An independent experimental fact-checking site, exploring and advocating ways to make fact-checking better.
“Are bureaucrats, high taxation and trial lawyers keeping America from tackling Alzheimer’s disease? Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., said they are during a speech to CPAC, the annual conservative conference.” —PolitiFact, March 20, 2013 Overview PolitiFact sets a straw man ablaze. The Facts Rep. Michele Bachmann drew PolitiFact’s attention with her March 16 speech at an annual gathering sponsored by…
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“After five years of retirement, when you’re 70 years old, you could lose $645. And after 10 more years, when you’re 80 years old, you would’ve lost a grand total of $5,113. In 25 years under chained CPI, you would’ve lost a grand total of $13,715. That’s almost $14,000 of your hard-earned money, snatched from your wallet.” –David Certner, AARP…
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To help pursue the aim of educating readers about the workings of logic and rhetoric and to help make the rating system less daunting and mysterious, we’ve updated the rating system page to include an example of each icon we might use. When we add a new icon we’ll add the image to the rating system page. Each of the…
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“45,007,000 seniors would be forced out of traditional Medicare and into a voucher program.” —Democratic Policy & Communications Center Overview Democrats’ evaluation of new Ryan budget uses language that leaves a misleading impression. The Facts The statement drawing our focus occurs right off the bat in the Democratic Policy & Communication Center’s official evaluation of the newest version of…
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“I mean, you just heard it. There is no ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases that Republicans will accept.” —David Gregory, host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” Foreword We’re aware of our relatively tight focus on budget deal rhetoric. This item struck us because a major news media figure (Gregory) beautifully parroted the gist of the administration’s budget…
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“The President has put forward a proposal that will be reflected in his budget and the principles will be reflected in his budget. And that proposal, as you know, because you covered it, that he made to the Speaker of the House demonstrated his willingness to find common ground with the Republicans on both revenue and entitlement cuts, demonstrated his…
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We’re adding a new icon to our ratings arsenal. We use fallacy icons and descriptions from yourlogicalfallacyis.com because that site did a great deal of good work designing fallacy icons—work we’d have ended up doing otherwise. Yourlogicalfallacyis.com also provides simplified descriptions of the fallacies well-suited to readers new to analyzing rhetoric in terms of logic. We use a variety of…
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“It is the President’s position that in pursuit of balanced deficit reduction that includes both entitlement reforms and revenues from tax reform, that the offer he made to Speaker Boehner remains on the table, and that if the Speaker of the House were to change his position and go back to the position he held just a few months ago,…
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“At Hobby Lobby alone, the care of thousands of women in 42 states is at risk. And if the courts side with them, that means millions of women face losing basic health coverage.” —Stephanie Schriock, EMILY’s List Overview An email from Stephanie Schriock, president of EMILY’s List, uses technically true statements to serially exaggerate the potential effects of the…
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We ran across a quotation attributed to noted Supreme Court justice Louis D. Brandeis. Curious about the context more than suspicious of its authenticity, we tried to find the source. The quotation ended up having a number of variants. “We may have a democracy or we may have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot…
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