Tag Archive: PunditFact

The importance of interpretation: a PolitiFact example

PolitiFact published a brief guide to its fact check process recently on Aug. 20, 2014. It wasn’t bad at all. PolitiFact’s PunditFact published a fact check of former Texas congressman Tom DeLay on Aug. 31, 2014. It was pretty bad. How does this happen? How does a solid outline for fact checking claims turn into amateurish and ridiculous fact checks?…
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Zombie apocalypse plan? PunditFact vs. Palin

Zombie Apocalypse dispute

“Palin wrote on Facebook, “As unbelievable as it sounds, your tax dollars are funding the federal government’s Zombie Apocalypse Plan. I kid you not.” … Palin’s claim is False.” —PunditFact, from a May 28, 2014 fact check of Sarah Palin     Overview PunditFact’s ruling hints it used zombie-like research methods to fact-check Palin, followed by zombie-like stubbornness in refusing…
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Three-quarters of employer plans already compliant with the ACA?

“[T]he International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans … found that about three-quarters of all employer-sponsored health plans already meet the criteria of the Affordable Care Act.” —PunditFact, Nov. 20, 2013   Overview PunditFact, the pundit-checking branch of PolitiFact, misuses a 2013 survey by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans to help excuse insurance plan cancellations under the ACA. The…
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PunditFact vs Glenn Beck on losing health insurance

PunditFact logo with Glenn Beck inset

“[Glenn] Beck said that when Obama promised that people could keep the plans they like, he knew that half of all Americans would lose their health insurance. Beck is wrong in every respect. The primary study he relied on contradicts his number, saying that at most 50 million people would lose coverage, not 125 million.” —PunditFact, Nov. 6, 2013  …
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