Visiting More PolitiFact Writers with the Truth Index

About 14 writers do the bulk of PolitiFact’s rulings (roughly 70% of them). Generally there is one “lead” writer at each PolitiFact (PF) state, so I’m assuming the other writers are interns, part time or have other functions. For example, at PF National, Louis Jacobson writes about twice as many rulings as the other two writers, Robert Farley and Angie Drobnic Holan. Holan is the moderator at the Facebook page, so that’s probably one of her other “functions” while Jacobson concentrates on writing rulings. PolitiFact Ohio seems to divide everything somewhat equitably among four writers except for (the fifth) Thomas Feran, who appears to be the lead writer like Jacobson. In Wisconsin, Dave Umhoefer and Tom Kertscher are about in an even partnership with writing rulings, while James Nelson does fewer rulings and handles the Wisconsin Flip-o-meter.

Previously I focused on the three PolitiFact National writers; but here’s a better look at all the writers now that there’s a sufficient number of rulings to do a Politi-Score Truth Index applied to Democrat versus Republican rulings. All of these writers have done 20 rulings or more. The average is 48 rulings: Louis Jacobson of PolitiFact National was at the front with 115; Ryan Kost of PolitiFact Oregon was last with 20. I also wanted to include ALL PolitiFact states which necessitated the minimum of 20 because Kost had the highest number of rulings (20) written for PolitiFact Oregon.

Here are the writers as listed in an Excel spreadsheet from highest variance between Republican and Democrat Truth Index scores, followed by a graphical depiction.

Gene "Jim Morrison" Emery seems to light his fire with Republicans more than Democrats.

In the graph, I’ve placed an arrow to point at the Truth Index scores of James Nelson of PolitiFact Wisconsin: he seems to be the “culprit” as to why I’ve called Wisconsin not just cheesy but sleazy, finding a lot of false statements coming from both parties. He and his co-worker Tom Kertscher also appear to find Republicans more truthful as evidenced by the Truth Index, unlike almost everyone else.

I also notice, until I’m able to get used to it, that’s it’s a bit more difficult to follow/interpret the Truth Index as opposed to my own Politi-Score. To make the graph more understandable, I placed a “Half True” at the zero baseline. It’s kind of two-dimensional with the negatives and the positives….maybe that’s deliberate? I don’t know.