By: J. Randolph Evans

One of the most difficult challenges in the world of politics is separating fact from opinion. Candidates throw around facts like they were candy. Campaigns twist and turn facts to make the most innocent remark into a horrible thing. How is a voter to differentiate between fact and fiction?

Well, newspapers thought about this and came up with a clever marketing ploy. They created something called “Politifact.” As its name implies (through the combination of the words ‘politics’ and ‘fact’), it is designed to separate facts from fiction in the world of politics – if that is possible.

Here is how it is supposed to work. Newspapers take statements by candidates and put them to the test. Given how many crazy things some candidates say, there is never a shortage of things to test. Since most every candidate has a political opponent of some kind, there is never a shortage of folks pointing out every inaccuracy. Basically, the combination of a plentiful supply of factually challenged statements with ready and willing political opponents eager to point them out should make newspapers’ jobs easy.

 Now add a little flavor to the mix. Rather than just rate a statement as true or false, newspaper marketing departments developed some colorful descriptions for the statements they evaluate. On the one hand, there is ‘true.’ From there, statements go down the scale past ‘half true’ to the colorful ‘pants-on-fire.’

Candidates who get a ‘true’ or ‘mostly true’ are quite eager to tout the newspapers’ rating as vindication. Candidates who get a ‘pants-on-fire’ can expect their political opponents to paste the newspaper’s rating everywhere. Either way, the newspaper gets that which it trades on the most – publicity.

Now, in concept, the idea of a fact checker makes a lot of sense. Voters get the benefit of an independent source checker to rate the accuracy of statements by candidates willing to say just about anything to get elected. Candidates have to weather the test of someone holding their feet (or pants) to the fire for what they say. Struggling newspapers find a way to do that which they are supposed to be doing anyway – report the facts, not opinion. It should be a win-win.

Of course, if it was that easy, newspapers could just report the news free from slant and bias and voters could just decide. Unfortunately, the modern media does not work that way. Instead, most readers can easily spot the bias of their newspaper by just reading a few headlines. Actually, reading an entire newspaper article today leaves little doubt that the days of unbiased reporting are long gone.

But, with a name like Politifact, readers might think that in at least one area, newspapers had abandoned their biases for one brief moment of objectivity. Do not be fooled. Hidden within the clever marketing names like Politifact and the nifty ratings like pants-on-fire, newspapers still filter in their biases.

Don’t believe it? Here is one easy example (of which there are many). In one of its ratings, Politifact rated this statement by Governor Mitt Romney:

“Never before in American history has its president gone before so many foreign audiences to apologize for so many American misdeeds, both real and imagined.”

Politifact “set out to discover whether Obama really had apologized in his speeches, and what he was apologizing for.”

What did Politifact conclude?

But in our review of his words, we came up short. Yes, there is criticism in some of his speeches, but it’s typically leavened by praise for the United States and its ideals, and often he mentions other countries and how they have erred as well. There’s not a full-throated, sincere apology in the bunch. And so we rate Romney’s statement False.

So, just when readers thought it was safe to read and believe something in their newspaper, this comes along. Of course, no one seriously doubts the truth of Governor Romney’s statement. Indeed, there are entire websites devoted to documenting the complete list of President Obama’s apologies. The Obama Administration has itself defended its apologies. Just this week, President Obama himself defended his most recent apology to Afghanistan as necessary to “calm the situation.”

So, how could Politifact rate Governor Romney’s statement as false? Tellingly, it started with this gem:

But as we looked over Obama’s remarks, we noticed that he never used the word that is the universal hallmark of apologies: “sorry.”

 It was all downhill from there with experts and historical comparisons and everything in between. (The full analysis can be found [here] .

 Even though Politifact writers by their own admission “reviewed several analyses of what Obama’s foreign policy goals are in traveling the world and readily admitting to America’s mistakes,” they could never bring themselves to the Politifact of the matter; instead they opted for politicopinion.