the Politifact X files!

Because I have this kind of time, and because I like facts vs fiction or unfounded   statements of  opinion, I decided to review the entire fact checking history of my favorite conservative political fact checker – Politifact.

What I found was not surprising in absolute result, but the magnitude of the data skew was surprising.  One might expect a self proclaimed conservative fact checking service which has a stated goal of “keeping  track” of the veracity of the Obama administration, as well as general politics, to be perhaps a bit right leaning. I use this service because that is so not the case.

Since 2007 until last week, Politifact has rated (by my count) 245 statements as “Pants on Fire,” which means bald faced lies, as in the children’s chant of “liar, liar, pants on fire”. Far more (thousands) have been  rated “false”, “mostly false”, “mostly true”, and “true.”  A  rating of   “Pants on Fire”  generally is awarded to those statements which are blatant lies, which the  originator knew  was a lie, but told it anyway.

The queen of this category, hands down,  is Michelle Bachmann, with Mitt Romney a relatively close third. Between them is the “unattributed or substantiated e-mail” category. Ms. Bachmann has had an even 60 statements rated  by Politifact. Of these, 5 were “true” and of these three were slurs against Newt Gingrich of her own party! A whopping 37 were rated “false” [21] or “pants on fire” [16].  Now there’s a record to be proud of .

To recap: In total, Politifact over the period of its existence has rated 245 statements as “Pants on Fire.” 26 of these were attributed to Democrats or “liberal” sources. 2 were of a nature that was relatively apolitical, and a walloping 217 to Republicans or Conservative sources. If I were a data analyst, I might draw the conclusion that Republicans were more than 8 times as likely to intentionally lie to further their political interests!    Obviously, this is a small sampling, but the fact that it has been produced by an admittedly conservative news service is striking.

So, my friends, Conservatives and  Liberals alike, before you click  “send or “forward” on that e-mail rant you received from your fanatic friend, check it out. In the words of Mulder and Scully “The truth is out there.”  If the statement is from a Tea Bagger, there’s a good chance it’s a lie.