Author Archive: Bryan W. White

A reply, of sorts, from the International Fact-Checking Network, March 20, 2024

Our trip to the Poynter Institute, followed by an email to the person I met at Poynter carrying a forwarded email from Aug. 9, 2023, ended up bearing some fruit. This page documents our email outreach thanking Alex Mahadevan for greeting us a Poynter, IFCN Director Angie Drobnic Holan’s reply, my reply to Holan and company and Poynter president Neil…
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Slate helps spread PolitiFact’s false narrative

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Is Donald Trump the least accurate politician PolitiFact has ever fact-checked? PolitiFact has said so, even publishing an article devoted to the idea. But Zebra Fact Check showed the fact checkers don’t have the data to back the claim. Some other politicians have equal or perhaps better claims to the title, ignoring for the sake of argument that “Truth-O-Meter” ratings…
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Correction requests sent to Slate, Feb. 5, Feb. 6, and Feb. 22, 2024

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Slate published false information from interviewee and PolitiFact employee Louis Jacobson in a Feb. 1, 2024 article. We sent two correction requests which Slate appeared to initially heed. But Slate changed its update in a misleading way, so we sent a third correction request on Feb. 22, 2024. That request, unfortunately, has a mistake on our part. One of our…
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Seeking the elusive Poynter Institute correction

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On Aug. 3, 2023 and Feb. 1, 2024 (x2) we wrote to the International Fact-Checking Network at the Poynter Institute asking for corrections to cases where the IFCN credits/blames Bryan W. White (this author) with resolving unresolved complaints about IFCN signatory organizations. Yet the Poynter Institute has not corrected the apparently false reports and has not explained its decision not…
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PolitiFact stands pat with misleading Bush v. Gore narrative

PolitiFact published an explainer of the Trump ballot removal case before the Supreme Court. The Feb. 8, 2024 article had what we consider an ambiguous description of the Supreme Court case Bush v. Gore from 2000: The last time the Supreme Court played such a pivotal role in the presidential race was in 2000, when the justices ruled 5-4 to…
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Review: ‘Bias in Fact Checking?: An Analysis of Partisan Trends Using PolitiFact Data’

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An Honors Thesis by a Duke University economics student recently came to my attention. Writing in 2023, Thomas A. Colicchio mathematically analyzed PolitiFact “Truth-O-Meter” ratings in an attempt to objectively measure bias. We found an error in his approach that renders a portion of his findings effectively moot. As for the rest, it helps build the case against PolitiFact’s supposed…
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What is a “small error” at PolitiFact?

Jeff D, the co-creator of the “PolitiFact Bias” website, and I have often joked that PolitiFact’s principles are more like guidelines than actual rules. That’s a reference to a classic line from Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean,” about the so-called “pirate’s code.” And so it is with PolitiFact’s principles. PolitiFact’s corrections policy offers it an easy out from its responsibility…
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