Politifact's Dogged Commitment to the Truth (Update)

The St. Petersburg Times Politifact reported last month that the Republicans were telling a "Pants on Fire" falsehood by claiming that cap and trade would cost the average household $3,100 per year. MIT professor John Reilly, whose study the GOP used to make its estimate, told Politifact that the cost would be $215 per year.

Today, I reported that Reilly admitted that he made a "boneheaded mistake in an excel spread sheet", and, therefore, the cost would be $800, nearly four times more than Politifact reported.

What's more, Reilly's estimate jumps to $3,900 per household when you include the $3,100 that the average household would have to pay in higher energy prices due to cap-and-trade. Reilly believes that because the government will be 'returning' that $3,100 per household to the economy--whether through rebates or government programs, it matters not--it doesn't 'cost' the average household anything. Politifact apparently accepts this odd reasoning.

Here's how Politifact's editor Bill Adair responded this evening to another email asking if he would correct his false report:

Hey John.

Thanks for your interest in that item. I haven't had a chance to read your story. I'll take a look in the next few days.

Bill Adair

His email signature contains the Politifact motto: "PolitiFact: Journalism that tells the truth".

Perhaps Adair should add "when we get around to it" to the end of the motto.

Update: Adair emails:

Hey John -

We take questions of accuracy seriously and reviewed this one when you first approached Alex Lane. At that point, we didn't see sufficient evidence to run a correction. But I was planning to look into it further.

That was last weekend. On Monday, we became a little distracted by other events and I had to go to Florida for a couple of days. I am trying to catch up on several hundred e-mails that came in before yours. I'm also going to be off for a long weekend that was planned long ago.

I will review our story, the MIT study and the EPA study and see if our story warrants an update or a correction. But I thought your posting last night was unfair and a cheap shot.

Bill Adair

Washington Bureau Chief, St. Petersburg Times
Editor, PolitiFact.com

For the record, I first emailed Adair and his reporter with information reported in my article on April 15 and April 16.