The Donald Trump’s File
politifact.com
The other day a friend sent me a link to a website called politifact.com. In particular he said that I might take pleasure in checking out Donald Trump’s section. What struck me first was heading of the website’s name. The heading reads “Winner of the Pulitzer Prize”. Pardon me for not knowing! But I really thought this was a prize only given in literature. So I googled it and I had to find out that this prize actually originates in journalism and media! Oops…
Next I checked out their setup and found the Trumps’ section quite fast: The drop down menu ‘people’ leads you directly to “Donald Trump’s file”. Next I see was this:
I assumed what this was all about but was not quite sure so I went to the ‘About us’ tab to check out what this website is actually doing. I’m taking a snap shot of what I think to be meaningful for my purposes:
Alright, it was now clear to me what they are doing. The mission then was: Go quickly back to the Trump’s section and check out his Pants-on-Fire-statements! Now you have a look at the first snap shot — Notable that, after all, 43 % (!!!) are simply false and 19 % of his statements are rated as “pants-on-fire” which also means that they are going to be really, really funny (and scary)! Have a look yourself some of them really are.
Anyways, my point is another one. First of all, I think this website is a really good one, because I think it is a great thing to scrutinize and examine statements of politicians, especially of these one’s. But have a closer look at their rating system:
I’m mainly suspicious of ‘mostly true’, ‘half true’ and ‘mostly false’. Let us say they do a lot of research for a particular statement to find out how much of it is true. Let us now say that they produce a lot of evidence in favor of and against the statement. Let us say that they believe that a correct classification for the statement is somewhere between ‘half true’ and ‘mostly false’. Here the classification of the statement becomes subjective and they risk that the personal biases of the journalists may (subconsciously) influence the decision. Do you also agree that their decision might be influenced by their personal bias?
