Bias of Politifact
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I think everyone here knwos how biased PolitiFact has become. I just found this the other day while trying to find some balance in their reporting (there isn't any unfortuantely.).
Take a look at this article: Armey says Tea Party is more popular than Democrats, Republicans
The author is: Catharine Richert.
One of the paragraphs:
But some political analysts have questioned whether the poll exaggerated the Tea Party's favorable ratings because the group is not well known and because of the heavy coverage it gets from Fox News, a conservative news outlet. About 76 percent of those who see the Tea Party movement favorably also said they get their news from Fox, according to an analysis on MSNBC's First Read.
PolitiFact has gone and labeled FoxNews as a "conservative" news outlet. But has no problem listing MSNBC with the opposite "liberal" news outlet. Futhermore, the straw argument the author uses in her reporting is not against Dick Armey, but the poll itself. While two polls (WSJ-NBC and Rasmussen) confirm Armey's statement, the author argues that because the Tea Party gets coverage from Fox, that the polls cannot be credible because Fox bumps up their numbers.
And now look at how the article closes. She wants to make sure that Democrats stand in some good light, so she throws something in there to help her own party out:
So Armey is drastically overstating the group's standing. Yes, the Tea Party is viewed favorably by people who know about the group (particularly those who get their news from Fox), but the pollsters who conducted the survey say it's not accurate to say that the party is more popular than Democrats or Republicans. Also, other polls contradict Armey's statement and indicate that Democrats are more popular than Tea Party candidates. So we find Armey's claim to be False.
Where are these other polls? She had no problem calling people up to check the data, but can't link to polls that she talks about in her article. Any why would this be false. Armey's says something that the polls prove. WHat's more absurd is that the author even links to those two polls on the right hand column. So even with the staw argument, and by Politifact's past rulings like this, shouldn't this be considered "Half True."
I hope Newsbusters takes a stance against this biased machien PolitiFact and call them out for the leftists that they are. Too many news organizations are using PolitiFact as a "objective" "nonpartisian" source--when truly, we know its now. This must be pursued so that PolitiFact is known as a "liberal" "fact"-check machine---similar to what MediaMatters has become.













