538 has an interesting piece on Polifact’s ratings of the truth of statements by Republican candidates for President. The net of it is that almost every time Michele Bachmann opens her mouth, she’s lying. I’ll go out on a limb and argue that Santorum would be just as bad if he ever got a chance to speak, but his sample size is pretty small, as is Huntsman’s.
According to Polifact, at least 71% of what Obama says is at least half right, versus 51% for Perry and 64% for Romney.
Another message of this chart is that a big part of Ron Paul’s appeal is that he doesn’t tell a lot of lies. He comes by his crazy ideas honestly.
Brien Jackson
I think I’m more frightened by the possibility that they aren’t lying, honestly.
Omnes Omnibus
@Brien Jackson: If that is the case, would you go with stupid or deranged as the explanation for the divergence from fact?
Wag
Colbert was right. Facts do have a well known liberal bias.
Linda Featheringill
Unfortunately, I think that Bachmann isn’t lying all that much. I think she is accurately expressing her reality, which is different from yours and mine. And yes, that’s scary.
The lady got rickrolled by Perry. She just cannot seem to be aggressive in his actual presence. I don’t know if she is intimidated or turned on by all of his macho shit. Or both.
Cain? Sometimes it feels like he is misinformed rather than actually lying. Is that better?
mark
Ron Paul pulled a huge pants on fire last week wrt people cheering the death of the hypothetical uninsured at the debates.
SiubhanDuinne
Even though Palin isn’t a declared candidate (likely won’t be) and her star has dimmed nearly to black-hole status, I’d still enjoy seeing her evaluated in the same way. My guess is that she’d make Bachmann look like Honest Abe.
Linda Featheringill
Grammar note: Apparently I don’t have my contractions back yet after a week of work where they aren’t allowed. Oh well.
Linda Featheringill
@SiubhanDuinne:
I agree. Palin out-and-out lies. Whatever it takes to fit the occasion.
WereBear
Facts just get in the way of sweet sweet fantasy.
Brien Jackson
@Omnes Omnibus:
Sociopathic.
Scott
Here’s Palin’s Politifact scorecard.
Looks like she still lies a lot more often than she tells the truth, but Bachmann is still out-lying her…
Walker
The problem is, given Politifact’s reputation, I don’t trust their categorization of false vs. true vs. pants on fire. Remember how Poltifact characterized the claim that Ryan’s plan will end Medicare as “pants on fire?” All because it replaced it with something else called Medicare.
Politfact is not an organization to be trusted.
Omnes Omnibus
@Brien Jackson: That would explain it.
N.B. I originally typed “explain” as “expalin” which I think works in this instance.
mistermix
@Walker: I agree that they are not always right, but they’re one of the few journalistic organizations who even bother, and since we’re judging everyone by the same measure, it’s worth a look.
SiubhanDuinne
@Scott: Thanks.
4jkb4ia
Look at Perry. He has far and away the most untrue statements and the most flagrantly untrue statements. That is why Team Romney doesn’t have to attack him from the left, or the right, but can just say, “You can’t trust him to be president”. It would be interesting if Team Romney uses the word lie at any point given this data.
(Why am I looking at the front page this early in the morning?)
dr. bloor
So Cain is the guy who couldn’t even hit the minimum for getting his name right on the SATs, eh?
Southern Beale
This just tells me that the biggest liars are the front-runners, and those are the people most likely to talk more. I’m sure if Herman Cain got asked more questions and was interviewed more often he’d be up in the front along with Perry and Romney.
Amir Khalid
For a Presidential candidate, I reckon, misinformed is no better than lying. Either way, what you’re saying to the public is wrong.
BruceFromOhio
How can you tell a Republican candidate for president is lying? That his or her lips are moving is a clear indicator.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid: Why each one is wrong goes to their character and motivation though. I think it is helpful to figure out what each one is actually doing.
Veneficus
I love all the comments on the post by butthurt wingnuts accusing Politifact of being an evil liberal socialist conspiracy. I think their tinfoil hats might be on a little too tight.
Libby
I’d say another takeaway here is that Perry’s current problems stem from the fact he is obviously talking way too much.
Frankensteinbeck
@Walker: and @mistermix:
I guess you have a point. Even an inaccurate test can yield useful results as a statistical measure. But Politifact IS warped. They seem to revel in dumbass contrarian gotchas. It’s ‘true’ to describe the ACA as ‘job killing’ because 39,000 bureaucratic positions will be removed as Medicare is reshuffled! Not a friggin’ word about effects to the economy (the actual intended and universally understood meaning of ‘job killing’), or even bureaucratic jobs that might be added. Oh, and torture hasn’t been ended because, you know, sure it stopped completely, but hey Obama could restart it if he feels like it.
And mind you, their leadership trumpeted exactly those answers in an interview to show how awesome they are in catching Obama on his failures.
jrg
I don’t know why you’d give someone who spews completely transparent BS like “Gardasil will make your teenage daughter retarded”, or “Obama is going to send your child to a death panel” the benefit of the doubt. No one… No one is that fucking stupid.
Frankensteinbeck
@jrg:
Have you ever met a hardcore narcissist? Or a conspiracy theorist? Yes, people are that fucking stupid. There’s a decent percentage of people who will make up any fact that is convenient for them and BELIEVE it. Hell, that’s how cognitive dissonance actually works, rather than the way it’s usually described on the internet.
handsmile
Offering the ideological flip-side to the observations above of Walker (#12) and Frankensteinbeck (#2), a number of readers’ comments on the 538 article itself decry the leftwing bias and partisan agenda of Politifact (“should be called Socialist Fact Checking” fulminates one) and the St. Petersburg Times, its newspaper sponsor.
