Fact-checking fact-checkers

Every once in a while, the “fact checkers” at PolitiFact publish reader comments, and this one stuck out. "Your site seems to be mostly about Trump all the time," came one comment in an email. "How about a little less Trump, and write more about any other falsehood subjects?"

The fact-checking industry likes to view itself as the guardian of truth in an age of rampant misinformation, but what is one to do when they can’t all get on the same page? While PolitiFact, the Associated Press, and CNN’s Daniel Dale all rushed on Wednesday to call Republicans liars for saying Democrats want to give illegal immigrants access to federal benefits in exchange for ending the…

After Charlie Kirk was assassinated there was some nice-sounding talk about toning down the inflammatory political rhetoric, but some on the left didn’t get the memo. After Kirk’s memorial service, some internet-dwelling lefties compared Trump advisor Stephen Miller’s speech to that of future Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels’s 1932 speech about Horst Wessel. Snopes’s Nur Ibrahim set…

President Trump’s address to the United Nations General Assembly was the latest example of how our “independent fact-checkers” are better defined as Democrat-dependent messaging machines. Their selection bias is transparent. They wouldn't do the same for Biden or Harris.

The furor over Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension exposed PolitiFact once again as a very partisan outfit – not an “independent fact-checker.” They offered no fact check for Kimmel’s nationally broadcast lie that Kirk's killer was somehow a Trump fan. Instead they threw a "False" rating on Thursday at...Sean Hannity.

Whether they be on the left, right, or in the center, one of the frustrations of journalists everywhere is people who only read the headline, or the tweet, for a given article. On Tuesday, Politifact deputy editor Louis Jacobson did just that when he labeled the Department of Energy’s X account “false” for a claim about solar and wind energy that, if he had only read the article, he would have…

It's ordinary, and yet extraordinary: CNN's "Facts First" page of "fact checks" is all about President Trump. On their dedicated web page this morning, Trump is featured in 32 of 32 articles. Everything Daniel Dale has written obsesses over Trump, just like his TV appearances. 

The only thing worse than well-considered liberal bias is immediately-posted liberal bias. In their "live fact checking," PolitiFact demonstrates it's just trash-talking Trump like any MSNBC liberal and calling it a "fact check."

Former Washington Post colleagues Glenn Kessler and Jen Rubin reunited on August 4 on Rubin’s The Contrarian podcast to discuss Kessler’s departure from the Post’s Fact Checker page. During their conversation, Kessler would unleash three headscratchers: that he fact-checked Republicans more because they are in power, a historically incorrect warning about going back…

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.

As the front page of the New York Times editorializes about Trump waging a "War On Facts," it's a good time to remind you that the "fact checkers" are waging a War On Trump. Democrats drew zero ratings of "Mostly False" or worse, compared to ten for Republicans, including three "Pants On Fire" attacks on President Trump. 

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.