Hot Air Exposes Politifact

Karl over at Hot Air has an excellent piece on Politifacts Lie of the Year.



Karl does a good job pointing out their failure to describe exactly what they're talking about in the first place-

Let’s start with the straw man that “a ‘government takeover’ conjures a European approach where the government owns the hospitals and the doctors are public employees.” By this measure, there has been no government takeover of healthcare in countries like France or Switzerland. Even in England, most doctors, dentists, optometrists and other providers of local healthcare are self-employed, and contract their services back to the NHS. If PolitiFact wants to invoke the “European approach” to healthcare, it might help if they could accurately describe it.

But even more telling (and an ongoing problem at Politifact) is their inability to cite objective sources-

Then there are those “independent health care experts” PolitiFact consulted. One of them is “Princeton University professor Uwe Reinhardt, an expert in health care economics.” PolitiFact leaves out his $2,300 donation to Barack Obama.

PolitiFact also quotes Maggie Mahar...[w]ell-known among those who follow the issue as a market-hating health care expert, I am not exactly shocked that she told PolitiFact what PolitiFact so obviously wanted to hear. PolitiFact neglects to mention that Maggie Mahar is a fellow at The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank.

In contrast, PolitiFact dismisses the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute as conservative groups repeating a “lie” [Aside: Cato is libertarian, but we must all look alike to PolitiFact]. Thus, PolitiFact chose not to seek the advice of any experts affiliated with those groups, like Cato’s Michael Cannon, who argues that ObamaCare is a government takeover of the health care system. The closest to a Republican, let alone conservative, in PolitiFact’s interview list is Gail Wilensky, who coincidentally goes unquoted by PolitiFact.

As I've pointed out before, our non-partisan friends are loathe to get input from anyone that might disagree with their predetermined conclusion. The Lie of the Year is no exception.

Karl goes into greater detail and exposes more absurdity than I've quoted here. I encourage you to read the entire article.

One thing that he didn't mention was the fantastic method they used to arrive at the "winner"-

We asked PolitiFact readers to pick what they thought was the most significant lie of the year in 2010, and 3,289 people voted. The decisive winner was the same one PolitiFact editors and reporters selected for the Lie of the Year: the claim that the new health care law is a "government takeover."

There you have it. The significance of a "lie" is now determined by "reader polls". Not that the deck wasn't stacked in the first pace. And it's hardly shocking that Politifact's editors arrived at the same conclusion as their overwhelmingly liberal fans.

Once again we're left with a Liberal hit piece portrayed as objective journalism. Instead of providing readers insight, Politifact has only cemented their position as a mouthpiece for the Left.

Kudos to Hot Air for exposing their bias.


AFTER HOURS:
As usual, Bryan White at Sublime Bloviations does a superb job addressing even more problems with the Politifact piece.

Best line-

If dissatisfaction with the health care plan was such a big factor in the November elections then perhaps PolitiFact could have found a "Lie of the Year" that Democrats would be able to run on the passage of health care reform and/or keep control of the House of Representatives.

ZING!