MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Tuesday lambasted PolitiFact, calling the fact-checking site “truly terrible.”
Maddow was responding to the PolitiFact’s “Half True” rating of tennis legend Martina Navratilova’s claim that 29 states allow employeers to fire workers for being gay, even though the site acknowledged that she was correct if “you frame this statement in the context of blanket protections by states.”
“Still, even in those 29 states, many gay and lesbian employees do have protections, either because they work for the government, because they live in a city that bars such discrimination, or because they work for a company that has pledged not to discriminate based on sexual orientation,” the site’s ruling read. “On balance, we rate Navratilova’s claim Half True.”
That set Maddow off.
“They fact-checked a statement about state law, found it to be true, decided it didn’t seem seemly or whatever to actually just call it true, so then they researched other unrelated information about how there are other kinds of things besides states like, ‘Some companies decide they don’t want to discriminate and doesn’t that count for something?’ No! Because that is not the statement you are fact-checking,” Maddow said. “The statement you were supposed to be fact-checking is true and until someone figures out how to sue you to retrieve the meaning of the word ‘fact’ from the dark and and airless hole you have stuffed it into, Politifact, than no, it is not okay for you to just make this stuff up. You are truly terrible.”
On its Twitter feed Tuesday, PolitiFact urged Maddow’s viewers to read its ruling on Navratilova’s claim.
Hello @maddow viewers, read our factcheck for yourself and see what you think: ow.ly/kOi2Q
— PolitiFact (@politifact) May 8, 2013
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This post has been updated.
h/t HuffPo
