Politifact’s Double Standard for Conservative versus Liberal Claims on Trayvon

Posted on July 19, 2013 by soopermexican 3 Comments

One of my most viewed posts was a calculation I made about how many blacks had murdered other blacks in the time frame between the death of Trayvon Martin and the verdict in the George Zimmerman case. I extrapolated the number from an article which cited statistics from the BJS:

A 2007 special report released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, reveals that approximately 8,000 — and, in certain years, as many as 9,000 African Americans are murdered annually in the United States.

When Politifact came asking questions, I admitted that the number was not meant to be an exact measure, but an approximation given the statistics available. This was not good enough for Politifacts, which many have accused of being biased against conservatives, and gave my article a “Mostly False” rating.

In my analysis, I simply took statistics that were reported in 2007. Politifact dismissed this based on the fact that such black on black murders were reported to have fallen later:

Using the number 8,500, that translated to 21.65 blacks murdered each day by other blacks. So the blogger came up with a mathematical formula: 21.65 times 513 days=11,106. That 8,500 figure seems high, though, especially if we look at more recent figures. The FBI reported for 2011 that 6,329 black people were murdered, for example.

So let’s take the lower figure. If 93% of murders committed against blacks are from other blacks, then this brings us to a figure of 5,886 per year, or 16 deaths per day. Multiplying by the 503 days cited, we arrive at 8,111, which is indeed lower than the 10,865 number I extrapolated. My number using a number taken from 5 years of data, is 33% greater than the lower one using Politifacts’ statistic from one year (the average over 6 years from 2006-2011 is higher, 6,812).

However, in another Politifact report, they rated “half true” a claim from a Florida Senator Chris Smith:

“…since the [Stand Your Ground] law’s passage, deaths due to self defense have jumped over 250 percent.”

They found that self-defense deaths had increased by 200%, not 250%. The difference here is that he exaggerated by 25%, and the article goes on to explain why the number may not be representative or point to a correlation to the law:

David LaBahn, president of the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys based in Washington, said the increase in reported justifiable homicides could be the result of any number of factors — including overall crime or population growth.

So Politifact finds a Democrat exaggerating a number by 25%, with critics showing there may not be a correlation at all, and gives it a “Half True” rating, while it gives a “Mostly False” rating to my extrapolation, which is 33%* higher when taken compared only to one year.

Finally, the most troubling aspect of their dismissal of my post is the following:

Also, this claim lacks important context. Yes, it’s true that the majority of black murder victims are murdered by blacks, but the same holds true for whites: Most whites are murdered by whites. And in both cases, this race statistic is not available for all murders, but only ones where the race of both perpetrator and victim can be determined.

So they take the white-on-white murder claim as true in order to argue against my article, but then also say it’s not accurate when determining my interpolated number. Ironically, they are completely ignoring the context of the claim that I’m making. The reason this percentage of black-on-black crime is significant is because leaders of the black community as acting as if the Zimmerman case is representative of racism in America that takes the lives of blacks. It isn’t. Further, while the real numbers of white homicides and black homicides are similar, there is about 7 times as many homicides per capita among blacks.

This startling figure isn’t even mentioned in the Politifact article.

Because of the abject failure in objectivity from Politifact, the Mexynvestigative team and statistical analysis action group gives Politifact a MexyFacts rating of “2 moldy nasty Taco Bell tacos found behind the sofa after 3 months out of ten delicious tacos.”