In case people are not reading the comments on our results, Andrew Tyndall made some criticism of our recent Mike Murphy fact-check which is worth reading:

This first fact check fails. If Murphy had said: “Violent crime in Arizona has increased during the Obama administration” then the FBI statistics from early 2009 would be relevant.

The force of the “…as a result of unauthorized immigration…” however means that even in a general climate of declining crime, that small subset of violent crime that happens to “result” (whatever that means) from unauthorized immigration may have increased, against the trend. The FBI statistics do not address that question.

In this instance, crowd-sourcer Kelly can be excused, since Meet The Facts’ own paraphrase contains that same error. Murphy did not say that “AZ violent crime is up due to unauthorized immigration” as this post’s headline claims.

Or perhaps it is the transcript that is confusing.

If Murphy meant: “Violent crime in Arizona, as a result of unauthorized immigration, has increased during the Obama administration” then the declining crime rate would make him FALSE.

The lack of commas makes Meet the Facts FALSE instead.

This seems like valid criticism. When I (at least) watched the show and then reread the transcript and wrote the summary post of checkable statements, I understood the context to be as we had outlined. That Mr. Murphy was stating that violent crime had increased in Arizona as a result of a failure by the Obama administration to control unauthorized immigration. Then that the Obama administration had done nothing to counter unauthorized immigration in Arizona. These are some standard talking points that some conservative politicians and pundits are employing around the immigration debate. (examples here, here, here, and here) That being said, this was not an easy “quote” to use in the sense it was broken up like it was, and not grounded in specifics.

Let’s look at the whole thing. (In the original summary post I had condensed Mr. Murphy’s statements.)

MR. MURPHY:  But let me–let me…

MR. GREGORY:  Thirty seconds, go ahead.

MR. MURPHY:  It’s a lawless frontier because of the failure of the Obama administration to protect the American border.

MS. NOONAN:  Yes.

MR. MURPHY:  People are getting killed and murdered.  It has become really bad in Arizona.  This came…

MR. GREGORY:  Right.  This goes back before Obama, though, to be fair.

MR. MURPHY:  It–but it’s gotten, it’s gotten worse and worse.

MS. NOONAN:  But it has gotten worse.

MR. MURPHY:  It’s a crisis the Obama people have failed to address.  They’ve had a year to do something, they’ve done nothing.  McCain’s standing up for his constituents there.

Now a mistake we may have made is that it is surely impossible to know for sure if Mr. Murphy meant overall violent crime, or violent crime specific to border areas, or specifically murders, etc. I guess the question is then, is this statement uncheckable?

The statement “It’s a lawless frontier because of the failure of the Obama administration to protect the American border.” as a statement of fact is probably not true. There are indeed laws that govern our borders, and President Obama’s administration has spent resources to aide in the enforcement of those laws. Whether or not those measures were enough then becomes a subjective argument, or a matter of policy opinion, which we cannot approach.

The statement: “People are getting killed and murdered.” is undoubtedly true as surely there have been murders in Arizona. Mr. Murphy certainly seems to be connecting the “lawless frontier” to the murders however. So then the question is, how are people being murdered in relation to the “lawless frontier”

“It has become really bad in Arizona.” could be a subjective statement.

“It–but it’s gotten, it’s gotten worse and worse.” could apply to any number of things I suppose: the overall “lawlessness,” the quantity of murders, or some specific characteristic of the murders. But when prefaced by the Gregory statement “Right.  This goes back before Obama, though, to be fair.” it seems reasonable to assume that Mr. Murphy means that the lawlessness of the frontier in which people are getting killed has gotten worse since the Obama administration has been in power, as a result of actions they have not taken. It also seems reasonable to assume that the linking of “killings and murders” would make sense. The intention of suggesting the Obama administration is culpability is confirmed by Mr. Murphy’s next statement, that “It’s a crisis the Obama people have failed to address.  They’ve had a year to do something, they’ve done nothing.”

Whether or not the Obama administration has “failed to address” the crisis seems like it is a subjective statement. That “they’ve done nothing” is not, and is provably false.

If we are to assume that Mr. Murphy means only crime or violent crime in the border regions of Arizona, that would also appear to be false, as this Arizona Republic article reports.

So are we allowed to insert the commas as Mr. Tyndall indicates we would have to in order for our conclusion to be correct? Was Mr. Murphy too vague here to make his statement checkable? Or is it reasonable to assume, for the purpose of this fact-check, that he is making the argument as we summarized? How can we improve this fact-check? We would love to hear people’s thoughts…