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 from the main PolitiFact operation.
We asked Hollingsworth to clarify whether PolitiFact had changed its policy, taking jury duty away from the franchises and centralizing the decisions with the central organization’s experienced staff of editors.
We will update this post when and if we receive any reply from Hollingsworth or PolitiFact.
Dear Josie Hollingsworth,
I’m writing a review of PolitiFact’s recent description of its “Truth-O-Meter” process. While working on that project it occurred to me that in the past PolitiFact encouraged state franchises to operate their own star chambers, with assistance from PolitiFact National as needed.
That history seems hard to reconcile with the claim that each voting member of a jury has years of PolitiFact experience.
Can you confirm for me that PolitiFact has centralized all “Truth-O-Meter” decisions, so that there is one jury making all the decisions, albeit not necessarily the same three voting members each time?
Could you in addition list for me each PolitiFact staffer who has cast a vote as a member of the “Truth-O-Meter” star chamber in the past calendar year? Precision on that length of time isn’t necessary. I’m just looking to give the public a sense of the size of the pool from which voting members are drawn.
Thanks!