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By Scott Moore of Portland, Oregon. Scott is the Communications Director for Our Oregon and was a political reporter and news editor for the Portland Mercury. Previously, he contributed "Trivial Pursuit: That's Some Har-ible Reporting"
Just a day after having to do an embarrassing about face on a truly bizarre ruling, PolitiFact Oregon is back with a new entry that’s even more troubling.
Today’s PolitiFact Oregon criticizes the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for saying that “Rob Cornilles supports privatizing Medicare.” Actually, what the DCCC said was that Cornilles supports “turning over some of Medicare to private insurance companies”. In a partially rephrased Tweet, the DCCC asked “Did you know Cornilles said he'd support turning parts of Medicare over to private insurance companies?”
Reporter Janie Har and PolitiFact Oregon ruled these statements “Mostly False.” But in order to do so, they had to utterly conflate the statements to absurd levels, claiming that Democrats said Cornilles wants to turn Medicare entirely over to private companies and cut government out.
The fact is, Cornilles wants to open Medicare to private insurance companies in order to increase competition with the public program. By its very definition, turning over some of Medicare to private insurance companies IS increasing the privatization at the program. This should be obvious to any reasonable observer.
But Har made up a new argument -- that Democrats are contending that Cornilles wants to completely remove government from Medicare, and then ruled it “Mostly False.” The real controversy between the campaigns centers on Cornilles' claim that he is strongly against privatization while being in favor of proposals that do just that. PolitiFact’s problem is their unwillingness to focus on the real issues of the campaign and then actually fact-check them. Of course, it’s hard to be an objective referee for a fight you are participating in, which seems to be the main problem with the Oregonian these days.
Seriously, what is going on over there at PolitiFact Oregon? This isn’t fact checking; it’s weird semantics and word games to the benefit of the Cornilles campaign. And coming literally a day after the embarrassing reversal they had to make on another strange ruling, you’d think Har and her editors would be more vigilant about checking actual facts.
It’s not Oregon-specific, but New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has joined the chorus of voices pointing out the increasing bizarreness of PolitiFact:
Unfortunately, Politifact has lost sight of what it was supposed to be doing. Instead of simply saying whether a claim is true, it’s trying to act as some kind of referee of what it imagines to be fair play: even if a politician says something completely true, it gets ruled only partly true if Politifact feels that the fact is being used to gain an unfair political advantage. In the case of Obama’s job statement, Politifact first called it only half true, then upgraded that to mostly true, not because Obama said anything factually incorrect, but because Politifact perceived Obama as trying to imply that he was responsible for the gains.
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"Jefferson Smith has a proven track record of consensus building, without compromising on important issues."
Big news tonight in Portland city races: AFSCME Local 189, the largest city employee union with 940 members, has endorsed Jefferson Smith for mayor and Mary Nolan for city commissioner.
From the press release (with paragraphs re-ordered):
"Jefferson has been working with us in the legislature to move a progressive agenda protecting voting rights and creating transparency in government. Additionally, he carried the bill that directed state agencies to cut middle management and direct the budget to go to front line services. With potential cuts on the horizon at the City, this resonates with our members," said Local Vice President, Mark Gipson
"As a State Representative Jefferson Smith has a proven track record of consensus building, without compromising on important issues such as protecting voting rights, and creating transparency in government. He has shown through his work to limit middle management and focus budgets on front line services that he is willing to challenge the status quo."
"Eileen is an interesting candidate... many of our members liked her. In the end we felt she was untested ..."
Members also appreciated that Charlie Hales was willing to reach out and participate in the endorsement process have conversations with them. However, many of the members were seeking a change in leadership...
On the city commissioner race:
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By Scott Moore of Portland, Oregon. Scott is the Communications Director for Our Oregon and was a political reporter and news editor for the Portland Mercury. Previously, he contributed Sorry, PolitiFact Oregon, but you need to check your facts.
If I was the editor of the national PolitiFact enterprise, I’d be alarmed at the amount of damage its Oregon branch has been doing to the brand for many months, even violating PolitiFact’s own stated principles. The recent output from PolitiFact Oregon and its chief Oregonian reporter, Janie Har, should make it clear that they’ve ditched the fact-checking mission in favor of an embarrassing obsession with selectively focusing on political items that amplify Har's apparent personal bias.
Late yesterday, that obsession blew up in their face, when Har had to reverse a “ruling” on a claim that was meaningless to begin with.
Here’s the background: Last Thursday’s Oregonian Metro front page featured a pair of PolitiFacts penned by Har, one giving Suzanne Bonamici a “Pants on Fire” ruling and one giving Rob Cornilles a “True” ruling.
Bonamici’s offense? In a press release, the Bonamici campaign highlighted the fact that some of the evidence the Cornilles campaign provided to PolitiFact as the basis of their taxes attack against Bonamici included votes that weren't either taxes or fees. Har chose to inflate this misunderstood point into the full focus of her wrath, ignoring the other points made by the Bonamici campaign. Lost in Har’s reporting was any examination of the main controversy, which was Cornilles airing TV commercials falsely claiming that Bonamici was in favor of cutting Medicare.
