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PolitiFact responds to Rachel Maddow

Rachel Maddow made yet another stinging attack on PolitiFact last night, calling the Tampa Bay Times' fact-checking project "a disaster" (see video).

Via email, PolitiFact editor and Tampa Bay Times Washington bureau chief Bill Adair responds to the criticism:

Our goal at PolitiFact is to use the Truth-O-Meter to show the relative accuracy of a political claim. In this case, we rated it Mostly True because we felt that while the number was short of a majority, it was still a plurality. Forty percent of Americans consider themselves conservative, 35 percent moderate and 21 percent liberal. It wasn't quite a majority, but was close. We don't expect our readers to agree with every ruling we make. We have published nearly 5,000 Truth-O-Meter ratings and it's natural that anyone can find some they disagree with. But even if you don't agree with every call we make, our research and analysis helps you sort out what's true in the political discourse.

Unfortunately, Adair's defense serves to prove Maddow's point and negate his own.

In the statement in question, Florida Senator Marco Rubio said the majority of Americans were conservatives. In his statement, Adair admits that "the number was short of a majority." Yet PolitiFact arrives at the conclusion that Rubio's statement is "Mostly True."

"It wasn't quite a majority, but was close," Adair writes in his email.

So Rubio's statement isn't true. It's false.