Email outreach to Kaiser Family Foundation/PolitiFact reporter Victoria Knight
Zebra Fact Check reached out to Victoria Knight of Kaiser Family Foundation and PolitiFact in an attempt to resolve discrepant reporting by those two entities.
Resource pages
Seeking clarification or correction from Kaiser Family Foundation
A research tangent from an apparent PolitiFact error led Zebra Fact Check to a Kaiser Family Foundation page claiming U.S. law does not permit abortion up until the moment of birth. KFF offered no information to substantiate its claim. So we filled out and submitted a form asking either for the backing information or else a correction. That was on…
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Two complaints about PolitiFact sent to the IFCN, April 19, 2022
After PolitiFact failed to act for over a week in response to two correction requests we sent on April 11, 2022, Zebra Fact Check sent complaints about PolitiFact to the International Fact-Checking Network. Both complaints alleged PolitiFact failed to adhere to its commitment to an open and honest corrections policy.
Another correction request submitted to PolitiFact on April 11, 2022
A PolitiFact fact check published April 5, 2022 resulted in justified pushback on social media. Zebra Fact Check summarized the objections in the form of a correction request, submitted on April 11, 2022. On April 12, 2022 we followed up our first email with one correcting a mistake in our correction request. We will update this item if and when…
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Correction request submitted to PolitiFact, April 11, 2022 (Updated)
A PolitiFact fact check from April 8, 2022 made an ambiguous and misleading claim comparing costs of insulin in the United States to elsewhere. Accordingly, we asked PolitiFact for a correction. We will update this post when and if we note PolitiFact has either corrected the item or otherwise responded to the complaint. Update/Correction note: We changed the background description…
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Correction request sent to PolitiFact, Feb. 8, 2022
PolitiFact’s Jan. 28, 2022 fact check of a claim by Fox News’ Sean Hannity mistakenly rated his claim as though it used an “or” conditional instead of an “and” conditional. The resulting conclusion (“False”) flew in the face of logic. We noticed a fair amount of pushback against PolitiFact’s conclusion on Twitter, but after PolitiFact spent days making no move…
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Complaint to the International Fact-Checking Network about PolitiFact, Jan. 21, 2022
On Jan. 21, 2022, after PolitiFact declined to act in response to our Jan. 14, 2022 correction request, we sent this formal complaint to the International Fact-Checking Network, noting on the complaint form that PolitiFact’s inaction breached its pledge to “scrupulously” adhere to an open and honest policy on corrections. Updated a few minutes after publication to add the date…
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Correction request sent to PolitiFact, Jan. 14, 2022
After trying and failing to secure a correction from PolitiFact and fact checker Louis Jacobson using Twitter, Zebra Fact Check sent an email to “[email protected]” in order to obtain the correction. PolitiFact had quoted Hillary Rodham Clinton as saying “so many women are still paid less for men than the same work,” but Clinton hadn’t said that.
Email outreach to PolitiFact’s Josie Hollingsworth, Sept. 30, 2021
On Sept. 30, 2021 Zebra Fact Check sent an email inquiry to PolitiFact’s editor of audience engagement, Josie Hollingsworth. Hollingsworth claimed in an explainer video that “Truth-O-Meter” jury members have multiple years working with PolitiFact’s rating system. We found that hard to reconcile with PolitiFact’s past practice of having state franchises provide their own “Truth-O-Meter” juries, with assistance as needed…
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Correction request sent to Repustar/FactSparrow (Updated/Corrected)
Fact checker Repustar, represented on Twitter as “FactSparrow,” published a fact brief that (we believed) confused hospital admissions for coronavirus with coronavirus hospitalizations, though the CDC reports very different statistics for each. After seeing no movement on the issue based on Twitter outreach, Zebra Fact Check emailed Repustar to encourage a correction to the misinformation (we believed we detected). Update…
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