October 11, 2004
Truthblogging the Debate
filed under: Hey, What's The Big IdeaThere's been lots of discussion, since the Presidential/Vice Presidential debates began, over the liberties that the candidates are taking with the truth. Almost all the coverage mentions that both sides are distorting the facts to suit their political aims.
There's also been a kerfuffle over a memo from ABC News' Mark Halperin, instructing his people not to feel obliged to portray the deceptions as equal in quantity and quality on both sides, since they're pretty clearly not. This has been spun by the Right, of course, as evidence of the media's leftward bias.
Inspired by Kevin Drum's analysis of the factcheckers on the 2nd Presidential Debate at Washington Monthly, I set out to quantify the untruths, as they have been currently debunked. I examined the fact check articles and transcript annotations of the Washington Post, the LA Times, www.factcheck.org and CNN (all as linked from the Washington Monthly post).
I broke down the distortions into 5 different kinds of factual impairment that the candidates' statements suffer from:
Cherrypicking: Other data is available which weakens/contradicts the impression made by the statement.Context Violation: Proper context for the quote or figure cited weakens/contradicts the impression made by the statement.
Deliberate Misinterpretation: The quote or figure cited is deliberately misinterpreted so as to give an impression which the original quote or figure does not support.
Factual Untruth: The statement is objectively, factually untrue.
Misleading: The statement is intentionally misleading.
I then further broke it down into 1st Degree and 2nd Degree. A violation is rated 1st Degree if the full truth or data contradicts the impression made by the statement, and 2nd Degree if the full truth or data counterbalances or weakens the statement, but the impression made by the statement is basically accurate.
The final score?
Kerry committed 12 truth violations. Of those, 3 were 1st degree, 9 were 2nd degree.
Bush committed 26 truth violations. Of those, 21 were 1st degree, 5 were 2nd degree.
More detail after the break (click below)...
[UPDATE: I emailed my chart to Kevin Drum, who replied:
Heh heh. You're reading my mind. Or my blog, anyway. I've done the same thing, although in more mind numbing detail than you did, complete with a numerical ranking of each lie. It's kind of a silly thing to do in a way, but it was also interesting to force myself to analyze all this stuff. I'll put it up later today. My overall results will come as no surprise.....
The fact that he went into MORE mind numbing detail... well... numbs my mind. This is why he's the professional. When he posts his analysis, I'll link to it here.]
[UPDATE UPDATE: True to his word, Kevin Drum has posted his analysis of the untruths in the debate. Also true to his word, his approach was even more intensive than mine (following the equation: (Inaccuracy + Intent to Deceive)*Importance for a total of 1 to 18 points of fibbery). His results: Bush 18 lies for 118 points, Kerry 10 lies for 60 points.
I haven't had a chance to sit down with his analysis and figure out the 7 places I thought Bush was lying and 2 places I thought Kerry was lying that he didn't include.
His conclusion: "...As Halperin said, deception seems to be central to George Bush's campaign while it's basically peripheral to John Kerry's." I concur.]
Kerry committed 1 instance of Cherrypicking in the first degree, when he claimed that the Medicare/Drug Benefit bill was a $139B windfall to big drug companies. He also committed five instances of Cherrypicking in the second degree.
Kerry committed 2 instances of Misleading in the first degree: when he claimed that he was part of the Senate that "fixed Medicare"; and when he claimed in his closing statement that his Health Plan would cover "all Americans." He also committed three instances of Misleading in the second degree.
Kerry committed 1 instance of Deliberate Misinterpretation in the second degree (claiming the Duelfer Report proved sanctions were working - the Duelfer report is neutral on the issue of sanctions).
Bush committed a stunning 7 instances of Cherrypicking in the first degree, another 7 instances of Misleading in the first degree, 2 instances of Context Violation in the first degree, 4 instances of Deliberate Misinterpretation in the first degree and one first degree Factual Untruth (claiming Kerry's Health Plan called for government control over health decisions).
Neither side has a claim to total intellectual honesty and purity. Every politician chooses data that support their side, chooses readings of the opponent's statements which are detrimental to their opponent.
But not only does Bush get caught distorting the truth more than twice as much as Kerry, but almost all of his distortions are "first degree": i.e., without the distortion, the entire point he's making falls apart.
Here's a pdf of the table which includes each statement which has been fact checked, along with the violation that I awarded.
Posted by rjt at October 11, 2004 04:47 PM