PolitiFarce
Oh, it sounds so good, doesn’t it? PolitiFact will fact check politicians to see what is true and not. But, as we’ve been pointing out here and there, PolitiFact can be used as another vehicle to slant political news coverage, albeit under the guise of “fair and balanced” fact checking. Justin has already explained how…
I wonder if anybody at the Providence Journal — particularly on the PolitiFact crew — is concerned that, every few days, Cynthia Needham whacks a big chunk of their organization’s credibility off the table in the service of David Cicilline’s Congressional campaign. Last week, she gave David Cicilline a “mostly true” rating for his claim…
Perhaps the most helpful aspect of the Providence Journal’s PolitiFact feature is the significant degree to which it illustrates how even basic discussions of facts become deeply muddled in subjective context. As I’ve previously pointed out, when Democrat David Cicilline makes a statement about Republican John Loughlin’s position on Social Security that is substantively a…
Lincoln Chafee’s time as Warwick mayor ended before I’d taken much of an interest in Rhode Island politics, so I’d never had occasion to learn about his much touted resolution of a teacher dispute and strike in the city. The details in a recent PolitiFact article suggest that he might be more than comfortable with…
In contrast to the PolitiFact about which I complained, yesterday, this one by Eugene Emery was actually informative. The statement under scrutiny was from Republican candidate for governor John Robitaille, that “Rhode Island has a very generous unemployment compensation rate compared to most other states”: By the latest measurement, during the first quarter of 2010…
Frankly, if the folks behind the Providence Journal’s PolitiFact feature wish not to lose entirely the salable premise thereof — its neutrality — mere months from its introduction, they should ban Cynthia Needham from touching the Truth-O-Meter. Monique made mention of Needham’s take-down of Republican Congressional candidate John Loughlin, last week, but the matter deserves…
The “Truth”-O-Meter in today’s Providence Journal rates Congressional candidate John Loughlin’s comparison of social security to a Ponzi scheme as “False”. Let’s take a look, shall we? Here’s the definition of a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by…
As difficult as it may be for me to come to the defense of Patrick Lynch, I have to point out that the PolitiFact folks are doing exactly what they accuse Lynch of doing, here: Our Truth-O-Meter can’t predict the future, so we don’t know if the jobs estimates being projected by either Lynch or…
The Providence Journal’s still-new PolitiFact feature, with the market-hook Truth-o-Meter has generally been worth a perusal and sometimes a thorough read, although I’ve thought the journalists behind it could shoot for bigger targets much of the time. For today’s review of a statement by state rep. and congressional candidate John Loughlin (R., Tiverton), though, they…
In the course of checking a claim by Congressman Jim Langevin, C. Eugene Emery, Jr., offers this explanation of the calculation behind the “multiplier effect” allowing Democrats to claim, as Langevin did, “for every $1 we spend on unemploymen t benefits, $1.90 is put into our economy”: When you give $1 to people who have…