'YIKES': PolitiFact Founder Urges More Social-Media Suppression

Tim Graham
December 20th, 2023 4:00 PM

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…

 

NBC 'Reality Check': 'Effective' Obama Ad Paints Romney as 'Mr. Burns

Kyle Drennen
August 22nd, 2012 9:52 AM
In what co-host Matt Lauer billed as a campaign ad "reality check" on Tuesday's NBC Today, a Romney ad criticizing the Obama administration for gutting Welfare reform was dismissed as ineffective, "too complicated" and "Pants on Fire" false. Meanwhile, an Obama ad slamming Romney over taxes was praised for making Romney look like a cross between wealthy Simpson's villain "Mr. Burns" and an "evil…
 

PolitiFact Rates Another Accurate GOP Claim 'Mostly False' on CNN

Matt Hadro
May 21st, 2012 4:30 PM
PolitiFact decided to get cute with words and nail an accurate statement by a conservative advocacy group as "Mostly False" for supposed contextual issues. This is not the first time that the fact-checking outfit has labeled an accurate statement "Half True" or "Mostly False," as it did twice to the Romney campaign. According to PolitiFact's Bill Adair, who appeared on CNN Monday afternoon,…
 

PolitiFact Whiffs Again, Rates Accurate Romney Claim 'Half True

Matt Hadro
May 2nd, 2012 9:09 AM
It must be campaign season. Fact-checking gurus are rating accurate statements by the Romney campaign as "Mostly False" or "Half True" or – the best – "True but False," since they're correct but they apparently don't tell the whole story. However, when President Obama made a factually-incorrect statement last week, he did not receive a "False" rating from the website PolitiFact, but…
 

CBS Let 'Biggest Lie of the Year' in Politics Go Unanswered For Months

Matthew Balan
December 20th, 2011 3:52 PM
Tuesday's Early Show on CBS brought on PolitiFact's Bill Adair to reveal what he labeled as the "biggest lie of the year" inside politics, which was "the claim by many Democrats that the Republicans voted to end Medicare." But CBS let Democratic operatives spout that falsehood several times without scrutiny earlier in 2011. The network did stand out in bringing on the PolitiFact editor,…
 

Biden is 'Full Employment for Fact-Checkers

Colleen Raezler
August 27th, 2008 1:19 PM
Pay close attention to Joe Biden's words tonight. During an appearance on this morning's "Morning Joe" Bill Adair, Washington bureau chief for the St. Petersburg Times and editor of politifact.com, implied that Barack Obama's running mate is not always truthful. Adair told hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski that "from a fact-checker's standpoint, we should be grateful to Joe Biden" because…