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.
