An independent experimental fact-checking site, exploring and advocating ways to make fact-checking better.
Obama campaign ad: “It’s said that ‘Character is what we do when we think no one is looking.’ Mitt Romney thought no one was looking when he attacked 47 percent of Americans. His companies shipped jobs overseas. His plan cuts millionaires’ taxes but raises yours. He’ll voucherize Medicare and make “catastrophic cuts” to education. So remember what Romney said and…
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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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David Axelrod: “Governor Romney, the centerpiece and really the only piece of his plan that is real is this $5 trillion tax cut, $2 trillion in extra spending for the Pentagon, no plan to pay for, it and deregulate Wall Street.“ Overview The “$5 trillion tax cut” language relies on creative math and a contested study from the…
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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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President Obama: “Governor Romney, I’m glad that you recognize that Al Qaida is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not Al Qaida; you said Russia, in the 1980s, they’re now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War’s been…
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Mitt Romney: “And then the president began what I have called an apology tour, of going to various nations in the Middle East and criticizing America.” President Obama: “Nothing Governor Romney just said is true, starting with this notion of me apologizing. This has been probably the biggest whopper that’s been told during the course of this campaign. And every…
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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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President Obama: “The day after the attack, Governor, I stood in the Rose Garden, and I told the American people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened, that this was an act of terror.” Overview President Obama used an ambiguous phrase that was more or less technically correct to misleadingly answer Gov. Romney’s…
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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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