Politifact is biased

C1) Large sample size and comprehensive coverageA larger sample size creates a wider selection of topics and facts as opposed to selectively choosing facts where Republicans have told the truth. Pro's coin example is not analogous. A good analogy would be a situation where 1000 coins are flipped and lie on the ground. Checking 820 of those coins and concluding that there are 9 times more heads than tails is far more accurate than checking 267 of those coins and finding out that there are an equal number of heads and tails. Pro makes an unwarranted claim that Dobbs put as much effort into checking facts as Politifact did. Dobbs spread himself very thin by checking 267 facts just by himself and his assistant. Compare that to Politifact using a staff of 100 members to check 820 facts. We can see that not only did the Politifact staff have more time per fact, they also were able to check facts in their area of expertise as opposed to Dobbs who had to be a Jack of all trades. Furthermore Pro conflates the experience of other Post journalists that Dobbs took assistance from with regular staff at politifact. An occasional favor doesn't compare to a full-time staff member.I have never argued that a large staff size makes an organization unbiased. I argued that it makes them more competent. I've used this competency of Politifact compared to the lack of it at WP to explain the differences between WP and politifact. WP is a small organization which does not have the human resources necessary to accurately check facts. C2) The Washington Post isn't unbiased or LiberalDeborah Howell has a conservative bias. A vote for Obama by itself doesn't make someone a liberal as they could have previously voted for Bush. To show bias, a comprehensive evaluation must be made. In the wikipedia page that Pro cited, there is a list of 14 politicians who have received direct contributions from Abramoff and every one of them is a Republican. Harry Reid had no direct involvement with Abramoff. What Pro is referring to was that Reid received money from Native American tribes represented by Abramoff's firm which is a stretch at best. Compare this to Howell saying that Abramoff "had made substantial campaign contributions to both major parties," and FEC reports that show that there is no evidence that Jack Abramoff ever gave any democrat any money shows that she is biased in favor of Republicans. Her cover-up of this incident by the Washington Post management shows that bias extends to the Washington Post as well. Pro claims that liberals “admit” to there being liberal bias but his source is that of a conservative website known as “Media Research Center, The Leader in Documenting, Exposing and Neutralizing Liberal Media Bias.” It cites a bunch of journalists claiming that there is liberal bias. Nowhere does it say that the journalists themselves are liberals, so Pro's point is a leap from “some journalists claim that the media is biased” to saying that “liberals acknowledge there is a liberal bias.” The site itself is biased considering its goal is to find “liberal media bias” not any media bias. Compare that to my evidence from Consortium News which provides independent, investigative journalism and shown that the WP is conservatively biased by blaming the recession on Obama while facts show that the recession started in the Bush administration. Pro claims that it is reasonable since it has been 4 years since Obama held office. Yet, the reports dates back to March 2009 negating Pro's point and showing clear evidence of bias.We can see that when Pro's claim of a “liberal media bias” is countered, the UCLA study holds no water. The reason is that the UCLA study claims that 18 of 20 media outlets primarily cite the same sources as liberal congress people. However, all this shows is that liberal congress people cite the same sources as news outlets in general. The UCLA study uses circular reasoning. The sources cited by liberals being in line with 90% of news outlets make the liberal congress people more likely to cite journalistic quality sources as opposed to making the news outlets liberal. Their demarcation between what is liberal and conservative is off since as an 18-20 split which shows that the WP falling on the liberal side has little merit. C3) Examples1) Rand Paul: First, listening to Paul, one would be led to believe that the average federal employee earns an annual salary of $120,000. The average annual salary is $81,000. Paul's figure includes the benefits, health insurance, and even pensions to factor into it. Whether or not, the benefits and pensions are factored in depends on the wording and context of the claim. Paul says “I would freeze federal hiring. I would maybe reduce federal employees by 10 percent. I’d probably reduce their wages by 10 percent. The average federal employee makes $120,000 a year.” From this statement, it is clear that the audience would assume that the $120,000 are wages. Paul did not mention that he included benefits. IRS data separates the wages from benefits as they are two distinct things.Secondly, as shown by fact-check, the $123,000 is the number which Rand Paul got not from the BEA but from a libertarian think tank called CATO whose mission is to "to increase the understanding of public policies based on the principles of limited government.” They have a bias towards making it seem like the Federal workers are earning more [22].2) Rob Cornilles: Cornilles had not just mentioned the 98% as a statistic; he used it to support a claim of partisanship while omitting important information to mislead the voters. Pro claims that Bonamici voted with democrats on 90% of the votes that matters. This is not the claim made by Cornilles. He used an inflated number of 98%. The 98% would have been accurate at determining partisanship had Cornilles also mentioned the number of times Bonamici voted with the Republicans. Hence the half-true rating. Politifact were not fact-checking my opponent, they were checking Rob Cornilles. 3) Apology tour: Terms like “apology” need to be appropriately defined in order to be fact-checked. How would Politifact define it? There are hundreds of dictionaries and many levels and interpretations of the word in the common language. As a fact-checking service, Politifact chose the definition “a formal state apology” considering that the person accused of giving the apology is the president. They then proceeded to check whether Obama's statements match this claim. Pro has not given a single example of an apology from Obama even when asked so he concedes this point. His entire argument is based on an assumption that Obama had given “informal” apologies and a further assumption that the GOP had claimed that Obama had given an “informal” apology neither of which are true. 4) Affordable Care Act: First, the ACA doesn't actually cost $1750 billion. It costs $1250 billion net. The remaining money comes back through penalties, receipts, and other budgetary effects. Pro tries to discount them by saying that they are done merely “on paper” and “by the Obama administration.” I refuted both of these points by showing that these came straight out of the CBO projections. With that point negated, Pro has no ground to stand on considering the gross cost instead of net cost. Second, Pro's numbers are based off of comparing a 10 year period to an 11 year period. As I have explained, over a uniform 8 year period (the only period common to both analysis), the net costs actually declined by 0.64%. Pro says taxes are collected upfront and benefits paid out later should be mentioned. It has nothing to do with the truth of the ad which made no such claims.Sources[22] http://en.wikipedia.org...