PolitiFact wins Green Eyeshade Award for public service in online journalism

PolitiFact, the national politics fact-checking website of the Tampa Bay Times, has won a first place Green Eyeshade Awards in the category public service in online journalism.

The contest, sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists and now in its 63rd year, recognizes the best journalism in the southeastern United States. 

PolitiFact won for its fact-checking reports of the 2012 presidential election. The public service category recognizes "outstanding service to the public rendered through extensive coverage of an issue facing a community."

PolitiFact's state partner PolitiFact Florida also won a first place Green Eyeshade award in the category of ...

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Posted by Angie Drobnic Holan :: Published on Thursday, May 9th, 2013 at 06:56 a.m.

Editor Bill Adair to leave PolitiFact

This summer we say goodbye to Bill Adair, founding editor of PolitiFact.

Adair, who helped create the Tampa Bay Times' prize-winning fact-checking site, will join Duke University as the Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy, Times Editor Neil Brown announced Thursday.

A national search for the next PolitiFact editor will begin soon, Brown said. Adair will continue a relationship with PolitiFact as a contributing editor.

PolitiFact was recognized with a Pulitzer Prize in 2009, has won numerous online journalism awards and has expanded the fact-checking of political speech through more than 10 partnerships around the country ...

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Posted by Amy Hollyfield :: Published on Thursday, April 4th, 2013 at 03:48 p.m.

The Lie of the Year, still

A number of readers emailed us this week about news reports that Chrysler is moving forward with a partnership in China to produce Jeeps. They wondered: Doesn’t that disprove our Lie of the Year -- that Mitt Romney said Barack Obama "sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China" at the cost of American jobs?

No, it doesn’t.

We were clear in our original Oct. 29 fact-check and our Dec. 12 Lie of the Year story that Jeep intended to build cars in China to sell in the Chinese market. News reports this week don ...

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Posted by Bill Adair :: Published on Friday, January 18th, 2013 at 03:34 p.m.

Deleting duplication on the Obameter

As we continue wrapping up our work on the 2008 Obameter promises, we found a duplication.

President Barack Obama’s promise to "restore 24-month limit on cumulative Guard and Reserve deployment time" is contained within another of his promises: to "limit Guard and Reserve deployments to one year for every six years."

We’re deleting the first promise on guard deployments; our reporting in the second one addresses the issue of cumulative limits on deployments.

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Posted by Bill Adair :: Published on Thursday, December 20th, 2012 at 02:18 p.m.

PolitiFact honored with Vigilance in Journalism award

PolitiFact has been award the 2012 Irene Miller Award for Vigilance in Journalism by the Pinellas County, Fla., chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.

The Irene Miller award is given annually to "members of the media profession who have exemplified consistent dedication to the highest principles of freedom of the press and responsibility to  the necessity of an informed public."

The award is named in honor of the late Irene Miller, who served as Pinellas County chapter president until 2001, and in the words of her colleagues, "had the greatest appreciation for the important role of the ...

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Posted by Bill Adair :: Published on Friday, December 7th, 2012 at 09:21 a.m.

Some GOP health care pledges moot; we delete them

As we finish rating the 2010 campaign promises made by House Republicans on our GOP Pledge-O-Meter, we’ve determined that a few of them don’t fall anywhere along our scale of Promise Broken to Promise Kept.

Some health care pledges made by Republicans were conditional upon repealing the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. House GOP members opposed the law but liked some provisions and promised to enact legislation keeping them in effect. They were:

• Ensuring access to insurance coverage for people with pre-existing conditions
• Expanding state high-risk pools and reducing the cost of health coverage
• Eliminating annual ...

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Posted by Molly Moorhead :: Published on Monday, November 12th, 2012 at 05:33 p.m.

Daily Disclosure tracks campaign ads

We are getting help with our coverage of campaign ads from the Center for Public Integrity's Daily Disclosure, a digest of new ads that appears on CPI's iWatch news every morning.

Every morning, staffers at the center comb through Federal Election Commission reports, news releases and Youtube postings to find where the money is going and see the latest ads from campaign, party groups and super PACS. The Daily Disclosure is a great way to follow the money -- and the rhetoric -- every day.

 

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Posted by Bill Adair :: Published on Friday, August 17th, 2012 at 10:58 a.m.

