that the press has a liberal bias. Con fallaciously argues that the quotes should not count because they appear in a publication with a conservative bias. However, because each quotation includes the reference to where the person made the statement, it makes no difference who collected the quotes. The quotes are referenced and accurate. In this debate, should all of Con's references be discounted because biased-Con assembled the list? No, the references stand on their own.Con cites no study and gives no examples, other than the one concerning Howell, that Fact Checker has a conservative bias. 3. Examples1. PolitiFact argued that Rand Paul's claim of that Federal workers "make" $120,000 was a lie because the $120,000 is total compensation and not just salary. Let's try that out. Warren Buffett's salary is $100,000. His total compensation is $63 million. [http://online.wsj.com...] It is misleading to interpret "make" as "salary" rather than total earnings. If PolitiFact wanted to explain the difference between "salary" and "total earnings" it would be fine for them to do so, but to claim that Paul lied by using the more accurate figure of total compensation is clear bias.Politifact said Paul included payments to current retirees, and that error made Paul's figures "several thousand dollars" too high. But Paul had claimed $120,000 rather than the $123,000 his source provided. There was no significant error.PolitiFact used an incorrect and misleading interpretation of "make" to make Rand Paul a liar.2. The Republican claimed a Democrat voted with her Party 98% of the time, which was the absolute truth. PolitiFact said that was misleading because 80% of the time both Parties voted alike. The fact was accurately stated so it was unquestionably true. However, PolitiFact's "correction" was clearly misleading. Readers were supposed to believe that if the 80% was not counted, then the Democrat would be seen as non-partisan. If PolitiFact wanted to be fair, they would have stated that the Democrat was 90% partisan according to their way of figuring it. That's a trivial difference which they chose to conceal.3. We should assign the common dictionary definition to words that are otherwise undefined. Politifact didn't do that. They decided to use the definition of "official state apology" as the meaning of "apology," because only then could they condemn "apology tour" as a lie. However, "official state apology" (or the corresponding definition) doesn't appear in any ordinary dictionary. They did not cite anyone who used "apology tour" as using the meaning they assigned. They used semantics to get the result they wanted. Using the obscure definition admits that the ordinary definition was met, because semantic dodges are only used when common usage leads to a loss.4. A fact checker is supposed to sort out misleading statements for the benefit of readers. The important fact of Obamacare is that it was set up with taxes starting before benefits to make the economics of the first ten years look better than the true operating costs. PolitiFact worked to obscure that important fact rather than reveal it.Since the first year of Obamacare has virtually no costs, whether it is included or not makes no difference.-----Comparison to a less-biased fact checker shows PolitiFact is biased.