PolitiFact, which has really been outdoing itself with its coverage of the Planned Parenthood scandal, has come up with another doozy. Here is the statement PolitiFact chose to evaluate:
— Alliance Defending Freedom on Monday, August 3rd, 2015 in a Twitter post
PolitiFact’s rating of this statement? “Half-true.” Which is really odd because it is entirely true that Planned Parenthood doesn’t do mammograms and has no licensed mammogram facilities. PolitiFact admits as much:
The list, updated weekly, includes more than 8,700 facilities. A representative from the FDA did not get back to us by deadline, but a search of the list does not yield any facilities with the official “Planned Parenthood” name in its title.
It’s weird that PolitiFact acts uncertain about the mammograms issue. “As we’ve noted before, Planned Parenthood clinics do not provide mammograms themselves,” notes another PolitiFact fact check from just three weeks ago. In the process of making that observation, PolitiFact linked to a 2012 fact check they did that also noted Planned Parenthood doesn’t do mammograms. (And yet, in that fact check they also rated President Obama’s statement that women “rely on [Planned Parenthood] for mammograms” as “half-true.”)
To repeat: Planned Parenthood doesn’t do mammograms. “Zero Planned Parenthood facilities are licensed to do mammograms” is an entirely true statement. And yet, PolitiFact rates the cut-and-dired numerical fact “half-true” because (yes, this is an actual quote) “numbers don’t tell whole story on mammogram claim” even though they admit “Federal data and Planned Parenthood’s own documents back up the claim from the Alliance Defending Freedom.” But if you are evaluating the actual factual claim made made by the Alliance Defending Freedom, in this case the numbers do tell the whole story. Insisting otherwise is argumentative nonsense, not fact checking. And yet, PolitiFact does this sort of thing with shocking regularity.
Follow Mark Hemingway on Twitter @Heminator
