Tampa Bay Times (2007–2018) Poynter Institute (2018–present)
URL
politifact.com
Commercial
Yes
Launched
August 2007; 16 years ago (2007-08)
Current status
Active
PolitiFact.com is an American nonprofit project operated by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, with offices there and in Washington, D.C. It began in 2007 as a project of the Tampa Bay Times (then the St. Petersburg Times), with reporters and editors from the newspaper and its affiliated news media partners reporting on the accuracy of statements made by elected officials, candidates, their staffs, lobbyists, interest groups and others involved in U.S. politics.[1] Its journalists select original statements to evaluate and then publish their findings on the PolitiFact.com website, where each statement receives a "Truth-O-Meter" rating. The ratings range from "True" for statements the journalists deem as accurate to "Pants on Fire" (from the taunt "Liar, liar, pants on fire") for claims the journalists deem as "not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim".
PunditFact, a related site that was also created by the Times' editors, is devoted to fact-checking claims made by political pundits.[2] Both PolitiFact and PunditFact were funded primarily by the Tampa Bay Times and ad revenues generated on the website until 2018, and the Times continues to sell ads for the site now that it is part of Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a non-profit organization that also owns the newspaper. PolitiFact increasingly relies on grants from several nonpartisan organizations, and in 2017 launched a membership campaign and began accepting donations from readers.[3]
In addition to political claims, the site monitors the progress elected officials make on their campaign promises, including a "Trump-O-Meter" for President Donald Trump, an "Obameter" for President Barack Obama, and a Biden Promise Tracker for President Joe Biden. PolitiFact.com's local affiliates review promises by elected officials of regional relevance, as evidenced by PolitiFact Tennessee's "Haslam-O-Meter" which tracked former Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam's rhetoric[4] and Wisconsin's "Walk-O-Meter" which tracked former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's efforts.[5]
PolitiFact won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for its reporting during the 2008 United States presidential election,[6] and has been praised and criticized by independent observers, conservatives and liberals alike. Both liberal and conservative bias have been alleged at different points, and criticisms have been made that PolitiFact attempts to fact-check statements that cannot be truly "fact-checked".[7][8] A survey of 511 stories from 2010 to 2011 found that statements made by Republicans were almost three times as likely to be labeled as false as those of Democrats.[9] A larger 2016 analysis by the American Press Institute found that PolitiFact was statistically more likely to be critical of Republicans,[10] while a text analysis by the University of Washington in 2018 was "not able to detect any systematic differences in the treatment of Democrats and Republicans in articles by PolitiFact", but noted that the analysis "cannot determine whether there are partisan biases in Politifact's judgments about truthfulness nor selection of which statements to examine."[11][12]
^"PolitiFact.com". St. Petersburg Times. Archived from the original on August 15, 2010. Retrieved August 16, 2010.
^Adair, Bill. "Principles of PolitiFact, PunditFact and the Truth-O-Meter". PolitiFact. Archived from the original on April 18, 2014. Retrieved April 12, 2014.
^"Who is PolitiFact? Who pays for PolitiFact?". PolitiFact. January 12, 2017. Archived from the original on May 29, 2017. Retrieved May 30, 2017.
^"Haslam-O-Meter: Tracking the promises of Bill Haslam". PolitiFact Tennessee. Archived from the original on March 22, 2012. Retrieved March 19, 2012.
^"Walk-O-Meter: Tracking the promises of Scott Walker". PolitiFact Wisconsin. Archived from the original on July 14, 2015. Retrieved July 14, 2015.
^"2009 Pulitzer Prizes". Pulitzer Prizes. Pulitzer Prizes. January 3, 2009. Retrieved January 3, 2009.
^Claiming persistent bias, Democratic Party to stop taking PolitiFact's calls Archived March 23, 2016, at the Wayback Machine; Milwaukee Magazine; Erik Gunn; June 14, 2011
^PolitiFact RI once again shows right-wing bias Archived December 23, 2015, at the Wayback Machine; Rhode Island Future; Samuel Bell; May 25, 2013
^Ostermeier, Eric (February 10, 2011). "Selection Bias? PolitiFact Rates Republican Statements as False at 3 Times the Rate of Democrats". Smart Politics. University of Minnesota. Retrieved February 10, 2011.
^Farnsworth, Stephen. "A Comparative Analysis of the Partisan Targets of Media Fact-checking: Examining President Obama and the 113th Congress" (PDF). American Press Institute. Retrieved May 3, 2021.
