Fact-checking fact-checkers

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…

On Sunday morning, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria re-aired an April 6 primetime special with the not-so-subtle title of The War on Government, which purported to be a history lesson on the conservative movement’s frustration with Republican politicians’ unwillingness or inability to shrink the government going back to President Dwight Eisenhower, which has culminated in DOGE’s blunt-force…

If you argue that fact-checking websites like PolitiFact should not be the final arbiter of what is true because they fact-check Republicans way more than Democrats, the response you are likely to get is because they deserve it. However, a Thursday article on Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer undermines that point because the article makes it clear that Schumer was wrong to blame the…

PolitiFact’s relationship with Facebook might be over, but just in case Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg feels the need to change his mind one day, a Thursday article from Maria Ramirez Uribe proved why it should stay that way. Uribe rated President Trump “false” for saying “there’s a different standard” for due process for illegal immigrants despite admitting he was, in fact, correct.

It must be a cold day in hell apparently. Leftist fact-checker FactCheck.org actually took time to defend President Donald Trump’s first term economy from deceptive falsehoods circulating online.

PolitiFact editor-in-chief Katie Sanders is still decrying Meta Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to break up with the fact-checking companies, so, on Thursday, she wrote an article using the death of Pope Francis to argue he supported their work.

NewsBusters has repeatedly noted that Dale appears on air at CNN overwhelmingly to "correct" Trump. Fox News media reporter Joseph Wulfsohn exposed that pattern again: in the first 80 days of Trump's second term, Dale made at least 23 on-air fact-checks of Trump, but only two for Biden during the same period in 2021.

Factcheck.org may be the best of the fact-checking websites that recently saw their influence decline when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided to break up with them. However, a nearly 3,000-word SciCheck essay from Catalina Jaramillo on Monday proved that is still not good enough to justify the previous partnership, as she took aim at a series of transgender-related executive orders from…

On April 7, Facebook pulled the plug on the censorship of “independent fact checkers,” replacing it with a “Community Notes” approach, like Elon Musk’s X uses. No one was more upset than the censorious left-wing “fact” police. But PolitiFact's treatment of Sen. Cory Booker's "historic" 25-hour speech on the Senate floor proves they're often in the tank for Democrats.

Most people probably do not know who Angie Drobnic Holan is, but they should. Holan is the director of the International Fact-Checking Network at Poynter, and on April 2, or International Fact-Checking Day, she wrote an op-ed bemoaning the setbacks the industry has taken in 2025 from Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and the Trump Administration.

PolitiFact’s Louis Jacobson slapped a “false” label on Elon Musk on Wednesday for his claim that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. Jacobson’s big argument against Musk was not convincing, as he insisted that because Social Security is legal, it can’t be accurately described as a Ponzi scheme.