PolitiFact Bias

Hoystory: "Fact checking frauds"

Self-described "reformed journalist" Matthew Hoy's disgust with PolitiFact only occasionally bubbles over into blog posts at his blog, Hoystory, but this week we have a double helping.

Hoy starts out by pulling the rug out from under PolitiFact's "Pants on Fire" rating of Jeb Hensarling's claim that Congress leaves itself as the only ones not receiving subsidies on the "Obamacare" exchanges.

Hoy:

The point Hensarling was making, which is obvious to anyone with half a brain (which explains Politifraud’s problem), was not that no one was getting subisides, but that Congressional staffers, many of whom make north of $100,000 a year, would be the only ones at that income level who get subsidies from the federal government.

And Hoy continues by pointing out PolitiFact's failure to apply its own standards consistently in rating "False" an obvious use of hyperbole, this time when conservative bloggers mocked the Obama administration for closing the ocean as a result of the partial government shutdown:

In their effort to protect their lord and savior, Barack Obama, from himself, Politifarce conveniently disregarded two of  their own rules on what statements deserve their attention:

In deciding which statements to check, we ask ourselves these questions:

• Is the statement rooted in a fact that is verifiable? We don’t check opinions, and we recognize that in the world of speechmaking and political rhetoric, there is license for hyperbole.
  
• Would a typical person hear or read the statement and wonder: Is that true?

Visit Hoy's Hoystory blog for the whole takedown, and let this serve as a reminder that PolitiFact's problems are legion. We don't have the hours in the day to expose them all, so we're grateful to people like Hoy who take the time to expose PolitiFact's errors and distortions.