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You don’t say? Study confirms PolitiFact fact-checks Biden’s critics more than the president himself

October 1, 2022 | | Print Article

PolitiFact, the fact-checking project run by the Poynter Institute, is not a legitimate fact-checking outfit, and the data proves it.

A study conducted earlier this year by the Media Research Center found that between Jan. 20th, 2021 and Jan. 19th, 2022, the president was fact-checked only 40 times, whereas his critics were fact-checked 230 times.

This despite Biden lying with virtually his every breath.

Fast-forward to this week, when the MRC updated its previous study with new data showing that between Jan. 20th, 2022 and Sept. 19th, 2022, PolitiFact only fact-checked the president 18 times, whereas it fact-checked his critics 108 times.

“Put it all together, and over his first 20 months in office, Biden had 58 fact-checks, while Biden critics were checked 338 times. Overall, there were 5.8 fact checks of Biden critics for every one of the president,” according to the MRC’s NewsBusters.

(Source: NewsBusters)

PolitiFact’s so-called fact-checks always contain a rating. On the false side, they range from “Mostly False” to  “Pants on Fire.”

According to NewsBusters, Biden has never once been issued a “Pants on Fire” rating during his first 20 months in office.

“Biden could say the evacuation from Afghanistan was an ‘extraordinary success,’ and we have ‘zero percent’ inflation, and there were no factual objections. On April 22, he claimed he was a ‘full professor’ for four years at the University of Pennsylvania, which is simply false. They called it ‘Half True,'” the watchdog group notes.

Conversely, PolitiFact has issued 79 “Pants on Fire” ratings against the president’s critics, and quite frankly, many of these ratings are bull.

In a story published in August, for instance, National Review accurately noted that the president’s student loan forgiveness plan will cost each taxpayer thousands of dollars.

“A Penn-Wharton Budget Model released Tuesday found that ‘a one-time maximum debt forgiveness of $10,000 per borrower will cost around $300 billion for borrowers with incomes less than $125,000.’ That provision alone translates to more than $2,000 per taxpayer,” NRO’s report read.

This claim was 100 percent accurate. Yet PolitiFact said otherwise, and it reached its decision by splitting hairs.

“PolitiFact whined that National Review’s usage of the … $2,000 estimate was misleading because it was based on the total projected cost of Biden’s plan ($329.1 billion over 10 years) divided by the number of 2019 tax returns (just under 158 million),” according to NewsBusters.

“Additionally, the outlet said the [estimate] overlooked that about one-third of those returns are joint filers, not solo taxpayers, and that corporations, estates and partnerships filed some of those returns.”

PolitiFact also “downplayed the $2,000 estimate by saying Biden’s debt cancellation policy spans a decade, which according to the outlet meant that ‘the number of taxpayers would change over that time — most likely increase — which would bring the share down.'”

This is how PolitiFact appears to conduct its so-called fact-checks — by splitting hairs and creating issues out of thin air.

A perfect example of this phenomenon occurred last month when PolitiFact fact-checked the observation that the president “has been secretly flying illegal immigrants into communities across the country in the middle of the night.”

The observation was 100 percent true. PolitiFact even admitted as much in its supposed fact-check.

“The charter flights are not publicized and sometimes are done in the middle of the night to protect the confidentiality of those being transported and to guard against anyone who would interfere with the flights,” PolitiFact’s so-called fact-check reads.

Read that and then read it again. Did Politifact not openly admit that the flights are happening at night and without the public being aware of them?

Yet PolitiFact ruled the observation to be “Mostly False.”

“The ad implies that it is a new phenomenon for the federal government to transport immigrants around the country. That’s not true,” its final ruling reads.

What? How was this implied?

“The federal government flies adult detainees in its custody from one facility to another, or from one U.S. city to another during deportation proceedings. The U.S. government in some cases also flies unaccompanied children who are being released from its custody to a family member or sponsor,” the ruling continues.

“Some of these flights may happen at night, but they are not covert operations. The same types of routine flights were done by the Trump administration. The ad contains only an element of truth. We rate it Mostly False.”

What? When did anyone say the flights were “covert operations?”

See how it works? PolitiFact makes things up out of thin air to justify its deceptive so-called fact-checks. But what makes PolitiFact’s so-called fact-checks all the more troubling is that they’re used to silence people on social media.

“Politifact is an official third-party fact-checking apparatus for Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram. This means that PolitiFact is not like any ordinary website that offers a critique of a political narrative: PolitiFact’s critiques are enforced by social media platforms,” according to Reason magazine.

Reason magazine wrote about PolitiFact back in July after the pseudo-fact-checking site “flagged as ‘false information’ posts on Instagram and Facebook accusing the Biden administration of changing the definition of a recession in order to deny that the U.S. economy has entered one.”

Meanwhile in actual, fact-based reality:

Vivek Saxena
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