Fact-checking fact-checkers

As the in-house ‘misinformation’ expert at NBC, Ben Collins peddles enough falsehoods to kill a fully grown African bull elephant. On Thursday when Ben took to X (formerly Twitter) to whine that some media outlets were actually covering the plagiarism scandal plaguing Harvard president Claudine Gay, commentators from across the political spectrum united to rake him over the coals.

Bill Adair, a founder of PolitiFact, has a new piece at Nieman Lab complaining that "fact-checking is failing," that the old standard of posting your fact checks on a website isn’t working. The old standard of "informing democracy" isn't working, and he’s upset that conservatives and Republicans don’t trust fact checkers. But the problem isn’t their obvious tilt, it’s that their suppression…

They describe themselves as "independent fact-checkers," but they're not. They sound like liberal columnists, which is why conservatives and Republicans disdain their partisan rulings. Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren have been "fact checked" very, very differently in the last decade. Alex Christy discusses the chapter he wrote with Brent Baker in the new book A Future for the News.

In response to Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, CNN International’s Christiane Amanpour, whose show is simulcast in the United States on PBS, wrote, “Now, more than ever, we need to commit to real reporting across a real nation, a real world in which journalism and democracy are in mortal peril, including by foreign powers like Russia paying to churn out and place false news, and hacking into…

To close out the Wednesday GOP Presidential Debate, the Washington Free Beacon’s Eliana Johnson asked the candidates which former president they would draw inspiration from and for his choice, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis selected Calvin Coolidge. For some reason, PolitiFact decided to fact-check this.

There are only three things certain in life: death, taxes, and professional fact-checkers condemning Republican politicians for lamenting the small size of the U.S. Navy. The latest installment in this nearly-decade long exercise of opinion-checking disguised as fact-checking came on Monday as PolitiFacat’s Louis Jacobson only gave presidential candidate Nikki Haley a “half-true” rating for…

Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler has found a topic on which to consistently shame President Joe Biden: being too much against Hamas. Earlier, Kessler condemned Biden for not trusting Hamas’s casualty reports despite admitting combatant deaths are lumped in with non-combatants and on Wednesday, Kessler added the claim that Hamas beheaded Israeli babies.

PolitiFact and Factcheck.org are both part of Facebook’s fact-checking program that rates and suppresses online content, but what is Facebook to do when the two have a disagreement? A Wednesday article from PolitiFact rates a claim about the cost of Thanksgiving from White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre “mostly true,” while Factcheck.org accused both her and the RNC of partisan…

One of the concepts that put Republicans on edge during live events is the leftist media promising "fact checking in real time." It always carries the potential to be even worse than their "fact checking" that isn't rushed. Here are some of the lamest, dumbest fact checks from the third presidential debate in Miami.

On Friday, we noted NBCNews.com was trying to throw the "False" flag at pro-lifers in Ohio over the state's Issue One referendum. PolitiFact also ruled pro-lifers were "False" with a similar strategy. Opponents of abortion aren't allowed to speculate about what the abortion-rights language would allow.

Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler decided to detour from going after Republicans on Wednesday to condemn something President Biden said recently. Unfortunately, it was on the subject of Biden doubting Hamas’s casualty reports, labeling such…

The Democrats at PolitiFact jumped at the chance to “fact check” new House Speaker Mike Johnson’s acceptance speech after he was elected. They gave him a “Half True” for saying “Prices have increased over 17% in the last two years.” Johnson's office sent PolitiFact data that prices have increased that much under Biden, but they fussed "Johnson said two years, not two years and nine months."…

When it comes to "fact checking" conservatives, PolitiFact seems at war with plain English. The conservative group Americans for Prosperity offered an ad on Facebook criticizing Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) as he seeks re-election in a tough battle with Republican Gov. Jim Justice."The Inflation Reduction Act led to higher taxes," the ad said. They ruled this is "Mostly False," when it's true…

AP fact-checker Philip Marcelo beclowned himself on Friday as he rated a claim that Hamas sympathizers chanted anti-Semitic remarks “false,” not because they didn’t—he admits that they did—but because the clip “is more than two years old.”