On Sept. 3, 2018 we sent notice to PolitiFact regarding a mistake in its Aug. 29, 2018 fact check of a claim by President Donald Trump.A .pdf image of that complaint follows. As of this date (Sept. 15, 2019) we have received no response or acknowledgment from PolitiFact and the fact checkers have not addressed the mistake.
Dear Truth-O-Meter,
An August 29, 2018 fact check of President Trump uses an apparently false claim in its reasoning, and repeats that false claim in its summary paragraph.
First occurrence (bold emphasis added):
The chart is not neutral evidence supporting Trump’s point, and it labels anything not overtly conservative as "left. In the "left" category are such rigorously mainstream outlets as the Associated Press and Reuters.
Second occurrence (bold emphasis added):
This figure is based on a non-scientific study from a conservative website that categorized any media outlet not expressly conservative as being part of the "left."
With the above, PolitiFact flatly claims that the chart categorizes all websites that are not expressly conservative as "left." Yet the chart has a number of media companies straddling the line between left and right, among them C-SPAN, UPI and RealClearPolitics. Does PolitiFact intend to impute that the companies straddling the chart's center line are overtly conservative?
The fact check offers no evidence, not even via citation from what we can tell, that any of the three just mentioned are identified as "expressly conservative."
Moreover, McClatchy and the Christian Science Monitor occur to the right of the chart's center line. Where would we find any solid evidence at all that they are "expressly conservative"?
We think it improper for PolitiFact to state that these outlets count as overtly or expressly conservative without providing a shred of proof supporting its claim. The claim is false on its face.
We hope PolitiFact will see its way toward implementing a prompt correction for this misinformation.
