Factcheck.org

Friday 23 January 2004 — This is nearly 21 years old. Be careful.

As we continue our charge into political overdrive, I fear that reasoned discourse will be impossible. Factcheck.org may be a help. Their mission:

We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit, “consumer advocate” for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding.

Judging from the current articles on their home page, they seem to be true to their word, chastising Bush, Gephardt, Dean, the whole bunch. We need all the help we can get in these areas.

Comments

[gravatar]
andrew 10:14 AM on 23 Jan 2004
uhhh-huh. "Non-partisan", riiiiiiggghhtt. And as for their homepage, I see:
- Article attacking RNC
- Article attacking Bush (R)
- Article protecting Dean (D) (against dropout Gephardt (D))
- Article protecting Clark (D)
- Article attacking conservative ad in Iowa
- Article attacking Bush

That being said, a perusal of their archives appears to be more balanced.

They might start by factchecking everything that comes out of Clark's mouth, as they guy is a fool. And let's add up Kucinich's policy proposals. By my count, he is proposing a quadrillion dollars worth of new federal spending, to be paid for by "cutting 15% from the Petagon budget [insert rant here about Halliburton]"
[gravatar]
Ned Batchelder 2:20 PM on 23 Jan 2004
But Andrew, you assume that "balanced" means reporting an equal number of problems from both parties.

What if one party really is more dishonest than the other? How do you tell what is "balanced"?

And I suspect the reason they don't chase down Kucinich is that they focus on the front runners and don't bother with the lunatic fringe.
[gravatar]
David Boudreau 11:08 PM on 23 Jan 2004
http://www.concordcoalition.org/
[gravatar]
Damien Katz 11:29 AM on 25 Jan 2004
Ned is on the right track. From their site: "We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players..."

That explains why they don't have so much stuff about Democrats.
[gravatar]
Sylvain Galineau 11:52 AM on 1 Feb 2004
Actually, Andrew might have a point here (granted, given the arsenal I've seen him carry around once, I am prone to giving the guy a point every now and then...). There is a recent entry on the State Of The Union address that reads more like a partisan rebuttal than neutral fact-checking.

I do like it, though. All the sources are referenced and linked when available. Let's hope this is the beginning of a trend.

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