PolitiFact.com
Encyclopedia
PolitiFact.com is a project that is operated by the St. Petersburg Times
, a project in which its reporters and editors "fact-check statements by members of Congress, the White House, lobbyists and interest groups...." They publish original statements and their evaluations on the PolitiFact.com website, and assign each a "Truth-O-Meter" rating. The ratings range from "True" for completely accurate statements to "Pants on Fire" (from the taunt "Liar, liar, pants on fire") for outright lies.
The site also includes an "Obameter", tracking President
Barack Obama
's performance with regard to his campaign promise and a "GOP Pledge-O-Meter." which tracks promises made by House Republicans in their "Pledge to America."
. Adair remains PolitiFact.com's editor.
In January 2010, PolitiFact.com expanded to its second newspaper, the Cox
-owned Austin American-Statesman
in Austin, Texas
; the feature, called Politifact Texas, covers issues that are relevant to Texas and the Austin area.
In March 2010, the Times and its partner newspaper, The Miami Herald
, launched Politifact Florida, which focuses on Florida issues. The Times and The Herald share resources on some stories that relate to Florida.
Since then, PolitiFact.com expanded to other papers, such as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
, The Providence Journal
, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
, The Plain Dealer, Richmond Times-Dispatch
, and The Oregonian
.
's claim that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
of 2009 would lead to government "death panel
s" that dictated which types of patients would receive treatment.
Columnist James Taranto
of the Wall Street Journal, writing in 2011, criticized this choice, saying that PolitiFact.com relied on an "out-of-context interpretation" of Palin's words, and that Palin's basic argument, that the act would lead to the government "drastically curtailing medical benefits", was in fact correct.
In December 2010, PolitiFact.com dubbed the lie of the year to be the claim among some opponents of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that it represented a "government takeover of healthcare". PolitiFact.com argued that this was not the case, since all providing of health care and insurance would remain in the hands of private companies.
The 2010 "lie of the year" decision was quoted approvingly by Stephanie Cutter
on the White House blog. It was disputed, however, by Libertarian Reason
magazine journalist Peter Suderman, who called the government-takeover claim simply an "exaggeration with elements of truth"., as well as the Wall Street Journal editorial board, who wrote that the health-care act "sounds like a government takeover to us."
in 2009 for "its fact-checking initiative during the 2008 presidential campaign that used probing reporters and the power of the World Wide Web to examine more than 750 political claims, separating rhetoric from truth to enlighten voters."
"part of a larger journalistic trend that seeks to recast all political debates as matters of lies, misinformation and 'facts,' rather than differences of world view or principles." In The American Spectator
, conservative analyst Matthew Vadum, citing several of PolitiFact.com's analyses, called their content "political opinion masquerading as high-minded investigative journalism."
In October 2009, PolitiFact.com fact-checked a skit on the sketch comedy
television show Saturday Night Live
that showed President Obama stating that he had not accomplished anything thus far; PolitiFact's appraisal was then reported on CNN
. Wall Street Journal writer James Taranto
called the fact-checking "a bizarre exercise", and added, "PolitiFact does not appear to have done the same for past "SNL" sketches spoofing Republican politicians like George W. Bush
, Dick Cheney
and Sarah Palin
... It's as if CNN and the St. Petersburg Times are trying to reinforce the impression that they are in the tank for Obama.".
In February 2010, PolitiFact.com rated President Obama's statement that the Recovery Act had saved or created 2 million jobs in the United States as "half true", stating that the real figure was 1 million according to several independent studies. Economist Brian Riedl of the conservative Heritage Foundation
responded that such a statement "belongs in an opinion editorial - not a fact check", since "there is no way to determine how the economy would have performed without a stimulus."
PolitiFact.com has also been attacked by left-wing commentators. In July 2010, Huffington Post blogger Ayo Adeyeye criticized them for labelling a statement by Arianna Huffington
that the company Halliburton
was "defraud[ing] the American taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars" as half-true, instead of fully true.
Rachel Maddow
has criticized PolitiFact for claiming she denied a budget shortfall in Wisconsin. She later played a clip showing that she did in fact acknowledge that Wisconsin was having a budget shortfall and requested that PolitiFact issue a correction, which they ultimately refused.
St. Petersburg Times
The St. Petersburg Times is a United States newspaper. It is one of two major publications serving the Tampa Bay Area, the other being The Tampa Tribune, which the Times tops in both circulation and readership. Based in St...
, a project in which its reporters and editors "fact-check statements by members of Congress, the White House, lobbyists and interest groups...." They publish original statements and their evaluations on the PolitiFact.com website, and assign each a "Truth-O-Meter" rating. The ratings range from "True" for completely accurate statements to "Pants on Fire" (from the taunt "Liar, liar, pants on fire") for outright lies.
