The fact-checking industry has grown tremendously in recent years, and mostly for good reason. Half-truths, outrageous rumors, and outright fabrications are common enough without the Internet. They are ubiquitous online. When fact-checking is well done (by, for instance, Glenn Kessler at the…
Fake News. Here’s “What Happened.”
The Associated Press is running with a rather tendentious headline at the moment, "AP FACT CHECK: On climate science, most GOP candidates fail." For their fact check, the AP asked a group of Ph.D. scientists to grade presidential candidates based on their statements about global warming. To keep…
This morning, Washington Post fact checker Glen Kessler decided to fact check Marco Rubio's statement at the latest GOP debate that Hillary Clinton lied about al Qaeda's involvement in the September 11, 2012 attack in Benghazi. In public, Clinton initially attributed the attack to spontaneous…
The Washington Post fact checker looks at "repeated, misleading claim that Planned Parenthood ‘provides’ mammograms." Michelle Ye Hee Lee's conclusion is spot-on:
The media have been quite zealously attacking Ben Carson for criticizing aspects of Islam that he believes are incompatible with the American political system. The skeptical among us -- and that, unfortunately, must include every discerning consumer of mainstream media -- would note that much of…
For several years now, PolitiFact has been waging war on anyone who points out that America has the smallest Navy it's had in nearly a century. Mitt Romney pointed out this fact in a presidential debate in 2012 and PolitiFact rated his statement "pants on fire" even though the number of ships in…
PolitiFact, which has really been outdoing itself with its coverage of the Planned Parenthood scandal, has come up with another doozy. Here is the statement PolitiFact chose to evaluate:
Planned Parenthood now finds itself being heavily criticized after being caught on tape brokering fetal body parts. Fortunately for them, they have no shortage of allies in the media, including PolitiFact.
Following Marco Rubio's announcement that he's running for president, the Associated Press decided to "fact check" some of the candidate's rhetoric. If you follow the news, you're probably aware that "fact checking" is more often than not a lame attempt to cloak partisan opinion behind a veil of…
On March 10, Senator Ted Cruz said the following: “On tax -reform, we, right now, have more words in the IRS code than there are in the Bible—not a one of them as good.” It’s no surprise that Republicans in Congress tend to hate taxes and love the Bible, and as Republican rhetoric goes, this is…
Yesterday, Senator Ted Cruz said the following: “On tax reform, we, right now, have more words in the IRS code than there are in the Bible — not a one of them as good.”
Recently, Rudy Giuliani raised some eyebrows when he got in a heated discussion with Michael Eric Dyson on Meet the Press. He was discussing the killing of Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri and said the following: “Ninety-three percent of blacks in America are killed by…
From last week, another example of PolitiFact's incredible bias:
Rep. Tom Cotton, the Republican nominee in the Arkansas Senate race, is running an ad highlighting his leadership in trying to fix Washington's broken farm bill legislation. The ad isn't particularly controversial ormaking false claims, in any discernible way and yet "fact checkers" at…
Last week, after the President started receiving a torrent of criticism over his broken promise that Americans who wanted to could keep their health insurance plan under Obamacare, I wrote an item asking the question "Will PolitiFact Ever Correct Its Biggest Obamacare Error?" I noted that the fact…
PolitiFact has a pretty terrible and rather partisan history of Obamacare fact checks. However, there's one, in particular, about Obamacare that remains especially puzzling. It's the "half-true" rating the organization gave when President Obama promised that, If you like your health insurance, you…
The Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA) at George Mason University is out with a new study on media fact checkers, and unsurprisingly, their results suggest that PolitiFact has it out for Republicans. Dylan Byers at Politico summarized CMPA's findings:
Earlier today, I wrote a lengthy critique pointing out the inconvenient fact that PolitiFact's Lie of the Year -- "The Romney campaign's ad on Jeeps made in China" -- turns out to be true. It involves a lot of complicated back and forth, so I encouage you to read that post if you're not familiar…
Last month, PolitiFact selected its "Lie of the Year." Given PolitiFact's dubious record of singling out Republicans for lying far more often than Democrats, you probably could have guessed the winner of this particular sweepstakes was a Mitt Romney campaign ad:
Over at Huffington Post, Dan Froomkin has an interview with Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein titled, "How the Mainstream Press Bungled the Single Biggest Story of the 2012 Campaign." It turns out, the single biggest story the media ignored is the fact that Republicans lying liars, to paraphrase the…
Since I've become a pretty outspoken critic of "fact checking", I often get asked if there's any media fact checking efforts I approve of. The short answer is no, not really.
