PolitiFact.com’s Truth-O-Meter Fact Checking
by Amber Mac on September 29, 2016
The US election is coming up fast and the debates are in full swing. During this campaign especially, I’ve heard from so many people who just want an unbiased place they can go to fact check the many claims of candidates and their parties. Thankfully, we’ve got the Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact.com website to help us.
PolitiFact’s Truth-o-Meter scale rates quotes from “True” to “Pants-On-Fire” and allows users to click-through to see in-depth explanations of where these ratings come from, including who researched it and from what sources. You can search for quotes by Truth-O-Meter rating, or look at specific lists of people (e.g. Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton), promises (e.g. the Obameter and GOP Pledge-O-Meter), and more.
There are also special editions of the service that focus on news at the national, state, and global (yay!) levels, as well as a dedicated PunditFact.com site for media and other non-politicans (including bloggers, newspapers, and more). They even have a PolitiFact Truth-o-Meter widget that you can embed on your website, and they’ve recently released an annotated transcript of the first presidential debate on Medium, which is a great way to review what’s been said and where they’re stretching the truth!