The site also includes an "Obameter", tracking President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
's performance with regard to his campaign promise and a "GOP Pledge-O-Meter." which tracks promises made by House Republicans in their "Pledge to America."
History
PolitiFact.com was started in August 2007 by Times Washington Bureau Chief Bill Adair, in conjunction with the Congressional QuarterlyCongressional Quarterly
Congressional Quarterly, Inc., or CQ, is a privately owned publishing company that produces a number of publications reporting primarily on the United States Congress...
. Adair remains PolitiFact.com's editor.
In January 2010, PolitiFact.com expanded to its second newspaper, the Cox
Cox Enterprises
Cox Enterprises is the successor to the publishing company founded in Dayton, Ohio, United States, by James Middleton Cox, who began with the Dayton Daily News. He was the Democratic candidate for the President of the United States in the election of 1920...
-owned Austin American-Statesman
Austin American-Statesman
The Austin American-Statesman is the major daily newspaper for Austin, the capital city of Texas. It is an award-winning publication owned by Cox Enterprises. The Newspaper places focus on issues affecting Austin and the Central Texas region....
in Austin, Texas
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
; the feature, called Politifact Texas, covers issues that are relevant to Texas and the Austin area.
In March 2010, the Times and its partner newspaper, The Miami Herald
The Miami Herald
The Miami Herald is a daily newspaper owned by The McClatchy Company headquartered on Biscayne Bay in the Omni district of Downtown Miami, Florida, United States...
, launched Politifact Florida, which focuses on Florida issues. The Times and The Herald share resources on some stories that relate to Florida.
Since then, PolitiFact.com expanded to other papers, such as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is the only major daily newspaper in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, and its suburbs. The AJC, as it is called, is the flagship publication of Cox Enterprises. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is the result of the merger between The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta...
, The Providence Journal
The Providence Journal
The Providence Journal, nicknamed the ProJo, is a daily newspaper serving the metropolitan area of Providence, Rhode Island and is the largest newspaper in Rhode Island. The newspaper, first published in 1829 and the oldest continuously-published daily newspaper in the United States, was purchased...
, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is a daily morning broadsheet printed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. It is the primary newspaper in Milwaukee, the largest newspaper in Wisconsin and is distributed widely throughout the state...
, The Plain Dealer, Richmond Times-Dispatch
Richmond Times-Dispatch
The Richmond Times-Dispatch is the primary daily newspaper in Richmond the capital of Virginia, United States, and is commonly considered the "newspaper of record" for events occurring in much of the state...
, and The Oregonian
The Oregonian
The Oregonian is the major daily newspaper in Portland, Oregon, owned by Advance Publications. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper on the U.S. west coast, founded as a weekly by Thomas J. Dryer on December 4, 1850...
.
"Lie of the year"
Since 2009, PolitiFact.com has every year declared one political statement from that year to be the "lie of the year". In December 2009, they declared the lie of the year to be Sarah PalinSarah Palin
Sarah Louise Palin is an American politician, commentator and author. As the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 presidential election, she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major party and first Republican woman nominated for the vice-presidency.She was...
's claim that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is a United States federal statute signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. The law is the principal health care reform legislation of the 111th United States Congress...
of 2009 would lead to government "death panel
Death panel
"Death panel", , is a term that originated during a 2009 political debate regarding health care reform in the United States. The death panel claim portrayed the health care bills then pending before the U.S. Congress as encouraging euthanasia for the elderly and as rationing health care for the...
s" that dictated which types of patients would receive treatment.
Columnist James Taranto
James Taranto
James Taranto is an American columnist for The Wall Street Journal, editor of its online editorial page OpinionJournal.com and a member of the newspaper's editorial board. He is best known for his daily online column Best of the Web Today...
of the Wall Street Journal, writing in 2011, criticized this choice, saying that PolitiFact.com relied on an "out-of-context interpretation" of Palin's words, and that Palin's basic argument, that the act would lead to the government "drastically curtailing medical benefits", was in fact correct.
In December 2010, PolitiFact.com dubbed the lie of the year to be the claim among some opponents of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that it represented a "government takeover of healthcare". PolitiFact.com argued that this was not the case, since all providing of health care and insurance would remain in the hands of private companies.