A few weeks ago, I attended a panel discussion at the National Press Club where the heads of all of the major media 'fact checking' organizations participated. (I wrote about the event here.)
In these pages last week, The Scrapbook noted that a second academic survey had been done suggesting that PolitiFact—the largest of the major media “fact checking” organizations—is biased against Republicans. The survey, by the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University,…
Bill Clinton’s address to the Democratic convention is widely seen as a pivotal moment in President Obama’s reelection campaign. It was an undeniably powerful speech, but particularly noteworthy were his remarks about the popular and bipartisan 1996 welfare reform Clinton himself signed into law.…
Yesterday, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. the heads of all of the major media "fact checking" organizations convened for a panel discussion. On the panel were PolitiFact editor Bill Adair, Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler, the Associated Press's Jim Drinkard, and it was…
Over at Red State, a blogger makes a note of an incredible Washington Post fact checker column yesterday. The column ostensibly fact checked a series of claims made by pro-life groups criticizing Obama on his abortion record. I don't want to get into all of the back and forth because it involves…
The Associated Press ran a fact check on Bill Clinton's speech at the Democratic convention last night that contained the following section:
Yesterday, I wrote a lengthy blog post taking PolitiFact to task for their shamelessly skewed "fact checks" on the Romney-Ryan health care plans. And as it happens, I woke up today and National Review has an excellent editorial on the same topic. It's worth reading in full, but this part was as…
Perhaps if we all ignore PolitiFact, they'll go away. But for the time being, the supposedly independent organization continues to crank out skewed and partisan work. There's no better example of this than the the current jihad the "fact checking" organization is waging against the Romney-Ryan…
I know those of you masochistic enough to pay close attention to media fact checkers aren't going to be surprised by this, but Media Trackers, a nonpartisan watchdog, combed through the personal Twitter feed of PolitiFact Ohio writer Tom Feran and found he's a pretty vocal liberal. You can review…
The Associated Press came out with a lengthy and extremely tendentious "fact check" regarding the selection of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney's vice presidential running mate. I am on record as deploring the media fact checking phenomenon in pretty strong and detailed terms. And this fact check was so…
The Romney campaign is none too happy with PolitiFact at the moment, issuing a blistering response to a recent fact checking item on a campaign talking point. As a response to Democrats' "war on women" rehetoric, the presumed GOP presidential nominee's press secretary pointed out that under Obama's…
Before I explain why PolitiFact is once again being deliberately misleading, grossly incompetent, or some hellbroth of these distinguishing characteristics, you'll have bear with me. Part of the reason PolitiFact gets away with being so shoddy is that it counts on its readers believing that it can…
I've already written at length on the major media's "fact checkers" and, alas, it's a never ending game of whack-a-mole to point out the absurdity of the arguments employed by these self-appointed guardians of veracity.
So the liberal punditry woke up today to find that PolitiFact has declared the "Lie of the Year" to be Democrats's claim that Paul Ryan's budget will "end Medicare" or "end Medicare as we know it." They're having quite the collective freakout—see Paul Krugman, Jonathan Chait, Matt Yglesias, Brian…
If you’ve ever found yourself engaged in a futile, one-sided argument with a politician on your TV screen, you’re hardly alone in your frustration. However, if you’re inclined to jot down such intemperate outbursts, and have the chutzpah to charge people for your services—you might have what it…
Last month, I wrote that President Obama’s own handpicked Council of Economic Advisors had released an estimate that the president’s economic “stimulus” had added or saved just one job for every $278,000 of taxpayer money spent. Obama’s economists said the “stimulus” had cost $666 billion to date…