Politifact.com stories from National
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Posts by Politifact.com stories from National
PolitiFact’s Fall TV Preview
Sep 6th
Labor Day weekend marks the kickoff of the fall TV season -- not sitcoms and reality shows, but campaign ads. To help make sense of the impending avalanche of ads, we present the Message Machine Fall TV Preview, part of a PolitiFact-NPR partnership to factcheck the 2010 campaign. PolitiFact has a unique perch to watch the TV ads. Our six state partners (in Texas, Florida, Ohio, Georgia, Rhode Island and Wisconsin) are fact-checking claims in their states, and our national staff is checking commercials in many others. We"ve seen candidates from both sides rely heavily on party playbooks and, in ... >>More
Announcing PolitiFact Wisconsin
Sep 5th
The Truth-O-Meter has arrived in Wisconsin. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel today is launching PolitiFact Wisconsin, our sixth state site. Like our other partner sites in Texas, Georgia, Florida, Rhode Island, and Ohio, PolitiFact Wisconsin is integrated with our national site and uses the Truth-O-Meter to rate the accuracy of statements by candidates, elected officials and political parties. The St. Petersburg Times launched PolitiFact three years ago. Since then, we've rated more than 1,500 claims on our Truth-O-Meter and tracked more than 500 of President Barack Obama's campaign promises. The Wisconsin team is headed by Greg Borowski, the senior editor for ... >>More
Mailbag: ‘Glenn Beck rules, PolitiFact drools.’
Sep 3rd
We got lots of reader feedback on our recent work. Here's a selection, edited for length and style. The New York mosque controversy We got a lot of reader criticism for our rating of Al Hunt's statement, "This is not a mosque. It's a cultural center that has a prayer area." We rated that False. We said it's imprecise to simply refer to the New York project as a mosque, but the center's organizers and backer regularly describe the project as including a mosque. Readers disagreed. "This has to be one of the worst ratings you've done in evaluating Al ... >>More
Democratic exaggerations about “privatizing Social Security”
Sep 2nd
It was a winning line for Democrats five years ago against President George W. Bush's proposal: Republicans, they said, want to "privatize Social Security." Now Democrats are turning to it in the midterm campaigns — even though it's often an exaggeration of the GOP candidates' positions. In Arkansas, a campaign ad shows a solemn Sen. Blanche Lincoln looking into the camera, saying, "Unlike John, I'm against privatizing Social Security and Medicare." That would be John Boozman, a Republican Congressman who's challenging her. In Colorado, a narrator asks, "Who is Ken Buck, and does he speak for Colorado? Buck wants to … >>More
Rating tax attacks in Pennsylvania Senate race
Sep 1st
In their hard-fought race for a Pennsylvania Senate seat, Republican Pat Toomey and Democrat Joe Sestak have attacked each other over tax policy. In a Toomey ad, the Republican nominee charged that "Joe Sestak ... even wants to bring back the death tax, letting the IRS take half of your savings when you die." We found some truth to Toomey's claim because Sestak supports reviving the estate tax, which was phased out earlier this year, albeit at a rate lower than it would be without Congressional action. However, we also concluded that Toomey exaggerated the scope of the tax, incorrectly ... >>More
On ‘This Week’: schools, jobs and McDonald’s eggs
Aug 31st
Sunday's edition of This Week with Christiane Amanpour focused largely on education, with guests that included Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Jamie Oliver, the "Naked Chef" from Britain who has called for better nutrition. We've put three claims from the show to our Truth-O-Meter: Duncan said the high school dropout rate in the United States is 25 percent. We found he glossed over the details and rated that Half True. Democratic strategist Donna Brazile said 45 percent of the people who have been unemployed have been so for at least six months. We found her verb tense was slightly off ... >>More
Is the Obama administration keeping track of our fat?
Aug 30th
It sounds like a claim from a chain e-mail, but it's posted on the website of a Republican candidate for Congress. Is Big Brother really going to keep tabs on your flab? The charge was posted in a letter dated Aug. 10, 2010, on the website of Ann Marie Buerkle, a Republican who is seeking to oust Rep. Dan Maffei, a freshman Democrat representing a district in upstate New York. The letter, addressed to "Dear Friends," was signed by the candidate herself. It said, "You may have noticed the latest 'product' from big government advocates in Washington. We now know ... >>More
The Truth-O-Meter report card on Glenn Beck
Aug 27th
We'll be fact-checking Glenn Beck and others who speak at his "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday. We hope to publish those items in the next few days. In the meantime, we thought it would be timely to look at Beck's record on the Truth-O-Meter. As you can see from the running tally in his PolitiFact file, we've rated 17 statements by the Fox News talk show host. It's fair to say that record skews toward the False end of the Truth-O-Meter. His record (as of Aug. 27, 2010): True 1 Mostly True 1 ... >>More
Why do so many people think Obama is a Muslim?
Aug 26th
President Barack Obama has declared himself a Christian. He has worshipped in Christian churches, prayed with Christian ministers, and recounted how he knelt beneath a cross and felt God's spirit. And yet, a surprising number of Americans keep telling pollsters they believe he's a Muslim. The Pew Research Center last week reported that 18 percent of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim, up from 11 percent in March 2009. A Time magazine poll also released last week found even more -- 24 percent -- said he was a Muslim. Dig deeply into the polls, however, and you see the roots ... >>More
Did the stimulus cost more than the Iraq War?
Aug 26th
Washington Examiner editorial page editor Mark Tapscott warned readers Aug. 23, 2010, to expect to hear a lot from Democrats about the cost of the Iraq War. It might be expensive, he said, but not as expensive as President Barack Obama"s economic stimulus. Citing data from conservative writer Randall Hoven, Tapscott said, "Obama"s stimulus, passed in his first month in office, will cost more than the entire Iraq War -- more than $100 billion more." Really? Could the nearly seven-year-long war cost less than the 2009 stimulus, which was designed to keep the U.S. economy from sliding into a depression? ... >>More
