One Of These Facts Is Not Like The Others

Every day, PolitiFact staffers look for statements that can be checked. We comb through speeches, news stories, press releases, campaign brochures, TV ads, Facebook postings and transcripts of TV and radio interviews. Because we can't possibly check all claims, we select the most newsworthy and significant ones.

-Principles of PolitiFact

Last week my good friends at PolitiFact Ohio reviewed the controversial accusations recently being made by Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio). His comments have been making the rounds on blogs, news highlights and YouTube, so it's no surprise they felt compelled to weigh in on his outrageous insinuation that none of the programs slated to be cut by the GOP budget "appeared on the GAO's list of government programs at high risk of waste, fraud and abuse."

Huh?



Newsworthy and significant indeed.

This is simply PolitiFact's latest relapse while battling their addiction to selection bias. This time however, their article featuring an obscure statement made by Kucinich regarding the GOP's spending plans has proven especially fortuitous for us fact checker fact checkerers that like to keep tabs on the liberal bias of the supposedly non-partisan truth seekers.

The statement PolitiFact rated was made during a must-see tv House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Federal Government Spending Oversight. Still awake? Because that's not all! Kucinich made the comments on February 17th, over a month prior to publication of the fact check on March 28th.

So they're a little slow in getting around to this one. "What's the big deal?" you might ask.

The issue is that during the same week this rating was published, Kucinich was making the rounds on news networks suggesting President Obama has committed an impeachable offense by launching military strikes in Libya without Congressional approval.

Here he is on MSNBC, March 22, armed with his trusty pocket Constitution-



You can find more videos of Kucinich making similar claims on Bill O'Reilly and Fox's America's Newsroom amongst others. Here's a few newsworthy and significant quotes-

-"The president needs to explain to the nation why he went outside the Constitution to order this attack."

-"Congress should be called into session immediately to decide whether or not to authorize the United States’ participation in a military strike. If it does not, the action of the President is contrary to U.S. Constitution."

-"It would appear on its face to be an impeachable offense..."

-"He didn't have Congressional authorization, he has gone against the Constitution..."

-"[Obama] knows clearly that he has not complied with the Constitution. And that's a very serious matter because he's using the ultimate authority of a president."

All fun stuff! And every one of those statements meets PolitiFact's criteria for being chosen-



One can only imagine the sky high stack of emails sent to PolitiFact that asked-

"I was watching the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Federal Government Spending Oversight and was wondering if it's true that none of the budget items selected to be cut in the GOP plan were identified by the Government Accountability Office as having a high risk of waste, fraud and abuse? Do you mind checking this out? I've heard a lot of people repeating this claim."

The amount of readers asking if Kucinich was being accurate when he very publicly and repeatedly accused the Commander in Chief of violating the United States Constitution by unilaterally engaging in a very unpopular and violent military action, and therefore may be subject to impeachment, was apparently nil.

The truth is that PolitiFact isn't rating the obvious Kucinich blurb because it would force them to confront an issue that reflects poorly on Obama.

To be fair, PolitiFact did acknowledge Obama's Flip-Flop on the Libya issue. As a candidate he said-

"The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."

They gave him a Full Flop, but even that rating is couched in tu quoque justifications. And the fact is flopping on an issue is an irrelevant and much less serious charge than violating the supreme law of the land. Politicians flop on all kinds of issues all the time. Obama is no different, and by calling him on a flop they're not really "sorting out the truth" of anything. But violating the Constitution and committing an act that rises to the level of impeachment is a serious offense. Why the silence?

What this teachable moment has exposed is that PolitiFact's bias isn't always as obvious as simply picking more statements on the left or the right or rating one group more harshly than the other. Their bias is evident in the specific claims and specific people they choose to rate as well as the things they choose to ignore.

Subtle bias can be far more destructive than obvious campaigning. PolitiFact's dishonesty is especially damaging because of their fraudulent non-partisan, objective, truth seeking monicker. The truth is that PolitiFact is nothing more than cleverly labeled propaganda. The evidence is clear to see once you look at what they aren't checking as much as what they are.