| | | The 'PunditFact' [ politifact.com] that zax uses for his 'Liberal Disinformation' :
No, PolitiFact did not show that half of Fox News statements are false.
"...The “study” from PunditFact (a subdivision of PolitiFact), which is not really a study, says no such thing. You do not have to rely on my word for that: PunditFact itself warns against using its figures “to draw broad conclusions,” e.g. that Fox News lies “like all the time.” (Like, is this like a 1980s Valley-girl movie, or are you just, like, functionally illiterate?) That is because the study is an exercise in drawing nonsensical conclusions from arbitrary data..."
"...PolitiFact’s kindergarten-level methodology here is to take the total number of statements it evaluates, tally up the “mostly false,” “false,” and “pants on fire” ratings, and then do a little division. Given the underlying selection issues, this amounts to nothing more than doing meaningless arithmetic on meaningless data. If PunditFact editor Aaron Sharockman spent more than 20 minutes on this so-called research, he should demand a refund from his university. (Given that he has a B.A. in journalism, he should demand a refund on general principles.)..."
nationalreview.com
PunditFact: A Case Study In Fact-Free Hackery
"If you like liberal ideologues who label inconvenient facts as “false,” then you’ll love PunditFact. Why? Because PunditFact just declared that a demonstrably true fact was false because, according to PunditFact, the factual claim “ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.” Facts are strange that way. They do tend to give an impression of the truth, even if some people find that impression discomfiting..."
thefederalist.com |
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