An independent experimental fact-checking site, exploring and advocating ways to make fact-checking better.
Email sent to PolitiFact’s Angie Drobnic Holan and Jon Z. Greenberg on May 10, 2018. I’m currently writing up a fact check of statements PolitiFact has supported. First, that the BCRA’s Medicaid cut was aimed at reducing Medicaid enrollment (Holan). Second, that the BCRA eliminates the ACA option for states to expand Medicaid (Greenberg). The other day during your Reddit…
Read more
ZEBRA FACT CHECK From the start, the rating systems for PolitiFact and the Washington Post Fact Checker have drawn criticism over their inherent subjectivity. At the same time, such systems draw some strong support from members of the fact-checking community (a Duke Reporters Lab article from 2016 estimates a majority of fact-checking organizations use such rating systems). PolitiFact’s founder, Bill Adair, reportedly participated…
Read more
Email message sent to Michael Wagner on April 26, 2018: Following the announcement that the International Fact-Checking Network would serve as a type of quality control organization for fact checkers, I have carried the concern that the verification process lacks teeth. The issue of error correction served as the issue of greatest concern. The IFCN verification process appeared to place…
Read more
Upon finding dubiously sourced information in a byline-less Des Moines Register editorial, Zebra Fact Check reached out to try to find the primary source backing the editorial’s claims. Quickly we realized that the editorial had very probably borrowed, without credit, material from the Whitehouse.gov website. We started our outreach solely with the purpose of obtaining information about the primary source….
Read more
After we noticed an April 11, 2018 newspaper opinion article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette making misleading statements about Zebra Fact Check and another site I help run, we tried to contact the author, Brenda Looper, via the email address listed on the Democrat-Gazette’s website. We sent the first email on April 11, 2018 and the second on April 13, 2018….
Read more
(Post-publication update note: We published this with no title. We added the title promptly) Email outreach to PolitiFact’s Allison Colburn, Louis Jacobson, Angie Holan and Aaron Sharockman, Sent March 29, 2018. Dear PolitiFact folks, As most of you are probably aware, PolitiFact rated charges the ACA cut Medicare as “Half True” or worse (mostly worse, were you to tell the truth about…
Read more
After writing an article for PolitiFact Bias containing criticisms of a March 3, 2018 PolitiFact fact check, we sent the following email to the writer and editor asking for either a correction or explanation of what looks like a core error. We copied the email to PolitiFact Editor Angie Drobnic Holan, PolitiFact Executive Director Aaron Sharockman and International Fact-Checking Network…
Read more
We sent the following message to Alison Mitchell of the Congressional Research Service in an attempt to clarify the CBO’s language about the “costs” of employment-based insurance under CHIP reauthorization. I’m a fact-checking journalist looking at claims made about the CHIP program renewal. I’ve run across your name more than once while trying to find information on the relationship between…
Read more
As part of a critical assessement of a PolitiFact fact check, we sent an email to PolitiFact Editor Angie Drobnic Holan and PolitiFact Executive Director Aaron Sharockman. If you wonder why I write to you less frequently these days, it is because trying to communicate errors to PolitiFact via email counts as one of the least transparent processes one could…
Read more
We reached out to the Congressional Budget Office to try to get clarification on its report on the 10-year budgetary effect of CHIP reauthorization. A PolitiFact fact check brought to my attention an apparent discrepancy in CBO’s report on the budget effects of extending the CHIP program for 10 years. The text of the report says CHIP saves money because services…
Read more