{"id":28398,"date":"2012-01-20T16:04:46","date_gmt":"2012-01-20T20:04:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=28398"},"modified":"2012-01-20T16:04:46","modified_gmt":"2012-01-20T20:04:46","slug":"politifact-busted-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=28398","title":{"rendered":"PolitiFact busted, again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Politifact, the nominally non-partisan “fact checker” which takes a statement by a politician, surveys a group of “experts” of their own choosing and then coughs up a “truth-o-meter” score, has landed in hot water, again. Previously it was when the liberal media establishment got all asshurt<\/a> over Politifact calling the claim that Republicans were trying to end Medicare the “Lie of the Year”, much to the amusement<\/a> of columnists like Mark Hemingway over at The Weekly Standard. Hemingway had previously worked to expose so called “fact checking” organizations as being fundamentally misrepresentative highlighting, among other things, the absurdity of using AP reports as the arbiter of proper military analysis after Politifact went after Romney on a Iran statement.<\/p>\n

This time around it again concerns our military.
\n
\nPolitiFact put Romney in its cross hairs over the (100% true) statement that the Navy is smaller than anytime since 1917 and the (100% true) statement that the Air Force is smaller, and its platforms older, than anytime since 1947. They submitted this to Tom Bruscino, the assistant professor of history at the U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies with a request to double check the numbers and a plea to find any context these statements might ignore. Bruscino confirmed, to the best of his abilities, the accuracy of the numbers and made a fairly nuanced assertion that, in context, the figures seem more damning than they are but are not without validity in describing those services readiness.<\/p>\n

PolitiFact determined that Romney’s statements leave his “Pants are on Fire.”<\/a> Politico’s Charles Hoskinson called the verdict an epic fail on his Morning Defense feed<\/a>:<\/p>\n

FACT-CHECKING THE FACT-CHECKERS – PolitiFact is digging in after receiving criticism for a post awarding GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney a \u201cPants on Fire\u201d rating for saying that the United States is at risk of losing its military superiority because, among other things \u201cour Navy is smaller than it\u2019s been since 1917.\u201d PolitiFact noted, \u201cThis is a great example of a politician using more or less accurate statistics to make a meaningless claim.\u201d Among those who criticized the ruling was Tom Bruscino, one of the experts consulted by PolitiFact, but the fact-checking website tells POLITICO\u2019s media blogger Dylan Byers it stands by its ruling.<\/p>\n

EPIC FAIL – It\u2019s PolitiFact that deserves the \u201cPants on Fire\u201d for incomplete reporting, because Romney was just repeating a point Navy leaders themselves have made numerous times over the past year. Here\u2019s Mabus, speaking last April at the Navy League\u2019s annual meeting: \u201cOne of our main areas of focus has to be the size of our fleet. The CNO has repeatedly said, and I repeatedly have strongly supported him, that the minimal number of ships we should have is 313. We have 288 today in the battle fleet: the lowest number since 1916, which \u2013 during that time, the intervening years, our responsibilities have grown somewhat. But if Congress funds the shipbuilding program that we have laid out, we will reach a fleet of 325 ships in the early 2020s.\u201d<\/p>\n

WE ARE WELL-AWARE that there are many experts who believe the Navy can accomplish its mission with the current number of ships, or fewer, because today\u2019s ships are more capable than those of the past. But the important point here is whether it\u2019s fair to call a presidential candidate a liar for using the same argument for a bigger fleet that the Navy itself is using. Romney\u2019s point falls flat as a political attack because he\u2019s suggesting the administration should do what it already had planned to do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And people wonder how politicians like Newt Gingrich can breath life into a faltering Presidential campaign simply by going after the media establishment in front of a right of center audience…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Politifact, the nominally non-partisan “fact checker” which takes a statement by a politician, surveys a group … PolitiFact busted, again<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":619,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186,187,189,6,119,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2012-election","category-air-force","category-defense-cuts","category-media","category-navy","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/619"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28398\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}