2013: First Six Months' Fact-checking for the Big Three

PolitiFact has definitely "downsized" in the U.S. even with its recent international presence in Australia.  At least for the time being.

 

Since 2011, I've generally expected 475 to 500 rulings from PolitiFact for each quarter.  When 360 were produced for the first quarter of 2013, I attributed that to the writers taking a break after the 2012 elections.  But the second quarter was pretty much a mirror of the first, going from 361 to an almost equal number of 363 rulings.   The dropping of PolitiFact Tennessee and no rulings from PolitiFact New Hampshire would not be enough to make up the difference.  Basically PolitiFact has cut back 20 to 25 percent.

 

With fewer rulings to record, I thought I might try something different:  back in 2010 I took a look at FactCheck.Org in and of itself.  I've compared rulings on the same statements many times, and on an individual basis, I've looked at various politicos in terms of Politifact, Factcheck.Org (FCO) and the Washington Post FactChecker.

 

This time I decided to record all three of the most prominent political fact-checkers (PolitiFact, WaPo FactChecker and FactCheck.Org) for the first six months of 2013.  I also tried to make a comparison in terms of the Truth Index.  Between PolitiFact's Truth-o-Meter categories and the Gepetto Checkmark to Four Pinnochios (a "whopper") used at the Washington Post, it wasn't too difficult there.    Factcheck.Org (FCO), however, does not rate fact-checks  with Truth-o-Meters or Pinnochios like the other two.

 

Just like it did when I reviewed it in 2010, I found that FCO generally did not fact-check "truthful" statements, as the great majority of its findings are negative: either misleading or false (It appears the Washington Post FactChecker leans that way as well, although not nearly as much).   It was a very subjective exercise for me to attempt to "rate" them as well, so the "Truth Index" I obtained, in my opinion, should not be construed as entirely accurate.

 

For the most part I based my FCO "ruling" on the same criteria as PolitiFact.  "Misleading" statements which contained an element of truth "but ignore[d] facts which would give a different impression" were categorized as "Mostly False" while statements which were "inaccurate," or incorrect (or when the FCO article called the statement a "false claim," which occurred fairly often) were categorized as False.    There were no "Pants on Fire" or "Whoppers" for FCO.

 

The results I obtained can be shown in the chart below.

The two "smaller" fact-checkers tend to concentrate on facts likely false based on the "Truth Index."

Even with PolitiFact's downsizing, it is still the dominant fact-checker of the "Big Three" with over 3/4 of all rulings for the first six months of 2013.    As noted, it checks a lot more statements which, as can be seen are (1) "True" and, due to its state operations, (2) statements by people with no political affiliation.

PolitiFact had a 57 percent higher overall Truth Index than the Washington Post FactChecker, and it was 82 percent higher than Factcheck.Org.

When it gets down to Democrats versus Republicans, we see that PolitiFact still maintains its Democrat-favorable Truth Index, with Democrats getting a 13.8% more favorable average on the Truth-o-Meter. The difference for the Washington Post FactChecker is 23% more favorable to the Democrats, while FCO is almost dead even, with the Republicans favored by just under one percent.

While the WaPo FactChecker has a wider overall Truth Index variance (favoring the Dems), it should be noted that its "Whoppers" (4 Pinnochios) as a percentage of "Three Pinnochios plus Four Pinnochios"--a similar measure to PolitiFacts' Pants on Fire "factor" (Pants on Fire as a percent of False plus Pants on Fire) came out just the opposite of PolitiFact.  PolitiFact's writers were 18.5% more likely to give a Republican Pants on Fire during the first six months of 2013; Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post was 17.9% more likely to give a Democrat four Pinnochios.  On top of that, nearly half of the statements Kessler checked earned either three or four Pinnochios.

As far as FCO having a very slightly higher "Truth Index" for the Republicans, I need to re-iterate that I made the judgments as to how each statement should be "scored."  While I bent over backwards to be charitable, I could have made errors.  If, for example, I just congregated all statements which were rated negatively into one category instead of distinguishing misleading (mostly false) from false, it would have favored the Democrats, because during those six months FCO looked at 53 percent more Republicans (69 vs. 45).  So my FCO "Truth Index" cannot be deemed completely accurate.

Next up, a look at fact-checks "overlapping", that is, where the same fact was checked and how those taken together affected the overall number, and how they individually compared, concentrating on those where there may have been differences in the rating.  Stay tuned!