Fact-checking fact-checkers

PolitiFact co-founder Bill Adair is still doing liberal-media interviews for his book on why Republicans lie more. He admitted to a public-radio host that the "Truth-O-Meter" is an imprecise, subjective measurement. Everything about the "independent fact-checkers" is loaded with partisan opinion.

It is odd that a website that fancies itself as a fact-checking organization would believe that if you repeat a falsehood enough times it eventually becomes true, but that is what PolitiFact is doing with Democrats and transgender sports. In a Thursday article, PolitiFact defended Montana Sen. Jon Tester’s vote that failed to protect the competitive integrity of women’s sports by claiming such…

Republicans clearly believe that transgender-related liberal culture war nonsense is a winning issue for them, which means that PolitiFact views it as their job to defend Democrats from the true attacks on their record. On Tuesday, PolitiFact was it again, rating Nevada Republican Senate challenger Sam Brown “false” for correctly stating Sen. Jacky Rosen supports allowing men to compete in…

CNN Newsroom host Jim Acosta and fact-checker Daniel Dale white knighted for Kamala Harris on Tuesday as the pair reacted to a Donald Trump forum where Trump called Harris a “Marxist” and “lazy as hell.” Acosta thought such comments were “incoherent,” while Dale claimed they proved that the two candidates cannot be credibly viewed as equally truthful.

Bill Adair, Duke University journalism professor and founder of the “fact-checking” site PolitiFact, indulged his warped scales with a sympathetic host on tax-funded PBS, sending out a fair-and-balanced message: Republicans love to lie! Adair: "[Democrats] feel shame in ways that I'm afraid too many politicians on the right do not…."

PolitiFact is at it again. For the second day in a row, the website has condemned Senate Republicans’ Senate Leadership Fund for an attack ad against Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown. On Thursday, they twisted themselves into a rhetorical pretzel as they rated the PAC “false” for claiming Brown supports men being able to compete in women’s sports, and on Friday they did it again, claiming it is “mostly…

The Senate GOP's The Senate Leadership Fund recently released an ad condemning Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown for voting to allow men to compete in women’s sports. On Thursday, PolitiFact slapped a “false” label on the claim, but it had to allow Brown to have it both ways multiple times to do so.

In a NewsBusters analysis of six months of Politifact articles (April to September) that evaluated a named politician or public official with a “Truth-O-Meter” ruling reveals that PolitiFact is profoundly tilted against the GOP:  

If journalism professor and PolitiFact founder Bill Adair meant to increase faith in the fact-checking industry with his appearance on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, he failed miserably. Adair told host Jon Stewart on Monday that the reason why Republicans get fact-checked more is because “lying... has just become a culture” in conservative circles.

After Tuesday’s vice presidential debate between Republican JD Vance and Democrat Tim Walz, PolitiFact was at it again, rating Vance false 91 percent of the time and Walz false 29 percent of the time. While defenders of professional fact-checking may say, “Aha, that proves Vance lies more,” there were problems with PolitiFact’s assessments of both candidates.

PBS’s vice presidential debate favoritism began beforehand, in a political roundtable on Tuesday evening’s PBS News Hour in which White House correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez rolled out a list of Harris-Walz talking points. Predictably, Barron-Lopez embraced pro-Democratic “fact-checking” by CBS and defended the partisan "fact-checking" at last month’s ABC presidential debate.

Associated Press media reporter David Bauder reported on Friday that CBS News “says it will be up to the politicians — not the moderators — to check the facts of their opponents.” This upset "fact checkers" like former PolitiFact boss Angie Drobnic Holan, who want journalists to have the "courage" to challenge the candidates. Well, one party's candidates. 

It is a fact that under the governorship of Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, Minnesota removed a requirement that babies that survived abortions be given life-saving care. However, PolitiFact still slapped a “false” label on the claim on Wednesday.

During Vice President Kamala Harris’s interview session with the National Association of Black Journalists, on-stage fact-checking was nonexistent, but PolitiFact assigned itself to do the task online. Unfortunately, the difference between PolitiFact’s treatment of Harris’s NABJ appearance and Trump’s was just as stark as the candidates’ appearances themselves.