Politifact, the Revenge

[Trivia: what 4 key ingredients are combined on rye bread to make a Reuben sandwich?]

When I wrote about Nate Silver’s new diet of red pills, I mentioned

. . . I once saw someone pull data from Politifact and show that Politifact fact-checks of right-wing people and statements were consistently around twice as long as their left-wing counterparts, on the theory (not hard to verify in particulars) that significantly more explanation is necessary if you’re explaining vibes, implications, and context rather than checking someone’s facts. (I once saw this analysis, but I can’t now find it. I’ll cite it in the future if I ever track it down.)

Anyway, I finally found that piece! You can read the analysis here. Here’s the nub of the analysis:

if a statement is plainly true or clearly false, PolitiFact will simply provide the statement and analyze it according to a widely respected data source. It takes under 100 words to verify Mitt Romney’s statement on out-of-wedlock births  or Hillary Clinton’s statement on CEO pay

By contrast, when you look at their articles on Mitt Romney’s statement on Obama apologizing for the US (a statement that they fact-checked no fewer than five times), PolitiFact did an in-depth analysis of what exactly it means to “apologize” for something. They looked at Romney’s statement, asked his team for a response, parsed the response, got other “expert” opinions, combed through Obama’s statements. The first 3 times they fact-checked this, PolitiFact had to use 3,000-plus words per article to explain that Romney was wrong. Each time, their rating relied on what exactly it means to “apologize”. Then end up writing pieces in which they sound a lot like a parent scolding a small child about how they have to “really mean” their apology or it doesn’t count.

So when you look at the average word count of PolitiFact’s fact checks by political party and truth rating category, you find this:

Note that I was wrong in saying they were consistently twice as long; the effect is there, but not that extreme.

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Answer: Corned beef, sauerkraut, (Swiss) cheese, and dressing (either Russian or Thousand Island).