An independent experimental fact-checking site, exploring and advocating ways to make fact-checking better.
I’m on record calling Annenberg Fact Check, perhaps better known as FactCheck.org, the gold standard for mainstream fact checking. At the same time I’m trying to make the case that there’s ample room for competition. There’s potential to supplant today’s gold standard with an improved standard. A Nov. 14 story by former PolitiFact writer Robert Farley serves as an example. …
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Having noticed a theme in fact check coverage centering on presidential challenger Mitt Romney’s claims questioning of President Obama’s saving of the auto companies, I planned a commentary article to present my case. Before I typed the first word, Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute largely beat me to it. Though Bader puts his focus on inconsistent reporting by…
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Editor’s note: A different version of this post was originally published on Oct. 31 but was subsequently lost. The Romney ad about Chrysler building Jeeps in China is apparently the fact check topic of the week. Here’s the ad: The ad makes a number of claims. GM lost 15,000 workers. China gained 15,000 workers through GM. And…
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We have an example from yesterday of a fact checker doing something a fact checker should not do. PolitiFact, the popular fact checking site associated with the Tampa Bay Times newspaper, cherry-picked a definition and ruled on a politician’s statement based on that cherry picking. PolitiFact’s mistake occurs as it checks a claim from Republican senate candidate Linda McMahon. McMahon’s…
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Earlier today I read a fine fact check by Glenn Kessler of President Obama’s claims about Libya from the second presidential debate. And a few minutes ago I read the PolitiFact version. PolitiFact: Some have parsed Obama’s remarks and argued he didn’t say the Benghazi attack was specifically an act of terror. However, given the overall context of his…
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None other than Matthew Yglesias published on Monday with a piece that jibes with part of the fact check of Vice President Joe Biden that we published on Sunday. Yglesias: So on one level, Biden’s point here is that Republicans are huge hypocrites on the subject of debt. Absolutely true. But what’s this about wars on the credit card?…
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Our fact check of Paul Ryan’s charge that the Obama administration called Syrian ruler Bashar Assad a “reformer” nearly carried a bonus critique of PolitiFact’s reporting of the context. The problem? The mainstream press appears to downplay the force of the Syrian crackdown prior to Clinton’s infamous statement on “Meet the Press.” The Tennessean provides perhaps the best example so…
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References for this site represent a modified MLA style. Wherever possible we will use references available on the Web. MLA Style requires no listing of a URL under ordinary circumstances, which works fine because we’re providing hyperlinks through the title of the reference. We omit the indentations beyond the first line of the reference because the WordPress interface makes achieving…
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The vice presidential debate is in the books. We’ve got one fact check project in the works from the Biden-Ryan debate, but the research on the project has brought to the fore the need for a standardized reference style. Once that’s ironed out it will streamline the publishing process on projects that feature journal-style references that also happen to be…
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