An independent experimental fact-checking site, exploring and advocating ways to make fact-checking better.
On Feb. 20, 2014, PolitiFact Oregon posted a new rating relating to the gender wage gap. PolitiFact Oregon rated it “Mostly True” that women in Oregon make 79 cents on the dollar compared to men for the same work. It was a notable rating, since other PolitiFact ratings on the gender wage gap, while not exactly a model of consistency,…
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“Myth: Obamacare hurts businesses.” —The Democratic National Committee on its “Your Republican Uncle” website, Nov. 25, 2013 Overview The DNC’s attempt to turn truth into myth creates a distortion of a distortion. The Facts In late 2013, the Democratic National Committee created a website it says gives Democrats answers to Republican myths. We continue our fact check series of…
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“Myth: The website doesn’t work so people can’t sign up for health care even if they wanted to.” —The Democratic National Committee, December 2013 on the “Your Republican Uncle” website Overview The federal exchange site will cause some users to miss deadlines for obtaining insurance. The DNC holds back details it ought to know well. The Facts This myth-busting…
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A critical review of Lying in Politics: Evidence from the US, a working paper by Alessandro Bucciol and Luca Zarri Researchers Alessandro Bucciol (assistant professor of econometrics) and Luca Zarri (associate professor of economics), both of the University of Verona, wanted to examine the tendency of politicians to lie. But they were confronted the problem of objectively assessing whether and…
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“Barack Obama, in State of the Union, says women make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns … We rate the claim Mostly True.” —PolitiFact, from a Jan. 28 fact check of President Obama’s 2014 State of the Union speech Overview If the presidential State of the Union address is the Super Bowl for fact checkers then PolitiFact…
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“Myth: Obamacare isn’t working.” —The Democratic National Committee, December 2013 on its “Your Republican Uncle” website Overview An ambiguous claim misleads, as ambiguous claims often do. The Facts Having completed fact checks dealing with the Democratic National Committee’s claims about the economy, we move on to the DNC’s set of claims about health care at its “Answering Your Republican…
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How PolitiFact’s 2013 “Lie of the Year” selection was even worse than you thought It was Nov. 4, 2013, and insurance companies had already started to send cancellation notices to customers whose policies failed to meet the administration’s “essential benefits” standards under the Affordable Care Act. The media recognized the failure of the president’s pledge that Americans could keep the…
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“Myth: All of President Obama’s new taxes make life impossible for small businesses.” —Democratic National Committee, Nov. 27, 2013, on the “Your Republican Uncle” website Overview Fourth in our series on claims from the Democratic National Committee’s “Your Republican Uncle” website, we look at the claim that all of Obama’s new taxes don’t make life impossible for small businesses. …
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Goodbye, 2013. Hello 2014. It’s time to review Zebra Fact Check’s first full year. We produced 57 fact checks in 2013, or just over one per week. Seventeen of those were fact checks of other mainstream fact checkers, such as FactCheck.org or PolitiFact. We also checked one claim from Consumer Reports and another from the partisan Media Matters for America….
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“Myth: Democrats like President Obama have raised my taxes.” —The Democratic National Committe’s “Your Republican Uncle” website, Nov. 27, 2013 Overview Third in our series on claims from the Democratic National Committee’s “Your Republican Uncle” website, we have an oddly worded implicit claim that President Obama did not raise taxes. Obama has cut taxes and raised taxes, sometimes raising…
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