But it gets even better (and by “better,” I actually mean “worse”). Out of all of the many, many claims made by the Cornilles campaign and his surrogates, this is what Har and the PolitiFact team chose to “fact check”:
“Rob Cornilles has been endorsed by 20 local mayors, including Independent, Democratic and Republican.”
They ruled it “True”.
By running these pieces side by side, Har and PolitiFact Oregon were trying to send a clear message to the paper’s readers and the voters of CD1.
But here’s where it gets embarrassing: The “Independent” mayor endorsing Cornilles is actually non-affiliated, not a member of the Independent Party of Oregon. Har reversed the ruling yesterday from True to False based on that discovery. The reversal shined a floodlight on the fact that it was a ridiculously trivial “fact” to “check” in the first place.
In both cases, Har chose to pick out insignificant, obscure statements that have little to no bearing on the issues of the election. In Bonamici’s case, this allowed the Oregonian to stamp a “Pants on Fire” label over a statement that was generally true. In Cornilles’s case, PolitiFact picked a statement that isn’t disputed by anyone, and basically serves as a free campaign ad for the Republican by amplifying a message from an ad supporting him.
To put it more bluntly: Har’s apparent bias has been made obvious by her bizarre, nitpicky choices of claims to analyze, and then by how she treats those claims.
In doing so, Har and her editors appear to be violating PolitiFact’s own statement of principles:
Because we can't possibly check all claims, we select the most newsworthy and significant ones.
In deciding which statements to check, we ask ourselves these questions:
...Is the statement significant? We avoid minor "gotchas"’ on claims that obviously represent a slip of the tongue.
And:
Context matters -- We examine the claim in the full context, the comments made before and after it, the question that prompted it, and the point the person was trying to make.
Neither of the PolitiFact entries in last Thursday’s paper lived up to those principles. They were far from the most newsworthy or significant claims made by either campaign, and the overall context was ignored.
If the goal of PolitiFact is to elevate political discourse and give readers a fuller understanding of their electoral choices, PolitiFact Oregon is failing.
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The sleepy media presence in Washington County may be waking up. From today's Hillsboro Argus:
I couldn't find an online version of this image. This is a photo of it. It's by cartoonist Dan Adams for the Argus.
Rarely do I see any fundamental criticism of Washington County government in the Argus. Usually it's just nutty rightwing ramblings by columnist Jayne Carroll who has little or nothing to say about local government (unless it's to take shots at Kitzhaber). The editorials don't go there either.
In context, this is a tremendous shot across the bow at Duyck. I hope it's not the last. Duyck needs to end his vendetta against his own constituency immediately.
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By Jennifer Williamson of Portland, Oregon. Jennifer is an attorney and public safety reform leader running in the Democratic primary for HD 36 in West Portland. For more information, visit JenniferForOregon.com.
Over the last several weeks, Governor Kitzhaber’s Commission on Public Safety has received a lot of attention over the release of its report calling for a hard look at Oregon’s public safety system. I, along with many others, am pleased this issue is receiving this long over-due attention. For the last 3 years, a group of non-profit organizations, unions, and concerned Legislators and citizens have worked together as part of the Oregon Coalition for Safety & Savings (OCSS) to formulate policy alternatives to our one-size-fits-all incarceration system and the enormous impact it has had on every other segment of our state’s budget.
The OCSS is committed to supporting the most effective public safety policies so that our limited dollars are invested wisely. We are committed to keeping Oregonians safe and know that Oregon can do better when it comes to our spending on corrections.
The membership of the OCSS includes a wide range of individuals and organizations who understand the need to decrease our spending on prisons and reinvest those savings into education, human services, community corrections, victim services, mental health, and addiction treatment. Members of the Oregon Coalition for Safety and Savings include:
- Advocacy Coalition of Seniors and People with Disabilities
- American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon
- Association of Oregon Community Mental Health Programs
- The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde
- Human Services Coalition of Oregon
- League of Women Voters of Oregon
- National Association of Social Workers (Oregon Chapter)
- Oregon Alliance of Children's Programs
- Oregon Business Association
- Oregon Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence
- Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers Association
- Oregon Education Association
- Oregon Prevention Education & Recovery Association
- Partnership for Safety and Justice
- SEIU, Local 503
- Self Enhancement, Inc.
- Stand for Children
- Urban League
- Youth, Rights & Justice
As one of the leaders of this powerful coalition, I have focused on sounding the alarm on the growing cost of corrections. I have worked with the group on drafting policy recommendations supported by evidence-based practices that will actually make Oregonians safer. OCSS is continually working to prevent so-called “solutions” that have proven ineffective and costly in other states. These failed approaches include balancing the budgets on the backs of Department of Corrections’ employees, allowing for dangerous overcrowding of facilities, and the privatization of correctional institutions.
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