When PolitiFact responded to our May 27, 2022 outreach by failing to disclose edits it made to a May 26, 2022 fact check, Zebra Fact Check sent another correction request to PolitiFact. We noted, among other things, that revising and eliding material does not count as an update according to PolitiFact’s statement of principles.
Dear Truth-O-Meter,
On May 27, 2022 I sent you a message asking you to follow PolitiFact’s statement of principles in labeling changes made to your May 26, 2022 fact check of a claim from Ted Cruz.
You changed the “update” by moving the update notice to the end of the story. The added material (the updates, that is) remain distributed, without parentheses, in the midst of the text. I would suggest that you misunderstood your own statement of principles. As written, the section on updates would make clear to readers what was added after publication. If in the pre-existing body of text, new material would occur within parentheses. If the new material occurred after the update announcement, then readers can easily see the new material occurs after the update announcement.
The method you chose obscures for readers what was originally published and what was added later as an update.
In addition, your “update” does more than simply add material to the existing story. You made substantive changes without disclosing them to readers.
The Internet Archive has that story, should it have escaped your notice/memory.
Again, please identify the changes to the story properly and document those changes in accord with your statement of principles.
Thanks!