Fact-checking fact-checkers

NBC’s Seth Meyers hyped on Monday’s Late Night some highly suspect fact-checking from CNN during President Trump’s press conference when he announced he is federalizing Washington, DC’s law enforcement because, for Meyers, the binary choice is between Trump and CNN’s “stat nerds.”

Former ABC News political director Mark Halperin interviewed Washington Post “Fact Checker” Glenn Kessler after his final “fact check.” Halperin honed in on one of Kessler's most controversial recent checks, going after the New York Post for overplaying Joe Biden meandering off to talk to a parachutist.

After departing The Washington Post, fact-checker Glenn Kessler did what seemingly every major journalist who has recently left a major outlet has done: he joined Substack. On Tuesday, Kessler took to his new platform to claim that he left the Post because publisher Will Lewis wanted to expand the paper’s audience to include Fox News watchers.

One way that you know Washington Post "Fact Checker" Glenn Kessler was a liberal anti-Trump warrior is how National Public Radio was so sad to see him leave the paper. "In an era where false claims are the norm, it's much easier to ignore the fact-checkers" was the sad line they quoted from his final column.

Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler departed the paper on Thursday in a gloomy mood as he penned his final column lamenting the state of the industry and repeating several sanctimonious falsehoods about the business.

PolitiFact threw a “False” flag at Scott Jennings for suggesting on CNN Newsnight with Abby Phillip "There are like almost 5 million able-bodied people on Medicaid who simply choose not to work.” But that is less shocking than this “factual” website rushing to defend former Rep. Jamaal Bowman saying on that CNN show a few weeks ago that black people have worse health outcomes because…

The “fact checkers” at PolitiFact barely touch the talking heads on cable television anymore. They used to have a serious tilt against the Fox News hosts in prime time. So it’s unsurprising that on July 9, they published their first attack on conservative CNN analyst Scott Jennings, who offered a few tough words about Medicaid beneficiaries.

Last week, we reported on how PolitiFact threw a "False" flag at President Trump for calling New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani a "communist lunatic," despite contrary evidence, like his 2020 tweet in support of a communist mayor in India, suggesting that's the kind of mayor New York needs. On Thursday, PolitiFact doubled down on its ruling, dismissing Mamdani's clearly Marxist…

PolitiFact exists to defend Democrats against Republican attacks. In 2020, they threw their "Pants On Fire" label at Sen. David Perdue for describing his opponent Jon Ossoff as a "socialist." So it's unsurprising that PolitiFact would object to Donald Trump and other conservatives online for mocking New York's new Democrat nominee for mayor, Zohran Mamdani, as a "communist."

Factcheck.org may not have a truth-o-meter like PolitiFact or a Pinocchio scale like The Washington Post, but their Tuesday article by Alan Jaffe still claimed that President Trump was false in saying that the B-2 strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities “obliterated” their program. One of Jaffe's main points of evidence was the fate of Iran's centrifuges, but even his own selected expert…

One easy test of whether a media outlet is truly "fact-based" is the claims and lingo of transgender advocates. That goes double for "independent fact-checkers." If you call hormone blockers or amputation surgeries "gender-affirming care," then you are using the fact-mangling rhetoric of activists, not caring for facts. An article by PolitiFact writer Grace Abels used "gender-affirming care"…

NewsBusters analysts reviewed PolitiFact articles from January to May 2025 that evaluated a named politician or public official with a “Truth-O-Meter” ruling, and their tilted version of the "truth" shows that PolitiFact is not nonpartisan. Republicans were tagged as "Mostly False" or worse more than 85 percent of the time, while Democrats landed on the False side only 39 percent of the time…

On Sunday, Speaker Mike Johnson gave CBS’s Margaret Brennan what many considered to be a much-needed education on the House’s Big Beautiful Bill’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program reforms. However, on Thursday, PolitiFact’s Loreben Tuquero asserted that it was Johnson who was the “false” one, although she had to torch a straw man to do so.

PolitiFact threw another "False" flag on their mountain of 1,095 Donald Trump "fact checks" on Wednesday. The dispute was whether Harvard gave the Department of Homeland Security the information they requested on their foreign students. They found an expert in Georgia immigration lawyer Charles Kuck, who (surprise) is a serious donor to Democrats, including Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Stacey…