Politifact's 2011 Lie of the Year

I'm sure many of you know this already, but Politifact recently selected the claim that 'Republicans voted to end Medicare' as the biggest lie of 2011.

Now, granted, this statement is simply a bit of hyperbole that's missing a qualifier, but this error hardly merits the response that I've seen from some people in response to it:

I've heard a lot about the "Cult of Centrism", the overriding need for news outlets to appear objective, on this forum. But I don't think that a simple journalistic error means that Politifact has lost all credibility, especially not since it seems to be doing exactly what they want it to.

What do you think? has Politifact been completely drained of all its integrity by this decision?

edited 23rd Dec '11 8:22:09 PM by Wicked223

Meh. Exact Words. The Republicans really never did want to do that. They just wanted to privatize Medicare/Medicaid.

...

...which is one step away from abolishing it on the stupidity scale, but whatever.

I don't think it says anything about their integrity. I think it just means that they have no sense of scale. There are probably loads of better things they could have picked.

I would have nominated Scott Walker's claims that "I ran on an anti-union platform!" or whatever, sense that actually caused quite the ruckus.

From what I can tell, they didn't pick it based on the depth of the claim's falseness, but how widespread it was as a political talking point.

To be fair, while the republicans may WANT to destroy medicare as we know it. the vast majority of them know its about as politically feasible and palatable to a large section of Republican voters (read: older and elderly voters) as full legalization and support of Gay marriage.

Meh, one mistake doesn't ruin a site's credibility. So long as they own up to it and then move on. *shrug*

Honestly I think Politifact's mistake was in declaring a "lie of the year," as that puts them in the position of having to make an inherently subjective declaration of opinion— a dangerous thing for any organization that claims to be a beacon of facts in a world of lies and political manipulation..

The problem with an organization that dedicates itself to rooting out journalistic error and misinformation, is that said organization—being journalistic—is itself fully capable of making errors and printing misinformation.

Politifact is only slightly more trustworthy than your ISO standard news outlet, in my opinion.

Your standard news outlet is usually quite trustworthy, in that you can trust that what it's reporting isn't made up. Misinterpretations and errors do happen, but are usually caught in the fact-checking net. Politifact differs in that it makes an effort to fact check others, and while it has also made errors, it is a valuable resource because it does evaluate political claims on a factual basis, something few other sources do.

Their choice fits the standards they've applied in previous years. The response is just as widespread and just as stupid as I expected, but I'd like to think it doesn't represent liberalism, any more than the Tea Party represents conservatism.

(Yes, I just compared Paul Krugman to the Tea Party. After his comment, he deserves it.)

Edit: Perhaps I should make my response to this clearer. I might be talked into agreeing that Politifact should not have made this choice. Politifact, like the New York Times, uses a certain metric to determine what stories are important, and unlike the New York Times, it has outlined what that metric is. Its behavior is so far completely consistent with that metric, so crediting it with a centrist bias is as ridiculous as when people falsely credit the New York Times with a left-wing bias.

edited 23rd Dec '11 11:14:59 PM by feotakahari

Krugman responded to this?

Krugman appears to take issue with what I consider to be necessary marketing tools - things like the lie of the year and the truthometer. In an ideal world, maybe we would have nothing but articles explaining things and never tidy, flashy little sum-up graphical displays, but that's not what gets you traffic.

Looking over the articles themselves, one sticking point that I notice gets brought up a lot in the 'end Medicare = false' conclusion is the fact that current seniors would get exemptions so that any changes would only apply to current youth once they'd grown up. And that's just... sleazy, blatant pandering.

There are a lot of other reasons, of course, but by and large it mostly boils down to whether or not you consider increased privatization to be tantamount to ending a program entirely. (When a claim was simply labeled that and not 'ending' the program, it was rated mostly true.) I can see them judging 'ending' it to be false wholesale, but it's only false in the same way that all marketing is - it simplifies a concept so the audience isn't bothered with all the details. To label it ludicrous enough to be a lie of the year seems pretty centrism-biased to me, considering that we all know the GOP really would freaking do it if their voters would only let them get away with it. Lacking that, coming up with plans that make it suck as much as the rest of our privatized medical industry is the best they can do.