^Dallas Card, Lucy H. Lin, and Noah A. Smith. "Politifact Language Audit" (PDF). University of Washington, Department of Computer Science.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^"Is PolitiFact biased? This content analysis says no". Poynter. August 10, 2018. Retrieved December 31, 2021.
as considered true by the Politifact team, revealing confirmed facts and including accreditations. Since 2009, PolitiFact.com has declared one political...
networks. Gillin, Joshua (2018-04-20). "PolitiFact's guide to fake news websites and what they peddle". PolitiFact. Archived from the original on 2019-08-03...
pandemic". Washington Post. "PolitiFact.com". St. Petersburg Times. Retrieved August 27, 2009. "The Obameter". Politifact. Retrieved April 8, 2017. "2009...
2018-06-24. Gillin, Joshua (2017-01-06). "PolitiFact - No, a celebrity's car didn't break down in your hometown". Politifact. Archived from the original on 2023-09-08...
Retrieved 2024-01-22. Qiu, Linda. "PolitiFact - No, Air Force One did not refuse to take Obama to Hawaii". Politifact. Archived from the original on 2023-11-17...
Morning News. PolitiFact identified "Michael Baxter" as Michael Tuffin, a resident of Texas and New York. Following inquiries by PolitiFact, Facebook stated...
f-journalism-8-good-questions-with-politifacts-angie-drobnic-holan/ New editors named for PolitiFact and PunditFact. (2013, October 10). Tampa Bay Times...
major fact-checking sites regularly fact-checked Trump, including: PolitiFact, which awarded Trump its "Lie of the Year" in 2015, 2017 and 2019. FactCheck...
campaign misstatements of Donald Trump". PolitiFact. Farhi, Paul (February 26, 2016). "Think Trump's wrong? Fact checkers can tell you how often. (Hint:...
Gillin, Joshua (2017-06-26). "PolitiFact - Saga of bodies found in barrels on Clinton property is fake news". Politifact. Archived from the original on...
the Tampa Bay Times newspaper and the International Fact-Checking Network. It also operates PolitiFact. The school began on May 29, 1975, when Nelson Poynter...
old to become first human on Mars?". PolitiFact. Retrieved January 17, 2024. Lybrand, Holmes (July 23, 2018). "Fact Check: Is NASA 'Preparing This [Teenage]...
to Spot Fake News", FactCheck.org, archived from the original on 2024-01-12, retrieved 19 November 2016 "PolitiFact - PolitiFact's guide to fake news websites...
— is wrong". PolitiFact. Archived from the original on June 13, 2021. Retrieved July 3, 2021. Moritz, John C. (October 21, 2020). "Fact Check: Hillary...
land seizures, farmers". PolitiFact. Archived from the original on August 28, 2018. Meldrum, Andrew (August 23, 2018). "AP Fact Check: Trump's claim on...
Soviet security agency, for which he received PolitiFact's "Pants on Fire" rating. According to PolitiFact, "numerous historians of the FBI and the KGB...
States elections. Law enforcement as well as fact-checking websites like PolitiFact.com, Snopes.com, and FactCheck.org stated that these theories were false...
December 15, 2017. "Facebook did not remove Gateway Pundit post after fact-check". PolitiFact. Archived from the original on February 16, 2018. Retrieved December...
Dc 20006. "PolitiFact - No proof voter suppression kept Stacey Abrams from governorship, as Democrats said in Atlanta debate". PolitiFact. Retrieved September...
Medicare; fact-checkers found that both of Scott's assertions were false. During the campaign, Scott called Nelson a "socialist", an assertion PolitiFact described...
'Password.' It's a true story. His password was 'password.'" The fact-checking website PolitiFact rated Watters' claim "False." In April 2017, two days after...
Greenberg, Jon (January 27, 2022). "PolitiFact - Boebert lacks proof for claim on Hunter Biden's Burisma pay". PolitiFact. Archived from the original on February...
the disease it causes, and her own controversial history. Fact-checking website PolitiFact highlighted eight false or misleading statements made in the...
operate and promote business transactions across the world. PolitiFact and the Washington Post fact-checker rated Eric Trump's assertion that the Trump family...
they were "baseless". As rumors spread in April 2022, news fact-checking organization PolitiFact did not find any credible news reports to support the claim...
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