The 2010 "lie of the year" decision was quoted approvingly by Stephanie Cutter
Stephanie Cutter
Stephanie Cutter is a Democratic Party operative. She serves as Deputy Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama.- Biography :Cutter was born in Taunton, Massachusetts and raised in nearby Raynham, Massachusetts...
on the White House blog. It was disputed, however, by Libertarian Reason
Reason (magazine)
Reason is a libertarian monthly magazine published by the Reason Foundation. The magazine has a circulation of around 60,000 and was named one of the 50 best magazines in 2003 and 2004 by the Chicago Tribune.- History :...
magazine journalist Peter Suderman, who called the government-takeover claim simply an "exaggeration with elements of truth"., as well as the Wall Street Journal editorial board, who wrote that the health-care act "sounds like a government takeover to us."
Reception
PolitiFact.com was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for National ReportingPulitzer Prize for National Reporting
The Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting has been awarded since 1948 for a distinguished example of reporting on national affairs. The Pulitzer Committee issues an official citation explaining the reasons for the award....
in 2009 for "its fact-checking initiative during the 2008 presidential campaign that used probing reporters and the power of the World Wide Web to examine more than 750 political claims, separating rhetoric from truth to enlighten voters."
Criticism
PolitiFact.com has faced assertions among some politically conservative commentators that it is politically biased in its declarations of truth and untruth. For example, Taranto of the Wall Street Journal called PolitiFact.com "less seeker of truth than servant of power", while a Wall Street Journal editorial wrote that PolitiFact is"part of a larger journalistic trend that seeks to recast all political debates as matters of lies, misinformation and 'facts,' rather than differences of world view or principles." In The American Spectator
The American Spectator
The American Spectator is a conservative U.S. monthly magazine covering news and politics, edited by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. and published by the non-profit American Spectator Foundation. From its founding in 1967 until the late 1980s, the small-circulation magazine featured the writings of authors...
, conservative analyst Matthew Vadum, citing several of PolitiFact.com's analyses, called their content "political opinion masquerading as high-minded investigative journalism."
In October 2009, PolitiFact.com fact-checked a skit on the sketch comedy
Sketch comedy
A sketch comedy consists of a series of short comedy scenes or vignettes, called "sketches," commonly between one and ten minutes long. Such sketches are performed by a group of comic actors or comedians, either on stage or through an audio and/or visual medium such as broadcasting...
television show Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
that showed President Obama stating that he had not accomplished anything thus far; PolitiFact's appraisal was then reported on CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
. Wall Street Journal writer James Taranto
James Taranto
James Taranto is an American columnist for The Wall Street Journal, editor of its online editorial page OpinionJournal.com and a member of the newspaper's editorial board. He is best known for his daily online column Best of the Web Today...
called the fact-checking "a bizarre exercise", and added, "PolitiFact does not appear to have done the same for past "SNL" sketches spoofing Republican politicians like George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
, Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney
Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney served as the 46th Vice President of the United States , under George W. Bush....
and Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Palin is an American politician, commentator and author. As the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 presidential election, she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major party and first Republican woman nominated for the vice-presidency.She was...
... It's as if CNN and the St. Petersburg Times are trying to reinforce the impression that they are in the tank for Obama.".
In February 2010, PolitiFact.com rated President Obama's statement that the Recovery Act had saved or created 2 million jobs in the United States as "half true", stating that the real figure was 1 million according to several independent studies. Economist Brian Riedl of the conservative Heritage Foundation
Heritage Foundation
The Heritage Foundation is a conservative American think tank based in Washington, D.C. Heritage's stated mission is to "formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong...
responded that such a statement "belongs in an opinion editorial - not a fact check", since "there is no way to determine how the economy would have performed without a stimulus."
PolitiFact.com has also been attacked by left-wing commentators. In July 2010, Huffington Post blogger Ayo Adeyeye criticized them for labelling a statement by Arianna Huffington
Arianna Huffington
Arianna Huffington is a Greek American author and syndicated columnist. She is best known as co-founder of the news website The Huffington Post. A popular conservative commentator in the mid-1990s, she adopted more liberal political beliefs in the late 1990s...
that the company Halliburton
Halliburton
Halliburton is the world's second largest oilfield services corporation with operations in more than 70 countries. It has hundreds of subsidiaries, affiliates, branches, brands and divisions worldwide and employs over 50,000 people....
was "defraud[ing] the American taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars" as half-true, instead of fully true.
Rachel Maddow
Rachel Maddow
Rachel Anne Maddow is an American television host and political commentator. Maddow hosts a nightly television show, The Rachel Maddow Show, on MSNBC. Her syndicated talk radio program, The Rachel Maddow Show, aired on Air America Radio...
has criticized PolitiFact for claiming she denied a budget shortfall in Wisconsin. She later played a clip showing that she did in fact acknowledge that Wisconsin was having a budget shortfall and requested that PolitiFact issue a correction, which they ultimately refused.