Sidebar: FactCheck.org versus PolitiFact

NOTE:  Click here for another more recent (July, 2011) review and comparison of FactCheck and PolitiFact analyses like this one.

FactCheck.org does not give the type of rulings that PolitiFact uses to grade the claims it investigates. As noted in a previous post, most of the claims FactCheck investigates are found to be false or misleading the majority of the time, and there is no great middle "average" Half True like with PolitiFact.

Snopes.com "Truth o Meter":  Not as cut and dry.

Another website, Snopes.com, occasionally looks at similar claims as well (particularly over-the-top ones such as Obama’s citizenship) but gives a rating it calls “multiple truth values” when there are both elements of truth and untruth in the claim and its underlying argument. In some ways, this is a better label for Half True, since Half True is, well, also Half False, so the possible complexities are conveyed in the rating.

Conservatives and Republicans often site FactCheck.org’s connection to the Annenberg Foundation as proof that it has liberal bias. However, there is some evidence that it is more objective in its approach to factchecking than PolitiFact, at least in the posts of one serious fact-check monitor. Sometimes I wonder why Cato or Heritage do not sponsor their own fact-checking website; my guess is because they can’t bring themselves to call their *own* on the carpet, like FactCheck and PolitiFact often do, even with PolitiFact’s trend toward rating fewer Democrats than Republicans and on average scoring them higher on their “truth o meter” as well.

Here’s a sampling of some statements checked by both FactCheck.org and PolitiFact where  the agreement between both fact-checkers on how they rated the veracity of the statements was pretty clear. Some of the claims have been frequently repeated, so this is a pretty good representation.  I'm including this matrix under the topic "PolitiFact Detractors" since FactCheck lends PolitiFact some support in arriving at its rulings (or vice versa).

Topic	Factcheck.org	PolitiFact
Recent: Republican Mitt Romney at CPAC: “… (1) there are more men and women out of work in America than there are people working in Canada…(2) in the month of January, Canada created more new jobs than we did.”	(1)"it’s not true that there are more Americans who are unemployed than Canadians who are employed"...(2) “Romney is right about the January unemployment numbers.”	(1) False: “Romney’s comparison doesn’t work for the official unemployment figure, nor for the numbers that include Americans who are marginally attached to the labor force.” (2) True: “For the U.S. numbers, we turned to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and found Romney is correct.”
Obama’s SOTU: Corporate Tax Rates are highest in the world	**He said the U.S. subjects businesses to “one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world,” which is borne out by the World Bank and other studies.**	True: “He's right that the U.S. does now have the highest corporate tax rates on the books…”
Paul Ryan’s SOTU response: Obama has signed into law spending increases of nearly 25% for domestic gov't agencies — an 84% increase when you include the failed stimulus.	“It’s true that domestic spending has increased, but not nearly as much as Ryan claims. As we’ve written before, the 84 percent figure is the result of a flawed analysis by the Republican staff of the House Budget Committee.”	Half True:  “…Ryan used fuzzy math to make the year-to-year increase appear much larger than it was.”
“Obamacare” is a job-killing law (Republican Eric Cantor, January, 2011)	“House Republicans misrepresent the facts. Experts predict the health care law will have little effect on employment.”	False: “The evidence falls short.”
Widely held: Obamacare is a government take over of healthcare (PolitiFact 2010 “Lie of the Year”)	**Some of the more outrageous recent claims appear in ads that call the new law… a "government takeover." But much to the chagrin of a minority of lawmakers who wanted a true, government-run, single-payer system, that’s not what the law delivers.**	Pants on Fire/False: ** "The label 'government takeover" has no basis in reality, but instead reflects a political dynamic where conservatives label any increase in government authority in health care as a 'takeover.' **
Widely held: Republican Sarah Palin’s note on Facebook that Obamacare has “death panels” (PolitiFact 2009 “Lie of the Year”)	“…former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin …who advanced one of the biggest falsehoods about proposed health care changes when she claimed that President Obama’s plan included a "death panel" of bureaucrats in charge of deciding who receives health care and who doesn’t.”	Pants on Fire: “…it's definitely not what President Barack Obama or any other Democrat has proposed.” Click here for PolitiFact Lie of the Year 2009 Story
Other: Social Security is a Ponzi scheme (Republican Rick Perry, November, 2010) (and others)	**So Perry’s claim that today’s workers are "never going to see any benefit" is just a Texas tall tale.**	“Social Security is morally the polar opposite of a Ponzi scheme... We rate Perry's statement False.”
Other: **Constitution only requires you to tell the census "how many people in your home." **(Republican Michele Bachmann, June, 2009)	**Actually, the Constitution, under Article 1, Section 2, simply requires that an "enumeration" be done every 10 years to apportion the members of the House, but that it be done "in such manner" as Congress "shall by law direct."**	Pants on Fire: “There's a lot wrong in her statement…”
Other: Expiring Bush tax cuts will raise taxes on small business (Republicans Eric Cantor/Mitch McConnell, November, 2010)	Title: Not-So-Small Business Bluffing  “…that’s misleading…”	Barely True: “Sure, some extremely successful small businesses would be affected, but probably not many…You can’t make that leap, as one of the reports cited by Cantor says.”