Trump Fact Check

AlwaysWrite

Addicted Member
Dear Good Times Good Times:

POLITIFACT IS A TOTAL JOKE, and it represents the lamestream media to a tee.

PolitiFact is SUPPOSEDLY a nonpartisan project of the Tampa Bay Times, which is one of the most liberal "newspapers" (if you can call it that) anywhere.

The PolitiFact staff supposedly examines public statements made by American politicians, and the statements are supposedly researched and placed into six categories from True to False, with the most-ridiculously falsehoods rated as Pants On Fire.

A look at PolitiFact this morning indicates that Hillary's statements are true (in the categories True, Mainly True and Half-True) 72 percent of the time, while Hillary's statements were found false (Mostly False, False or Pants On Fire) 28 percent of the time.

By comparison, Trump's statements fall into the True classifications 30 percent of the time and as False 70 percent of the time. And in the Pants On Fire category, Trump is listed with 41 such statements, while Hillary has only 8.


When you are dealing with one of the most-dishonest politicians in history -- and likely one of the most-dishonest people in ANY category -- HOW CAN POLITIFACT HAVE ANY CREDIBILITY with such one-sided bias for Hillary and against Trump?

POLITIFACT is the complete opposite of a fair-minded site for determining truth and fiction. And to think that some people would tend to believe such one-sided GARBAGE.
 

MI2AZ

Active Member
Or, it could just be that Trump is that bad - a bigger liar than Clinton. He makes Clinton look like George Washington.
 

Greg T.

The Jizz Slinger
Or, it could just be that Trump is that bad - a bigger liar than Clinton. He makes Clinton look like George Washington.
Lmao!! Pinocchio couldnt make clinton look like GW. She cant even keep track of what she told herself.
 

AlwaysWrite

Addicted Member
Or, it could just be that Trump is that bad - a bigger liar than Clinton. He makes Clinton look like George Washington.
Dear MI2AZ:

Anyone who believes PolitiFact is either partial to lying (or liars) ... OR is too uninformed to know better.
 

AlwaysWrite

Addicted Member
Let's look at it another way. PolitiFact indicates that in the True category, Trump has 9 statements and Hillary has 53, and in the Pants On Fire category, Trump has 41 while Hillary has 8.

If one were to believe those statistics, that would indicate that Trump lies more than five times more than Hillary.

That would be impossible. Even with the most-conservative estimate, Hillary lies at least one-fourth (25%) of the time ... and that would mean that Trump lies more than 125% of the time -- which, of course, is impossible.
 

Good Times Good Times

Active Member
Or, it could just be that Trump is that bad - a bigger liar than Clinton. He makes Clinton look like George Washington.
From Wiki:

Reception
PolitiFact.com was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2009 for "its fact-checking initiative during the 2008 presidential campaign that used probing reporters and the power of the World Wide Web to examine more than 750 political claims, separating rhetoric from truth to enlighten voters".[24]

A Wall Street Journal editorial in December 2010 called PolitiFact "part of a larger journalistic trend that seeks to recast all political debates as matters of lies, misinformation and 'facts,' rather than differences of world view or principles".[25]

Mark Hemingway of The Weekly Standard criticized all fact-checking projects by news organizations, including PolitiFact, the Associated Press and the Washington Post, writing that they "aren’t about checking facts so much as they are about a rearguard action to keep inconvenient truths out of the conversation".[26]

In December 2011, Northeastern University journalism professor Dan Kennedy wrote in the Huffington Post that the problem with fact-checking projects was "there are only a finite number of statements that can be subjected to thumbs-up/thumbs-down fact-checking".[27]

Matt Welch, in the February 2013 issue of Reason magazine, criticized PolitiFact and other media fact-checkers for focusing much more on statements by politicians about their opponents, rather than statements by politicians and government officials about their own policies, thus serving as "a check on the exercise of rhetoric" but not "a check on the exercise of power".[28]

