An independent experimental fact-checking site, exploring and advocating ways to make fact-checking better.
Aug. 29, 2016 email from Zebra Fact Check The fact-checking website PolitiFact recently published a fact check that was heavily reliant on a survey published by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The fact check noted that the survey had too many methodological problems to count as solid scientific evidence, yet the story’s conclusion made it appear that each of you,…
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Aug. 29, 2016 email from Zebra Fact Check (addressed to Sheri Bauman, Dorothy Espelage, and Jan Urbanski): The fact-checking website PolitiFact recently published a fact check that was heavily reliant on a survey published by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The fact check noted that the survey had too many methodological problems to count as solid scientific evidence, yet the…
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A reader pointed out we put the wrong date on Thomas Jefferson’s letter to Col. David Humphries in our article about George Washington’s views on the right to bear arms. We had “1889” as the year. The letter was dated 1789. We have altered the article accordingly, including a correction/update notice at the end and an update to our list…
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“TRUE: Mike Pence advocated for ‘conversion therapy’” —Headline of a PolitiFact California fact check of a statement by California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, July 27, 2016 Summary PolitiFact’s California franchise somehow mistakes no evidence at all for clear evidence, apparently conflating “sexual behavior” with “sexual orientation.” The Facts On July 27 at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, California Lt….
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It is July 21, 2016, and we’re seeing media stories about the short-lived outrage over the plagiarized lines in Melania Trump’s Republican National Convention speech from July 17. Let us pause to shed a tear for the hypocritical mainstream media. Back in 2014, our research led us to stumble across an apparent case of plagiarism at the Des Moines Register. We tried to interest some…
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The American Press Institute published a call for better fact-checking on July 8, 2016. The authors, Jane Elizabeth of the American Press Institute and Alexios Mantzarlis of the Poynter Institute, set forth a checklist of items for fact checkers to consider as benchmarks. Without further ado: “Be the best about sourcing” Though we have worked to stand second-to-none in sourcing…
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“Cheney wrongly claimed that the U.S. prosecuted Japanese soldiers ‘for a lot of stuff’ but ‘not for waterboarding.’ While they weren’t solely prosecuted for waterboarding, Japanese soldiers were prosecuted for torturing American prisoners, including the use of ‘water torture.’” —Annenberg Fact Check Editor Eugene Kiely, from the FactCheck.org article “Cheney’s Tortured Facts” Overview Why pick solely on PolitiFact and…
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There’s no solid evidence that waterboarding works. https://t.co/rWBEn8n9r2 — Bill Adair (@BillAdairDuke) May 24, 2016 Bill Adair, Duke University’s Knight professor of computational journalism, helped found PolitiFact. That likely helps explain his “Truth-O-Meter”-ish Twitter avatar. Adair’s tweet about waterboarding helps show the way mainstream fact checkers help reinforce false partisan beliefs, in this case the popular narrative that torture…
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We sent the following message to Professor Darius Rejali on May 25, 2016. Dear Professor Darius Rejali, I’m a fact-checking journalist working on the issue of torture. Specifically, whether torture works. I’m writing to you because PolitiFact has cited statements from you saying that torturers do not know when tortured prisoners are telling the truth (PolitiFact uses that as an…
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Quote Check: Attributed to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger: “Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries.” Overview We found no good evidence to support attributing the above quotation to Kissinger. The Facts…
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