Unintentional Bias

Though I haven't seen as much of it recently, the last election cycle had a lot of folks online pointing to PolitiFacts as an unbiased review of the claims and statements made by various politicians.

Frankly, I never liked the site very much - the few times I checked out some of their commentaries, I ran into obvious word-games and distortions. Nothing blatant, but they always seemed willing to give the benefit of the doubt to more liberal candidates, and more willing to hold conservative's feet to the fire. Much like the writers at snopes.com do - if it's an article debuking Bigfoot's alien love affair, then I can be pretty sure I'm getting the straight scoop. Let politics enter the discussion, though, and you immediately have a 5-page deconstructionist analysis of why Hillary didn't really mean what she said.

So it comes as no surprise to see that bias again. What is interesting this time around is that it's been ferreted out and documented. For example:

In these latest examples the circumstances are virtually identical -- both candidates voted against a law they generally supported because the laws were overly broad and would have unintended consequences -- but the ratings applied are much more favorable to [the Democratic candidate].

Different editors, bad standards... or just an unintentional bias? Oh, well. I guess it's just another unrelated incident - completely coincidental, don't you know! Obviously the overwhelmingly right-wing media in the country are just trying too hard to overcompensate for their well-known favoritism of right-wing politicians.