From last week, another example of PolitiFact’s incredible bias:
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Now it should be obvious here that PolitiFact can’t validate what the effects of a minimum wage increase are because it hasn’t happened yet. Further, the context is that Grimes, who is challenging Mitch McConnell for Kentucky’s Senate seat, supports a minimum wage increase, while McConnell opposes one on the grounds that the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) median estimate is that a minimum wage increase will kill 500,000 jobs and maybe as many as a million. Grimes counters that the CBO says a minimum wage increase could help a million people get above the poverty level.
Couple of points here. One, the actual figure of Americans that the CBO says will rise above the poverty level is about 900,000 not “more than a million” and PolitiFact never seems to give Republicans the benefit of the doubt when they’re 10+ percent off. Two, while the CBO’s estimate of 900,000 people being raised above the poverty line is a net gain that takes into account the job losses, PolitiFact doesn’t say what job loss estimate the CBO is using to arrive at that figure. I presume it’s the median estimate of 500,000 job losses, but how does that estimate change if we see the high end estimate of a million people losing their jobs? Again, neither PolitiFact or the CBO can predict the future. There are all kinds of second order effects of centralized economic policy that are unforseen. And it has been axiomatic among economists for decades that minimum wage increases hurt labor markets. Only recently has that consensus become undone, largely for nakedly political reasons. There’s also an illustrious history of the government’s financial projections being wildly wrong, not to mention the problem of CBO estimates being manipulated.
So yes, Grimes is technically telling the truth about something the CBO report says, but her dismissal of what the report says about the downside of a minimum wage increase renders her point somewhere between strictly argumentative and moot.
However, if you just glance at the headline above, you’re going to walk away with the impression that 1) Grimes is telling the truth when the issue is much more complicated and 2) a minimum wage increase is a good idea if you want to help people in poverty even though that’s not entirely clear and it’s probably going to make half a million poor people — or more — worse off.
Now PolitiFact does explain all of the broader context below their horribly misleading headline, but surely they know a great many voters aren’t going to venture past the headline for a dry discussion of Congressional Budget Office estimates. And of course, such headlines have a way of popping up in candidate press releases and campaign ads. Yet, PolitiFact routinely presents complex information in such a misleading manner knowing full well the impression it leaves on casual reader and how it will be used for political purposes. And multiple surveys have shown PolitiFact is systematically biased in favor of Democrats. At best, PolitiFact is a shockingly irresponsible for news organization. At worst, they’re craven and dishonest.
