An independent experimental fact-checking site, exploring and advocating ways to make fact-checking better.
On April 7, 2022 PolitiFact published a fact check concerning Colorado’s new abortion law. PolitiFact drew immediate criticism on social media for failing to support its conclusion. Colorado law and late term abortion After a Facebook post said Colorado’s law codifying state abortion rights made abortion legal up until delivery, PolitiFact stepped in to fact check. PolitiFact’s fact check, by…
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In 2021 PolitiFact produced a video explainer about its “Truth-O-Meter” process. We reviewed the video in our article “PolitiFact’s misleading ‘Truth-O-Meter’ explainer” on Oct. 4, 2021. A tweet from PolitiFact’s Louis Jacobson on March 10, 2022 impels us to revisit the subject. Jacobson’s mention of the “chamber” suggested he was talking about the “star chamber” for PolitiFact New York. That…
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PolitiFact’s video explainer for critical race theory hides from its audience the movement’s postmodernist hostility to Western culture.
We saw something funny on PolitiFact’s Facebook page the other day. It was a video purporting to answer questions about PolitiFact’s trademarked “Truth-O-Meter” system for rating the relative truth of political statements. We would count the explanatory video as an unmitigated disaster. Much of PolitiFact’s video deserves critical commentary. We invite readers to watch the embedded video via YouTube before…
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On or about June 21, 2021, a Google search discovered a complaint we had submitted to the International Fact-Checking Network about PolitiFact. We’ve lobbied the IFCN for years to encourage it to adopt a more open policy with its system of complaints. We’d prefer for the public to have free access to all the complaints the IFCN receives about its…
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Somebody at the question-and-answer website Quora asked whether the website “Media Bias/Fact Check” counts as trustworthy. A number of the answers to that question conveyed our view of that site, that the subjectivity of its methodology basically makes it a category error to gauge its trustworthiness. Quoran Felix Ling, on the other hand, considered it a key point that nobody…
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The International Fact-Checking Network has yet to figure out how to balance its role as a fact-checking advocate with its role in fact-checker accountability. The IFCN peddles the image that it verifies compliance with its Code of Principles. In practice, its accountability measures count as incredibly weak. The IFCN’s 2021 treatment of its Poynter Institute stable mate PolitiFact exemplifies the…
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Zebra Fact Check has noticed a tendency among mainstream fact checkers to leave “systemic racism” alone as a fact-checking topic. The so-called “elite three” (FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, Washington Post Fact Checker) all suffer a lack of content on the subject. A Democrat can state that systemic racism exists as a reality in any number of contexts and fact-checkers will ignore it….
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Zebra Fact Check considers the avoidance of apples-to-oranges comparisons a completely basic task in fact-checking. Thus, it especially piques our interest when two mainstream fact checkers fact check the same apple fact with orange data when researching the same subject. During his inauguration speech, President Biden said the coronavirus deaths from the past year equaled the number of Americans killed…
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The IFCN’s 2020 transparency statement about its “Code of Principles” enforcement strangely lacks transparency. The IFCN does a particularly bad job of explaining how it handles complaints about its signatory organizations. The IFCN first allowed the public to lodge complaints about its signatory fact-checking organizations in 2018. Little fanfare accompanied the move, continuing through 2019. But apparently word got out…
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