Meta Meta, All That Data

This past fall, my conservative counterpart started his own fact-checking website called Zebra Fact-Check, sort of jumping on that "conservapedia" bandwagon of playing to the right-wing choir. He gave a new term to a categorization of his Zebra fact-checks where he was again publishing criticisms of PolitiFact rulings as he did at his original blog: he called it a meta-factcheck, which by definition is the correct terminology, since he is "fact-checking the fact-check." So I suppose that makes me a META-meta fact-checker, because I am "fact-checking" his fact-check of PolitiFact's fact-check. Wew!

 

But more than that, on his new "non-blogspot" website, he includes a little detail on the "About" page that has me wondering....whether my speculation about his concentrated vindictiveness toward PolitiFact may in fact have some foundation.

I graduated from the journalism program at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg in 2008. The university campus is located across the street from the Poynter Institute, which owns both the Tampa Bay Times (then known as the St. Petersburg Times) and PolitiFact.

I regarded Poynter’s 2007 foray into fact checking with hope and interest at first, but that changed quickly to horror. I couldn’t believe that the Times would produce a product so deeply inferior to the Annenberg Fact Check model.

My blogging gradually changed its focus to criticism of PolitiFact. I hoped that vigorous criticism would help PolitiFact reach for a higher set of standards.

Here's what I've "speculated" about previously (in October, 2012):

Speaking of that, this makes my theory seem all the more likely that Bryan White may have been someone rejected for a journalist-type job by the Tampa Bay Times or PolitiFact itself: he states that these [new Zebra] fact-checks are what he does best. So this bolsters my theory that this was his retaliation. But that's pure speculation.

I had written this before I browsed his website and found where he listed his educational achievements. So now I know for a fact that he has the background necessary for such a job, and graduated and (as known) resided in the vicinity of the biggest newspaper in the Tampa/St. Pete area, right at the time the PolitiFact operation was starting. If this was expansion at the paper, there quite possibly could have been openings for, if not full-time journalists, at the very least, interns, for the specific PolitiFact project, because in the course of my recording the writers along with each ruling, it was apparent they had many interns who tried their hand at composing fact-checks. Nowhere did I see anything written, researched or edited by one Bryan W. White.

As of today's date, Robert Farley remains one of Factcheck.Org's lead writers, as can be seen in this screen clip

Then there's the "deeply inferior" comparison of PolitiFact to the Annenberg FactCheck. FactCheck.org, as I've noted in many posts, for the most part agrees with PolitiFact when checking the same item. The only difference is that Annenberg FactCheck doesn't have a Truth-o-Meter, and its fact-checks are often more limited in scope, because they will include several checks in one post at their website. So, in certain respects, its fact-checks are not as complete nor as sourced as PolitiFact's. To top that off, one of its writers, Robert Farley, used to write for PolitiFact (although White seems to have about the same opinion of him as he does Louis Jacobson and the others). While one could say Farley moved "up", there's really no way to verify that Farley went from an inferior fact-checking operation to a superior one...unless White could find out from Farley himself. It would be interesting to see what Farley would have to say about that, and I have a feeling he might not agree with White.

 

Nevertheless, something definitely smells even more rotten in Largo, Florida.