I found a good comparison on another website - If you choose to never purchase gasoline again, are you 'ending' your car? Technically your car still exists - in a completely worthless state.

edited 24th Dec '11 8:40:34 AM by Karkadinn

Let me see if I can find a good article on this. Here.

http://gawker.com/5869817/politifact-is-bad-for-you

The reality on this specific case, is quite simply, let's say you have a Ferrari. Someone takes that Ferrari, and crashes it, and buys you a Volvo, but they take the hood ornament and the nameplate off the Ferrari and put it on the Volvo. Do you have a Ferrari or a Volvo?

That's actually what this is about. Politifact is claiming that you actually have a Ferrari. They're saying that political framing is more important than actual policy means and ends. And this is an absurdly dangerous, and yes, centrist stance.

Edit: This is the original

From http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/12/04/the-year-of-lying-decadently/

edited 24th Dec '11 8:44:38 AM by Karmakin

I'm confused: Isn't this the same sort of thing that Republicans do, and get called out on most of the time?

Such as?

Saying that the closure of tax loopholes is tantamount to raising taxes, for one thing?

Well the big difference there is we're talking about policy means and goals and not branding. Removing loopholes IS raising taxes, but at the same time it's just restoring fairness to the system, so there's a level playing field. It depends on what your priorities are.

Neither side is lying per se, they just have different views on the same subject. It's the same thing as this debate (although I would argue that it is the privatizers are being substantially more shady here, to be honest)

Edit: To go a bit more in-depth on the policy aspects of the example, let's assume that you eliminate all loopholes, and lower the appropriate tax rates to be revenue neutral. (In this case, we're generally talking about corporate taxes, to be specific) On some companies, you are increasing their tax burden, if they were taking advantage of loopholes, and for other companies, you are lowering their tax burden, if they were unable to take advantage of said loopholes.

So are you raising or lowering taxes? You're kind of doing both.

edited 24th Dec '11 9:03:06 AM by Karmakin

All that and, this may sound odd, but most people I know have no objection to taxes being raised in a general sense. The kneejerk anti-taxation fury of the GOP is something I don't really see reflected in general society atm because taxes are so low, and most people understand that implicitly.

Why don't you folks just be honest and admit that if they'd made a Republican mistatement their lie of the year you'd be swearing by it?

Because not all of us would?

I suppose they picked a Democratic "lie" this year in order to appear balanced after two Republican lies.

I strangely agree that it should be the lie of the year. However, it should also be rated Half-True.

The reason it deserves to be lie of the year isn't by virtue of being "the worst lie" since it's barely even false. But rather, it's by the sheer penetration of the line.

Though honestly, Poltifact shouldn't rate lies like that-lie of the year shouldn't be a thing.

Why don't you folks just be honest and admit that if they'd made a Republican mistatement their lie of the year you'd be swearing by it?

Becasue this wasn't a mistatement.

More importantly, that's not an argument.

How we'd be reacting in different circumstances does not in any way address the arguments being made.

Tomu, see my post above. I actually think the people who want to continue to call a privatized system Medicare are actually lying more than this "lie" itself. (To be fair I wouldn't really call either claim even dishonest)

For what it's worth, my pick for the lie of the year is http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2011_04/028869.php just for the pure audacity of it.

It was a statement that 90% of what Planned Parenthood does is abortion. (The actual number is about 3%). An aide replied for the speaker, Jon Kyl, that it "Was not intended to be a factual statement".

There's your lie of the year right there.

edited 24th Dec '11 2:49:52 PM by Karmakin

I guess I can see why you call it an absurdly dangerous stance, but I'm not sure why it's necessarily a centrist stance. They call out the left when the left frames its arguments badly, and they call out the right when the right frames its arguments badly, but they'll call out either side more if either side more frequently frames its arguments badly. (And I personally don't consider it dangerous—it's not like they're saying we can't determine which policies are stupid. They're only delegating that task to others, while they themselves cover what statements are factually incorrect. It's a legitimate focus for any site that wants to avoid being purely centrist, while at the same time avoiding becoming a one-sided harangue.)

edited 24th Dec '11 3:12:51 PM by feotakahari