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Truth serum - online fact checking sites for political open season
I get a small sense of satisfaction that I'm doing my part to stanch the lies, rumors and trickery during political open season. Below are some nonpartisan fact checker sites to help you determine fact from fiction. Game on!
FactCheck.org - powered by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, this site is nonpartisan, nonprofit, and aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. It accepts no funding from corporations, unions, political parties, lobbying organizations or individuals.
Politifact.com - has a neat "Truth-O-Meter" so you can see at a glance what's up with the candidate's claims. Content is nicely organized with tabs like "Chain E-Mails," "Flip-O-Meter," (shows candidates position flipping), and "Attack File," which reviews candidate's attacks and discusses their legitimacy or not. It is run by the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly to help determine the truth of the respective presidential campaigns.
Fact Checker - a blog from the Washington Post which aims to be a truth squad in the national political debate. Its goal is to shed light on controversial claims involving important national issues and the records of the various presidential candidates.
Snopes.com - a site devoted to dispelling urban legends that also runs a good bit of political fact checking. Try not to let the bad graphics and ads run you off as there's lots of fun content to review.
I didn't include partisan fact checking sites for reasons that I believe are, well - obvious. What are some of your favorite non partisan ones?
Comments
15
Subscribe to commentsTristan PhillipsSep 29th 2008 6:27PM
factcheck.org & snopes.com have real problems with being unbiased. Both sites can't seem to write unbiased facts about the 2nd amendment and FactCheck recently got blasted for writing a whole lot of crap about it.
As for politifact.com....The above image shows its full of crap.
You were saying about partisan fact checking sites?
wpdunn71901Sep 29th 2008 7:09PM
Ewwwww
Epic fail on the unbiased "Story"
lost me as a reader
ALL of these sites lean slightly ( FactCheck.org) to absolutely in the tank left leaning ( Snopes.com)
FAIL +3 vorpal blade
BufsabreSep 29th 2008 10:41PM
/me thinks the above posters fall into the old paradigm that no matter what happens even if its fair you see it as being to harsh on what you believe and too loose on what you disdain. i think both candidates are full of it and am voting for bob barr come november fourth and i see all sites as fairly unbiased towards either, all have their moments of leaning towards one or the other but nothings perfect we cant all be as "fair and balanced" as fox news or msnbc
Fred ThompsonSep 30th 2008 7:27AM
FactCheck does sometimes split hairs in a less-than-equal manner, especially with regard to history, that's true. Given their ties to PBS, is it any wonder they go leftist? Snopes is very good for debunking urban myths. Politifact has a neat graphic idea but why no Biden quotes?!?! WRT the Eisenhoewr story, this has taken on a myth status of its own. Many documentaries and books make the same statement. It's kind of like "Abraham Lincoln" freed the slaves or John Kennedy passed Civil Rights. Neither is true, but they're catchy phrases. Ditto Theresa Kerry's comment about gin-soaked raisins 4 years ago. Sounds crazy but there does seem to be some chemical basis for it.
OutbackSep 30th 2008 8:08AM
Placing this set of sites on the website at this time was as smart as finding the lone cow patty in a forty acre field and stepping in it.
JamesSep 30th 2008 11:58AM
#1 and #2 have some substance behind their criticism. Take a look at this:
McCain: "Senator Obama has the most liberal voting record in the United States Senate." = "Barely True"
In actual fact, one of the most widely-referred-to and highly-regarded senator-rating websites ranks Obama as the most liberal, and several other sites have him tied at "100% liberal" with other senators. Even if he ranks behind somebody else by a few points, McCain's general point -- that Obama is absolutely by no means a "centrist" as he sometimes tries to portray himself -- should be considered bright-green "TRUE", not "barely true".
RocketboySep 30th 2008 2:06PM
James, this is why it helps to actually read the articles. They try to cut past the picking and choosing that politicians normally do:
"Yet other ratings don't show Obama as the Senate's top lefty.
He wasn't the top liberal in his two other years in the U.S. Senate according to National Journal. He was 10th-most liberal in 2006 and 16th in 2005.
The McCain campaign has previously cited a 2006 rating by the liberal group Americans for Democratic Action that gave Obama 95 percent, which the campaign noted was the same as Kerry and Sen. Barbara Boxer.
