Rush, Tucker, Hannity, Maddow, Matthews, et all ALL try to present themselves on air as delivering the "honest news" to their audience. They do "pretend:" to be journalist - until called on having to be honest then fall back on the "I'm not a journalist", Hannity has especially jumped the shark. Fox and MSNBC have also gotten heavily into the role of censor - for example the next time a Mueller indictment comes down (and there will be more), check out the reporting on Fox - often times non existent - and I can pull multiple/endless examples from both Fox and MSNBC, and many others. What his sad is when someone says, "I get my news from Rush, Hannity, Maddow, etc. They tell me what is real" - I immediately know I'm dealing with a dolt.

Of course the biggest damage is by folks like Nunes, Hannity, et all - on both sides who, as Ted Koppel pointed out, are determined that ideology is more important than facts. They are simply bad for the country and our republic.

I get your angst with Stewart - Most right leaning voters tend to not like Stewart - but he was honest.

So a literally true statement is now only half true? I think your logic is very tortured. One could make the argument that Democratic Party money is outside money, just as RNC money would be outside money to a Republican candidate. Any money not directly raised by the candidate is technically outside money. Now, there is some outside money that would be more outside than other outside money. Money from George Soros or the "Evil Koch Brothers" would be "more outside," I would say. Sherrod Brown was free to make that kind of a statement, and I suppose he probably did. But, that doesn't make Mandel's statement only "half true."

Ummm... Yes, one could "make the argument that Democratic Party money is outside money" but you'd have to completely ignore that the Mandel campaign was responding to a claim that the Brown campaign made using a completely different definition of the term. Mandel's spokesperson knew they were spinning the truth, that much is obvious. And that's fine, that's what campaigns do. But Politifact provided context to the disagreement, because that's what their mission is. I don't understand how you could see their rating of "half true" and say that it is deliberately being unfair to the Mandel campaign. They use the same methodology for statements from both sides. There are multiple instances where Obama said something that was technically true but they rated it "half true" because they felt that he was leaving out context.

Like I said, I feel like you're being willfully obtuse here.

I’m too out of touch with pop culture to even know what rpbobcat is taking about, but I assume he’s made a telling point.

Here’s an insightful analysis from another willfully ignorant writer from an evil organization:


http://thefederalist.com/2016/12/16/running-data-politifa... /

The Webb vs Paul case is illustrative of the bias. They initially ruled Webb’s statement as “mostly true” then when the inconsistency with their earlier ruling on Paul was pointed out, they switched their ruling. Here’s their own statement on the matter:

“Correction (Dec. 20, 2016): This fact-check initially published on Aug. 24, 2015, and was rated Mostly True. Upon reconsideration, we are changing our ruling to Half True. The text of the fact-check is unchanged.”

If not caught in an inconsistency I suspect they would not have changed their ruling on Webb. In other words, if Webb made the statement and Paul had not previously it would have stood as “Mostly True.” This precisely the kind of thing that The Fedralist piece alleged.

You asked for a specific example and OhioCatFan gave you a specific example. But you apparently still think he's not arguing "actual points." Not sure I follow that.

OK, let me change subjects. Did you see The Hill report yesterday?

The Headline:
Mueller may have a conflict — and it leads directly to a Russian oligarch

The story:
http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/387625-mueller-may...

Some lawyers are saying this may put some of Mueller's indictments in jeopardy. Your reaction?

So the author bases his claim of bias on "if you're explaining, you're losing" and then takes 2,000 words to explain why he thinks Politifact is biased? That makes total sense.

Seriously, I see so many flaws with the argument. The first of which is that if Politifact is really trying to push a liberal agenda then they're really doing a crappy job of it by being biased for Jim Webb (a self-described conservative who refused to vote for Hillary but wouldn't say whether he voted for Trump). The second flaw is that they clearly show that Politifact rated Nancy Pelosi as the third most dishonest politician behind Trump and Cruz. Again, if they're so biased, why is Politifact trying to take down Pelosi? She's one of the most liberal members of Congress and a leader in the Democratic Party. They also rated Jeb Bush as one of the most honest politicians in the group, ahead of Joe Biden and Harry Reid. Also, why isn't John Kasich included in the analysis? Seems like a glaring omission to me.

The entire crux of the Federalist piece's argument relies on the fact that the average analysis of a Republican statement has more words than the average analysis of a Democrat's statement. That's a pretty thin thread on which to lay claim that Politifact is some left-wing propaganda machine. From the Federalist piece:

"When fact-checked by PolitiFact, Democrats had an average rating of 1.8, which is between “Mostly True” and “Half True.” The average Republican rating was 2.6, which is between “Half-True” and “Mostly False.” We also checked Republicans without President-elect Donald Trump in the mix and found that 0.8 truth gap narrowed to 0.5... All by himself, Trump has almost half of all the “Pants on Fire” ratings from the articles we scraped."