Quite a bit is made as well as to the report’s “sampling bias”: the admission by Politifact’s editor that they evaluate only those “statements that we think readers will be curious about.”
Politifact did win a Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for news coverage, and that particular category is reliably first-rate in its awardees.
Are there BJ readers/commenters who can offer more information about the St. Petersburg Times (is it really one of the “most liberal newspapers”?) or other examples, pro or con, of Politifact’s credibility?
suzanne
The husband of one of my friends tried to convert me to The Church of Paul this week, saying, “Dr. Paul is the most consistent member of Congress!” I responded that consistency isn’t a virtue if one is consistently wrong.
The Pale Scot
@Walker:
“Politfact is not an organization to be trusted.”
DITTO;
they have comprehension problems or willfully misunderstood Jon Stewart’s comment that Fox viewers misinformed as meaning they were uninformed. Stewart directly said misinformed and explained it.
Can’t take them seriously if you’re a realist/materialist
MattF
Amusing to note that Gingrich has a perfectly uniform distribution. He opens his mouth, and then… we’re back watching the Mickey Mouse Club and it’s ‘Anything Can Happen’ day.
The Pale Scot
Jon Stewart Gets It Right About Fox News
Just came across this at C&L it must be Kismet
azlib
Telling the truth is no longer a virtue and has not been for a long time in politics. I will say, the level and creativity of the lying has reached astonishing levels.
Elie
I don’t think that these candidates lie anymore than current leadership of most American corporations. What counts as communication is telling some huge fib about how things are going, while everyone else can figure out that this is probably not true. The parallel is that many times the senior leadership actually believes their own lies. Look what American business has done to us, esp the banks and financial organizations. Still lying, still serving their own ends first and still giving the finger to the people. Is it a surprise that these dudes and dudettes would do any differently. That fucked up model has ruined our whole country both economically and socially. Lies are a feature, not a bug.
wrb
It shows why Perry leads.
Why isn’t Bachman in second place, though?
Hill Dweller
Politifact(as well as the AP and WaPo fact checkers) play the “both sides do it” game, albeit with more subtlety. They will completely deconstruct something a Dem and/or the President says in order to make it look like a lie/falsehood. That sort of false balance–which is ultimately about careerism and profit margins–is killing journalism.
Hill Dweller
@Kola Noscopy: How in the world does “at least 71% of what Obama says is at least half right” equal “a political leader half wrong most of the time”?
pete
@wrb: Perry lies for a purpose; Bachmann just says whatever she happens to think in the moment, and any relationship to accuracy is purely coincidental.
pete
@Hill Dweller: Ssshh.
Lojasmo
@Kola Noscopy:
English, motherfucker, read it. Specifically, the phrase “at least.”
wrb
@Hill Dweller:
For example
Jon Stewart Gets It Right About Fox News
June 22, 2011 4:07 pm ET — 78 Comments
Fox News has attacked Daily Show host Jon Stewart for claiming that Fox News viewers are “the most consistently misinformed viewers” of cable news. However, Stewart was correct — Fox News consistently misinforms its viewers, and its viewers are found among the most likely to hold misinformed beliefs about current events.
on Stewart Criticizes Fox News For Having “Consistently Misinformed” Viewers
Stewart: “Who Is The Most Consistently Misinformed Media Viewers? … Fox Viewers, Consistently, Every Poll.”
In a June 19 interview with Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, Daily Show host Jon Stewart asked: “Who is the most consistently misinformed media viewers? The most consistently misinformed? Fox. Fox viewers, consistently, every poll.” [Fox News, Fox News Sunday, 6/19/11 via Media Matters]
PolitiFact Dubiously Rates Stewart’s Remarks “False”
PolitiFact Rates Stewart’s Fox News Sunday Remarks “False.” In a June 20 PolitiFact.com post, Jon Stewart’s comments regarding Fox News viewers being “consistently misinformed” were given a rating of “false.” From PolitiFact.com:
Kola Noscopy
@Lojasmo:
So…is the remaining 39% of what he says completely wrong…motherfucker?
This is typical ridiculously vague MSM reporting.
Frankensteinbeck
@wrb:
Yeah. Their argument was that some polls show that some specific programs that are not on Fox have the absolute most misinformed viewers. It was blatant nitpicking that didn’t address what he actually said.
I don’t know if they do that to conservatives. I wouldn’t be in a position to notice it. But they love to pick technicalities that have very little to do with the actual point in order to deliver a contrary opinion against liberal points. It makes them… erratic.
Djur
The big issue with these ratings is definitely sampling bias. I’m sure Obama (or even many of the Republicans) make uncontroversial statements of fact on a daily basis. By the nature of the project, Politifact is more likely to analyze partly or entirely false statements (or true statements which are challenged by others).
It seems a better measure would be something like falsehoods per public statement versus true facts per public statement.
I was actually looking at Politifact the other day, and a lot of the ‘true’ stuff from Republicans consists of attacks on the other Republicans. I’d be interested to see the above data broken down into ‘Statements regarding Self’, ‘Statements regarding Other Republicans’, and ‘Statements regarding Democrats/Obama’. I think you’ll find a lot of blatantly false statements like “Obamar says it’s cool to kill preemies” and a lot of obviously true ones like “Rick Perry says Social Security is unconstitutional.”
Kobie
@Kola Noscopy: Math ain’t your strong suit, is it?