Fact-checking fact-checkers

On a daily or on a yearly basis, it’s not hard to find PolitiFact telling the public that Democrats are factual and Republicans are liars. Take the Georgia Senate race: Sen. Raphael Warnock’s ratings in 2022 are three “Mostly True” checks and one “Half True.” But Herschel Walker drew two "False" ratings, two "Mostly False", and one "Half True." There was no rating on the "True" side.

Something unexpected happened on Wednesday. PolitiFact gave Joe Biden his first "Pants On Fire" rating as president....twenty-two months into plenty of transparent lies, starting with the Republicans are "Jim Crow 2.0" on election laws. This was the sentence they flagged as a lie: "On my watch, for the first time in 10 years, seniors are getting an increase in their Social Security checks."…

In recent weeks, CNN's "fact checker" Daniel Dale has been showing up on air to trash Republicans for making things up. On Monday, it was Republicans using "defund the police" ads against Democrats. But last Monday, Dale posted a "fact check" of Democrat abortion ads on CNN.com -- and he somehow never made it on to TV to discuss it. 

The New York Times is signaling that they’re not wild about Joe Biden running for president again. Suddenly, they announced his statements are routinely un-factual. He's a habitual liar. Why is this discovery emerging now?

In Sunday’s paper Washington Post “Fact Checker” sought to downplay the “election denialism” of Stacey Abrams. She wasn’t a Liar to say she “won” her 2018 election for governor of Georgia, or to say it was “stolen from the people of Georgia. No, it was merely twisty rhetoric, no cartoon Pinocchios needed. 

The liberal "fact checkers" despite any Republican attempt to describe Democrat candidates as extreme on abortion -- even as Democrats in Congress moved to pass a bill to "codify" Roe vs. Wade that would eliminate limits on abortion in all 50 states. The latest example came from PolitiFact in the Wisconsin Senate race. Check this angry headline for a "Pants On Fire" rating...

Ohio GOP Senate nominee J.D. Vance has a new ad attacking Democrat Tim Ryan for proclaiming “I don’t answer to any political party” while, in Vance’s words, “Tim votes with Biden, Pelosi 100 percent.” This would appear to be a straightforward fact-check for PolitiFact’s Amy Sherman, but instead of simply labeling Vance’s ad “true” or “mostly true,” Sherman somehow managed to only give it a…

PolitiFact is at it again. This time they are accusing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of making a “mostly false” statement when he said that Hurricane Ian was not predicated to hit Lee County despite conceding his statements on the matter were basically correct.

On Sunday, our Kevin Tober noticed Sen. Rick Scott faced pushback from CBS Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan when he said Vice President Kamala Harris was arguing that racial "equity" should be applied in disaster relief. It was only a matter of time before the "independent fact checkers" lined up to defend Harris. 

Snopes.com took after a PJ Media article, asking "Did Obama Foundation Store Classified Documents at Empty Furniture Warehouse?" Matt Margolis found a letter proving that was true. Snopes claimed it was "False"! 

At the top of their home page, PolitiFact begs for donations by proclaiming "Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy." But any evaluation of their target selection shows they are transparently less  likely to “fact check” Democrats than others. Over the last 18 months, PolitiFact offered almost six times as many fact checks of Biden critics…

Stephen Kruiser of PJ Media said it was "beyond ludicrous" for liberal media outlets to have "fact checkers" when they sound like "flying monkeys" for the Democrats (like The Wizard of Oz.) Washington Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler claims you can't say Democrats favor no limits on abortions -- which is true -- because late-term abortions are rare and whenever they happen,…

Glenn Kessler defended Democrats on abortion not once, but twice on Thursday and both times the Washington Post’s resident fact-checker got his facts wrong.

On Saturday, PolitiFact's Twitter account hinted at how they're tilting their "fact-checking" in the Ohio Senate race. Tim Ryan is overwhelmingly True, and J.D. Vance is typically False.