Tracking our corrections and updates

We've created a new page so you can see Truth-O-Meter items that have a correction or update. The page will include articles or Truth-O-Meter fact-checks that have:

• Corrections that were significant enough to change a Truth-O-Meter ruling
• Corrections that did not require changing a ruling
• Updates that provide additional information after the item was initially published

Here is our correction policy, as published in the Principles of the Truth-O-Meter:

We strive to make our work completely accurate. When we make a mistake, we correct it and note it on the original item. If the mistake is so significant that ...

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Posted by Bill Adair :: Published on Tuesday, February 7th, 2012 at 04:29 p.m.

'There's a fair chance PolitiFact spoke to other experts' -- yes, 13 others

We've gotten some criticism today about the Pants on Fire we gave to Mitt Romney for his claim that the size of the U.S. Navy and Air Force shows the United States is at risk of losing its "military superiority."

Tom Bruscino, one of the experts we consulted, wrote in a blog post that he thought it merited a Half True rather than a Pants on Fire.

Bruscino's post, which included his e-mail exchange with us, was picked up conservative bloggers who said it was evidence of liberal bias, and by POLITICO media writer Dylan Byers, who ...

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Posted by Bill Adair :: Published on Thursday, January 19th, 2012 at 06:41 p.m.

Who is PolitiFact? Who pays for Politifact?

Updated Monday, January 9, 2012 at 11:04 a.m.

As we've gained new readers over the years, every now and then we get e-mails that ask, "Who's paying for this Web site? Who's putting out this information?"

The short answer is this: PolitiFact is a project of the Tampa Bay Times and its partner news organizations to help you find the truth in American politics. (See more about our mission on the "About Us" page.) The Times is the biggest newspaper in the Tampa Bay area and it has the largest circulation of any paper in ...

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Posted by Angie Drobnic Holan :: Published on Thursday, October 6th, 2011 at 01:42 p.m.

Help us improve the PolitiFact apps!

If you have a suggestion or a problem with PolitiFact Mobile or Settle It! PolitiFact's Argument Ender, we want to hear from you.

Please email us at truthometer@politifact.com and tell us about your suggestion or problem.

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Posted by Bill Adair :: Published on Thursday, June 30th, 2011 at 08:05 a.m.

Coverage of PolitiFact

Highlights from press coverage of PolitiFact: 

An overview of PolitiFact

World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, Q&A with PolitiFact Editor Bill Adair, Aug. 18, 2011

PolitiFact in the States

American  Journalism Review, the Fact-Checking Explosion, December 2010 / January 2011
Poynter Online, Q&A on PolitiFact state partnerships, May 6, 2010
American Journalism Review, Facing the Truth-O-Meter: PolitiFact"s new Florida operation checks out the veracity of local pols" assertions, March 2010
Austin American-Statesman, Candidates, meet the the Truth-O-Meter, Jan. 14, 2010
Miami Herald, PolitiFact"s Truth-O-Meter will tell us when candidates are off the mark, Feb. 26, 2010 ...

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Posted by Bill Adair :: Published on Thursday, June 23rd, 2011 at 03:48 p.m.

Fact-checking claims about the health care law

Claims about health care have kept the Truth-O-Meter busy. You can browse our coverage on our health care page.

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Posted by Bill Adair :: Published on Thursday, January 20th, 2011 at 06:05 a.m.

A few changes to PolitiFact's Top Promises

When we unveiled our Obameter -- an unprecedented collection of the president's campaign promises -- it had more than 500. Several readers told us they wanted a way to highlight the truly important ones.

So we came up with PolitiFact's Top Promises, which started as a group of 10 campaign promises that the editors and reporters of PolitiFact deemed most significant. Soon afterwards, we expanded the list to the Top 25.

We periodically adjust the list to reflect the most significant issues.

So we're removing five promises from the list and replacing them. No promises are being deleted from ...

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Posted by Angie Drobnic Holan :: Published on Tuesday, January 18th, 2011 at 02:33 p.m.

The GOP Pledge-O-Meter

How the GOP Pledge-O-Meter works

The GOP Pledge-O-Meter keeps track of the promises that Republican leaders made during the 2010 campaign. The Pledge-O-Meter, like the Obameter, has six levels. The first three provide a broad picture of whether the GOP leaders are making progress; the final three indicate whether they kept the promise:

Not Yet Rated — Every promise begins at this level and retains this rating
until we see evidence of progress — or evidence that the promise has
stalled.

In the Works — This is our broad category to indicate the promise has been
proposed or is being considered.

Stalled — There ...

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Posted by Bill Adair :: Published on Saturday, January 1st, 2011 at 05:47 p.m.