On Wednesday May 29, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) announced that she will not seek reelection to Congress in 2014, and ever since the liberal media has had a field day mocking her political career. It appears the latest example of Bachmann-trashing has come from the Tampa Bay Times, which runs the liberally-skewed PolitiFact website, for having problems with their “Truth-O-Meter.”
In a piece published on Wednesday, Times staff writer Angie Drobnic Holan lambasted Bachmann for veering away from “verifiable fact.” At issue with Ms. Holan is the fact that PoliFact has labeled numerous statements by Ms. Bachmann has false or “Pants on Fire!” which according to the website, Ms. Bachman’s “first 13 ratings were False or Pants on Fire.” This article comes just two days after PolitiFact released a skewed study showing that Republicans were cited as dishonest three times as often as Democrats.
As my colleague Tim Graham explained in a Wednesday blog post, PolitiFact has an extremely skewed methodology in their ratings system, pointing out that PolitiFact, “has now consistently identified the Republicans as more dishonest” while the nonpartisan Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA) also found that same pro-Democratic tilt in a study of PolitiFact from June 1 to September 11 of 2012.
The Times article proceeds to provide several examples of Bachmann’s supposed trouble with the truth according to PolitiFact, and overall they claim that Bachmann’s record on the “Truth-O-Meter” skews toward the red with 15 statements labeled “Pants on Fire” and 21 as false.
But as my colleague Tim Graham pointed out:
No one should assume that a fact-checking organization can only be assumed to be fair if it tries to employ a 50-50 partisan quota on who's mangling the facts. However, "independent" fact-checking groups run by "mainstream" media companies can easily be questioned about a liberal tilt.
Additionally, Graham added, “It's this easy: when the "Pants on Fire" page presently displays 18 lies by Republicans or conservatives, and two by liberals or Democrats, perhaps there's some bias leaking in.”
It should come as no surprise that the Tampa Bay Times would use their own liberal fact checking website as the only means to slam Ms. Bachmann’s career, but before it trashes the congresswoman for having trouble with the truth it should admit its liberal bias before claiming to be fact-checkers.
