On C-SPAN, I recently talked about PolitiFact’s Obameter project, which tracks President Barack Obama’s campaign promises.
Category: Fact-checking
PolitiFact recently announced it would join with other independent fact-checkers to fact-check fake news on Facebook. (Read PolitiFact’s announcement.) I talked about that initiative with Brian Stelter on CNN’s Reliable Sources.
PolitiFact unveiled its “Lie of the Year” for 2016 on MTP Daily with Chuck Todd. Read the story on the PolitiFact website.
Categories
PolitiFact on Vice
PolitiFact was recently featured on Vice News. The report looked at how we fact-check on debate nights.
I went on C-SPAN to discuss PolitiFact’s fact-checking of the 2016 presidential debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
I wrote this column for PolitiFact reflecting on what I’ve seen fact-checking debates since 2007.
Do you yell at the TV when you see an interviewer letting a politician get away with spinning the truth? I know I do. But let’s admit the reality: Questioning candidates on live TV is harder than it looks. And moderating a presidential debate is probably the hardest.
Just look at the typical criticism of debate moderators. They ask dumb questions. They ask inside-baseball questions. The questions are too tough. The questions are too soft. They don’t follow up. They flog a pointless line of questioning.
This will be my third time fact-checking presidential debates, and while criticizing the moderators is common, I’ve seen a few things that make a difference between good moderating and lousy moderating. MORE ...
Here’s a link to my interview with Lucas Graves, a professor at the University of Wisconsin and author of the book, Deciding What’s True: The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in American Journalism. We talked about how fact-checking works, fact-checking presidential debates and reform movements in journalism.
Holan: Let’s talk about the big question first. Why does fact-checking matter?
Graves: Fact-checking matters in a few different ways. The most important one for me is that it represents a new kind of commitment from journalists to try to pierce political rhetoric and hold politicians accountable. It’s a cultural shift in journalism. MORE …
I appeared recently on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal to discuss the 2016 election and how PolitiFact does its work.
The Internet Archive combined forces with fact-checkers like PolitiFact this year to collect, archive and fact-check television ads of the 2016 election cycle. Nancy Watzman of the Internet Archive and I joined together to write this column for USA Today about our insights on the project.
As sure as night follows day, we are in for a torrent of political ads in the next 14 weeks. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump already are running general-election spots, and Senate and House campaigns will generate their own deluge as the two parties battle for control of Congress. These ads are often the main point of communication between candidates and voters. Most of them are designed to catch people’s attention with simple and striking messages. And most of them have a tortured relationship with the truth — bending, stretching, or all-out contradicting the facts. MORE …
I wrote a column about the recent third annual Global Summit on Fact-checking in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Much of the discussion there focused on best practices for fact-checking. My column explored five fundamental principles we all could share.
From Canada to Colombia, from Spain to South Africa, fact-checking is now spreading around the globe. In June, international fact-checkers gathered in Buenos Aires to compare notes on how we investigate claims, weigh evidence and publish our findings.
Those of us who gathered at the Global Summit on Fact-checking are a diverse lot. Some of us are journalists, as we are at PolitiFact. Others are researchers and writers who work for nonprofits. Still others consider themselves civic activists, agitating under repressive regimes to get truthful facts to the public.
While our identities are sometimes different, our work is usually the same: Credible, accurate information backed up with sources and evidence. MORE …