Speaking of analysis by Politifact, read the latest stunt regarding the SOTU speech as reported by Krugman or Jared Bernstein. Shameless behavior with no possible justification. Sorry but Politifact stinks.

I found the corrected Politifact column on this subject here (in which Politifact offers a link to its original column), Paul Krugman's commentary here, and Jared Bernstein's commentary here--none of which I'd seen until you mentioned them.

Ouch. Yeah, I agree that neither Politifact's original "Half True" ruling nor their corrected "Mostly True" ruling suffices.

Readers look to Politifact to perform a very narrow task, namely to confirm or deny with verifiable information the veracity of political figures' specific utterances--without regard to the larger issues to which those utterances relate, without regard to what those political figures may or may not have hoped their listeners might infer.

In this instance of their SOTU ruling, Politifact need not have collected those data on job losses in government to weigh the truth of Obama's assertion on job growth in the private sector. But they did collect that info, then didn't seem to know what to do with it!

However, I'm not sure I agree with Krugman that Politifact's thrust generally is "that a fact isn’t a fact if it helps a Democratic narrative."

Really, Politifact Tennessee's earlier analysis of Marsha Blackburn's assertion (the lightbulb thingy) kinda sought to examine the implication of what she said rather than the content of what she said, too.

To the extent that their rulings miss the mark once in a while, then, I haven't really detected any discrimination relating to political party. I think it's just the occasional incident in which they collect more info than necessary to make their determination, then become sidetracked as to what to do with all those facts!

I've noted just the Blackburn ruling of this sort so far among these first seven Politifact Tennessee rulings we've gotten.

I said: "In this instance of their SOTU ruling, Politifact need not have collected those data on job losses in government to weigh the truth of Obama's assertion on job growth in the private sector. But they did collect that info, then didn't seem to know what to do with it!"

No, on re-reading the piece, I see that they offered this government jobs info, then immediately suggested we disregard it!

Possibly that's where the authors confused themselves, too???

In any event, I think they read too much into both Obama's and Blackburn's recent remarks, which I agree they should avoid doing.

Thanks for the links, Tamara. It's this Krugman piece that really shows Politifact is untrustworthy. They poisoned their own brand, and I agree it probably happened because they fell into the common media trap of trying to over position themselves as fair and balanced. They just can't abide by an uneven score. Climate scientists side with Al Gore, so you know something's afoul. And did you hear of all that rcord snow in part of Alaska?! Besides, Rush's 15 billion listeners can't all be wrong. They report, you decide. And that's how Fair and Balanced prevails.

I don't take much at face value, but Politifact seems to be wobbling into consistently questionable territory...As in: Not to be trusted!

(link...)

Sigh. Point taken, Steve.

Do you guys maybe read PolitiFact more often than I do???