Analysis of PolitiFact's ratings
University of Minnesota political science professor Eric Ostermeier did an analysis of 511 selected PolitiFact stories issued from January 2010 through January 2011, stating that "PolitiFact has generally devoted an equal amount of time analyzing Republicans (191 statements, 50.4 percent) as they have Democrats (179 stories, 47.2 percent)". Republican officeholders were considered by Politifact to have made substantially more "false" or "pants on fire" statements than their Democratic counterparts. Of 98 statements PolitiFact judged "false" or "pants on fire" from partisan political figures, 74 came from Republicans (76 percent) compared to 22 from Democrats (22 percent) during the selected period reviewed. Ostermeier concluded "By levying 23 Pants on Fire ratings to Republicans over the past year compared to just 4 to Democrats, it appears the sport of choice is game hunting — and the game is elephants."[29] The study was criticized by PolitiFact editor Bill Adair and the MinnPost, with Adair responding, "Eric Ostermeier's study is particularly timely because we've heard a lot of charges this week that we are biased—from liberals […] So we're accustomed to hearing strong reactions from people on both ends of the political spectrum. We are a news organization and we choose which facts to check based on news judgment."[30]

A writer with the left-leaning magazine The Nation argued that findings like this are a reflection of "fact-checkers simply doing their job […] Republicans today just happen to be more egregiously wrong".[31] A writer with the right-leaning Human Events claimed that after looking at Politifact's work on a case-by-case basis a pattern emerged whereby Politifact critiqued straw man claims; that is, "dismissed the speaker’s claim, made up a different claim and checked that instead". The conservative magazine noted Politifact's use of language such as "[although the speaker] used [a specific] phrase […] in his claim, [it] could fairly be interpreted to mean [something more general that is false]". Human Events cited Bryan White's PolitiFactBias blog to state that "from the end of that partnership [with the Congressional Quarterly] to the end of 2011, the national PolitiFact operation has issued 119 Pants on Fire ratings for Republican or conservative claims, and only 13 for liberal or Democratic claims".[32]
 

AlwaysWrite

Addicted Member
Dear Good Times Good Times:

I could care less about how many prizes and honors PolitiFact has received, because the lamestream media doesn't report the truth properly and consistently. PolitiFact, operated by one of the most liberal newspaper in the country (Tampa Bay Times), is designed to "enlighten voters" to its point(s) of view.

The cited Wall Street Journal editorial called PolitiFact "part of a larger journalistic trend that seeks to recast all political debates as matters of lies, misinformation and 'facts' rather than differences of world view or principles." [... and PolitiFact doesn't stick to "principles" because it reflects one-sided views rather than FACT]

Your post includes comment by Mark Hemingway of The Weekly Standard, and he criticized all fact-checking projects by news organizations, including PolitiFact, The Associated Press and The Washington Post, writing that they "so much as they are about a rearguard action to keep inconvenient truths out of the conversation." [... and I emphasize "inconvenient truths."]

Your post also mentions an article by Matt Welch in Reason magazine, and Welch criticized PolitiFact and other media fact-checkers for focusing much more on statements by politicians about their opponents, rather than statements by politicians and government officials about their own policies, thus serving as "a check on the exercise of rhetoric" but not "a check on the exercise of power." [... but the "check on rhetoric" is done with extreme pro-Democrat and anti-GOP bias.]

Your post also mentions conclusions by University of Minnesota professor Eric Ostermeier, who found that Republican officeholders were considered by Politifact to have made substantially more "false" or "pants on fire" statements than their Democratic counterparts. Of 98 statements PolitiFact judged "false" or "pants on fire" from partisan political figures, 74 came from Republicans (76 percent) compared to 22 from Democrats (22 percent) during the selected period reviewed. Ostermeier concluded "By levying 23 Pants on Fire ratings to Republicans over the past year compared to just 4 to Democrats, it appears the sport of choice is game hunting — and the game is elephants." [... and I couldn't agree more.]
 
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AlwaysWrite

Addicted Member
I am curious (not yellow), but what do you consider to be an impartial fact checking website?
Dear MI2AZ:

I'm not aware of ANY "impartial" fact-checking Web sites, and only very rarely do I visit any of those sites. Besides, I do my own fact-checking, using my continuous and updated knowledge of worldwide happenings and applying my own personal logic. But, in part because PolitiFact is based in my area, I am more than well aware that its "fact base" is tilted FAR toward liberals and Democrats and SOLIDLY against conservatives and Republicans.
 
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