So by their own admission, Trump is responsible for a large part of the observed gap. It seems to me that the most likely explanation is that Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Nancy Pelosi are lying liars and that Kaine, Clinton, Obama, Sanders, and Jeb Bush lie too but not nearly as much.

But all of this is moot, because you've given two examples of so-called bias that were really just fuzzy areas of interpretation, and then you have refused to actually explain what it is you take issue with in those examples. I thought you were going to give me some glaring examples of where Politifact said that a liberal told the truth when it was clearly a lie or when a conservative was called a liar when they were clearly telling the truth. But it seems that your entire argument is based on the idea that they are slightly more generous to liberals, which again doesn't jibe with the data for Pelosi and Reid and it doesn't jibe with your example of Jim Webb.

I'm not really sure what you're trying to say in the parens, but to your larger point it sort of depends who you ask and when you ask them.

J-O-B-S were clearly an important issue in this previous election, but Obama's approval rating amongst Republicans didn't correlate in any way with job growth. During his Presidency, the unemployment rate dropped from 9.6% when he took office to 4.8% when he left it. Despite that, 64% of Republicans believed the unemployment rate rose during the Obama presidency. Trump himself called the unemployment rate a lie on 17 different occasions on the campaign trail, and clearly his supporters largely agreed. (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/zorn/ct-pollin... )

But they don't anymore. Trump brags about that same unemployment rate constantly. Now it's real and though job growth since Trump took office is actually slower than it was in 5 of the last 7 years, Republican voters believe otherwise.

Which is all just to say that it's not so much the actual economy or jobs that matters, but rather how the 'fake news media' talks about the economy and jobs. And beyond the media, there's a ton of confirmation bias built into those numbers. People believe what they need to believe to justify their voting decisions.

How does that square with the actual data though? 64% of Republicans think the unemployment rate increased during the Obama presidency, despite the unemployment rate being below 5%. The math doesn't really work out there, does it?

Yeah, I agree with all of that. What I'm asking is what magically changed from December to January in the election year to so drastically alter people's impression of how they, personally, are doing.

Republican voters have a much different impression of the economy now than they did a year ago. I'm open to the theory that one's opinion of the economy is based entirely on your own circumstance, I'm just having trouble reconciling how so many people's circumstances changed so drastically in such a short period of time.

Also, in these debates, is there any talk about morality or who the person really is. The canidates are so fake in the debates you really get no idea of who they really are. Again this is a big problem. There are a number of different situations where I could see morality being such a important part of the decisions of the president. Yet never discussed.

Ironically I think that is what is so appealing about trump. He’s doesn’t come off as fake, and people are dying for that. Even though he is so clearly a terrible guy, in a lot of ways. It doesn’t matter. At least he’s not afraid to broadcast himself. Especially when on the other side you have someone is so clearly fake, you don’t know what you’re going to get. If you had a sit down, more in depth discussion with people, maybe you could get a canidate who is not fake, and is a good person, and can go in depth on the issues. Instead of two choices we got where one of the canidates is fake, maybe a good person/maybe a bad person, and can’t go in depth. And the another canidate who isn’t fake, is a bad person, and who can’t go in depth.

Edit:I’d also like to point out, I wonder how this lake of moral communication effects our society.

Yes you’re correct. I’m not saying you don’t know that, I’m saying the people in the debates act like we both don’t know that. Which is where the frustration on my part and others are with the news.

That’s a debatable point you make about the pro trump anti-Obama/Clinton supporters. You’re saying that the economy isn’t demonstrably different now than it was under obama. Yes that may be true. Yet maybe that has nothing to do with why they voted for trump. You’re assuming that is. Again the economy is complex and the reasons you mention about wages growing, the U6 rate improving, ect are just a few factors in a hyper complex economy. You can’t just boil it down to those things. You ask why the seas have changed. I mentioned a few about the cost of business going up as well as the cost of living. Not to mention the ever increasing role technology is playing. There are a lot of ways the economy is changing and with all these changes people are struggling to adjust. Jobs that would have meant a solid living in the past don’t anymore. For example In places like West Virginia where coal was the dominate industry, people are left without a way to make a living. Those people have to be retrained and the communities economy has to completely transform. With the cost of education that’s not a cheap thing to do and for many people they have to take out loans to afford all of this. Which puts stresses on households and family income on the long term. these complex issues aren’t getting dealt with by the government because the debates are terrible and it leaves us with incompetent people getting voted in to run our country.