But there's a little sleight of hand in that one. Although the McCain campaign is correct that Obama earned a 95 percent rating that year for voting the way ADA wanted, there were 10 senators who got more liberal scores than Obama, including Barbara Mikulski of Maryland and Richard Durbin of Illinois. (In the latest ADA rating, for 2007, Obama missed five of the 20 votes the group scored, so he received a 75 percent rating. But he voted the way ADA wanted on each of the 15 votes he attended.)
Voteview.com, a site created by political scientists that plots lawmakers on a liberal-conservative scale based on their voting patterns, calculated there were nine senators more liberal than Obama in the current Congress, including Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
If McCain had made a more general statement about Obama's ideology, he could have been more accurate. But McCain's statement that Obama "has the most liberal voting record in the United States Senate," suggests it is a cumulative rating for all of Obama's time in the Senate. But in fact, it is true for only one rating for one year. Measurements for other years and by other groups show Obama is not the No. 1 liberal — in some cases, far from No. 1. So we find McCain's statement to be Barely True"
So yes, One study for One year. Not what McCain said.
JamesSep 30th 2008 10:26PM
Look, the point is that McCain's intent was to state that Obama is extremely liberal. People can say that Michael Moore is the most liberal person in Hollywood, and reasonable people may disagree about the use of the superlative -- maybe you'd come up with a better candidate for the title if you think a while -- but I don't think anybody would contend the point that he's really, really liberal.
Likewise, saying that Obama has the "most liberal" voting record should not prompt to us to try and find somebody who's slightly more liberal; the point is that as Senators go, he leans quite far to the left. If you take the quote too literally, it's not "true", but if you take the commonly-understood intention, it's 100% spot-on.
I don't see any quotes on the site that are interpreted literally like that to the detriment of the Democrat candidates, which is why I question their bi-partisanship.
RocketboyOct 1st 2008 9:44AM
"Look, the point is that McCain's intent was to state that Obama is extremely liberal. "
But it's not what he said.
"Likewise, saying that Obama has the "most liberal" voting record should not prompt to us to try and find somebody who's slightly more liberal; the point is that as Senators go, he leans quite far to the left."
Do you not understand the meaning of the word "most"? That would mean that nobody else has a more liberal record than he does. That's not true.
"If you take the quote too literally, it's not "true", but if you take the commonly-understood intention, it's 100% spot-on."
So, if you pretend that McCain didn't say what he did say, and make qualifications that were not in the statement, it was true? That's not the way the world normally works.
"I don't see any quotes on the site that are interpreted literally like that to the detriment of the Democrat candidates"
Well, then you didn't look hard enough. Read their statement on Ron Paul as to how they pick what they dissect.
RocketboySep 30th 2008 2:02PM
Wow, why the hate for 1&2? Snopes shouldn't be listed as a political debunker, because they are way out of their realm, and way to biased for that. But as a Consertive/Centrist, I have massive amounts of respect for 1&2 on the list. I think the above reactions are just "They said something bad about the person I like, they must be biased" reactions.
RussellSep 30th 2008 2:05PM
OK, so, a number of critical comments on this post so far indicating that all fo the above are "left" leaning... some even indicate "facts" to counter what is indicated on these sites.
Anyone want to suggest a non-partisan site that supports your comments? Not that I don't trust you... just doesn't seem fair to criticize without providing some information to support your argument.
RocketboySep 30th 2008 2:07PM
Don't believe the hype Russell. They are actually quite fair, but the true believers (tm) on either side of the fence don't like it when their saviors get called out on what they said.
sodapopSep 30th 2008 3:54PM
You should use Obama's claim that Henry Kissenger advice him to meet with Iran unconditionally of the lie in the graphic.
TCOct 1st 2008 7:40AM
Go Obammy! One day utopia will come and we'll all live in a big commune free of personal responsibility.
Now let us sing the Obammy prayer of Hope!
WhitmoOct 21st 2008 1:23PM
I have researched most of these sites and have yet to find them biased. They may not always say what I want about my candidate, but I believe them to be fair. Anyone who believes emails and blogs or comments without checking them out, is irresponsible. I would NEVER pass on info without checking it out. So many people out there are too willing to believe the negative about the other guy and the ridiculous about their guy. Please stop the hate!