Free Republic

When it comes to improving fact-checking, most of the focus tends to be on how fact checkers select the claims they examine, the sources they turn to in determining “truth” and the strength of their arguments. While it receives less attention, the editorializing language fact checkers use can be just as harmful to the public’s trust in their work. Browse through the first five pages of FactCheck.org’s Barack Obama archive and fact checks of the former president’s statements are headlined with relatively clinical terms such as “misrepresents,” “misleading” and “cherry-picks.” In contrast, the first five pages of the site’s Donald...

On Monday, Goucher College journalism professor and longtime Baltimore Sun media critic David Zurawik accused President Donald Trump of using a dictator tactic — telling so many lies as to exhaust the free press into silence. "He says something that’s really offensive about immigrants, and then Tucker Carlson says immigration makes us a dirtier country," Zurawik said. "That is really destructive to American life." He urged journalists to fight back. "We have to denounce it, but every time we do that, every time we chase that down, he is setting the agenda for what we cover, and none of us,...

Sorry if this has been covered before but I did a search in FR and didn't find anything. I'm looking for fact checking sites that I can believe any suggestions or comments would be welcome.

President Donald Trump is claiming victory after his attorney general published a summary of the special counsel’s nearly two-year investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, and whether the Trump campaign conspired with Moscow. In a four-page letter to lawmakers, Attorney General William Barr summarized the key findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, which Trump said unequivocally cleared his name on allegations that have dogged him over his presidency. "No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION," Trump tweeted. "KEEP AMERICA GREAT!" According to Barr, the Mueller report does largely exonerate Trump on the collusion question — but...

Shortened title. Full title: Judicial Watch: Docs Reveal FBI Cover Up of ‘Chart’ of Potential Violations of Law by Hillary Clinton ‘I’ll make sure Andy tells Mike to keep these in his pocket’ (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it received 186 pages of records from the Department of Justice that include emails documenting an evident cover up of a chart of potential violations of law by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Judicial Watch obtained the records through a January 2018 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed after the DOJ failed respond to a December 4, 2017...

Sen. Kamala D. Harris, California Democrat and 2020 presidential hopeful, appears to have fibbed during an interview Monday about smoking marijuana in college while listening to music by Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur. ...Neither of the future rap legends had released music by the time Ms. Harris completed graduate school, however.

If you missed it Saturday, read this to see just how far her advisors went in BSing about the infamous line on the GND fact sheet about “economic security” for those who are “unwilling to work.” It takes stones to go on the other party’s favorite cable news network and insist to their faces that that document was a fabrication rather than something that was posted on Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional website.And it takes elephant-sized stones to amplify that lie to your three million Twitter followers, which is what AOC herself did when she retweeted the clip without comment.WaPo can’t muster...

As soon as President Trump finished his State of the Union address Tuesday night, The Washington Post deployed its fact-checkers to blunt any positive narrative that might come of the President’s unifying speech. “President Trump’s State of the Union speech once again was chock-full of stretched facts and dubious figures,” the article begins, employing the standard terminology used by liberal reporters when they want to accuse the President of lying, but can’t find any actual falsehoods in his remarks. While most of their so-called fact checks were opinionated and/or arbitrary in nature — for instance, they waved away President Trump’s...

When the so-called “mainstream media” (MSM) created the concept of ‘fact-checking’ it at least seemed admirable on the surface and, for that matter, a job that was naturally suited to a free press charged with comforting the afflicted and holding those in power to account. But after some years it’s become obvious that the MSM was never really interested in checking facts — that is, not all facts espoused by all people in power. Democrats don’t get fact-checked, at least not with the same ‘vengeance’the MSM reserves for Republicans and conservatives…and POTUS Donald Trump. While our president does, at times,...

The media are accusing President Trump of omitting or distorting abortion information. But they should point to themselves first. On Feb. 5, Trump delivered his second State of the Union address to Congress. During his speech, he called out New York and Virginia officials for their extreme legislation and comments on abortion. In response, media outlets, from NBC News to the New York Times, raced to fact-check him. Not only did they omit information in some cases, but they also disagreed with one another, ruling Trump as “false,” and, at other times, “misleading.” Here are Trump’s remarks the media took...

Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) Um, why not pick somebody who actually won? – The Democrat Party’s focus on losers continued on Tuesday, as San Fran Nan and Chuckie Schumer agreed to assign the task of reciting the Party’s fake response to next week’s State of the Union Address to…wait for it…failed Alabama gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. In accepting the role, Abrams becomes the first African American woman to do the honors on this thankless task. The only wonder here is, how come Nan and Chuck did not give the role to someone who actually won a...

As soon as President Donald Trump’s speech ended, the liberal talking points were spewing on the cable news networks disguised as “fact checking.” Armed with press releases from the Democratic National Committee, the talking heads universally focused on the small stuff to avoid admitting the inconvenient truths leftists avoid like the plague – illegal immigration hurts Americans.Democrats don’t care. To leftists, individuals are disposable. Why would they be bothered by a Ronil Singh if they don’t care about the 100 million dead their totalitarian philosophy is responsible for? One more body on the pile of bodies isn’t going to bother...

There is a new, well-financed, well-oiled smear machine that is spinning up mud and using the media to spread it as though it is legitimate news. It goes like this: The Southern Poverty Law Center uses its anti-conservative, anti-Christian, pro-Muslim, pro-illegal immigration, pro-LGBTQ metrics to identify “hate groups.” The result: It has managed to label as hate groups such organizations as the Family Research Council, the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Center for Family and Human Rights, social scientist and researcher Charles Murray, Muslim analyst Frank Gaffney, the non-profit Center for Immigration Studies and its leader Mark Krikorian and Ayaan Hirsi...

20) "Trump’s mention of Ohr’s wife appears gratuitous. Her role in the matter, as yet, appears minimal." She worked for the main player in this drama, Fusion. And Fact Checker has zero ability to make that claim, since we still don't know her role. Bizarre.

Kimberley Strassel DISMANTLES Washington Post fact check of Bruce Ohr This is a must read thread from the WSJ’s Kimberley Strassel where she absolutely dismantles point-by-point the Washington Post’s fact check of senior DOJ official Bruce Ohr, a recent target of President Trump.Please have a read (21 in all):1) It is never fun to tackle fact checkers, but this one is a case study in that modern art of omitting details, stating unsupportable assertions as fact, slipping things in, manipulating a narrative. Opinion as "fact." So let's go through it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/08/16/who-is-bruce-ohr-why-does-trump-keep-tweeting-about-him/?utm_term=.e30d884f001c …2)"Ohr exists in a netherworld — a subject of fascination...

I realize it's a small point and that I'm weeks late to this absurdity, but I've decided to call attention to it anyway because it further underscores the ludicrousness of treating Politifact like a nonpartisan fact-checker.  I sometimes take issue with determinations made by the Washington Post or FactCheck.org's truth-assessing outfits, but they at least seem interested in impartiality.  Politifact is a different story, having earned a reputation as a liberal, anti-Republican institution.  Evidence of this has arisen time and again, and now there's another laugher to add to their rap sheet.  In the course researching this post about vulnerable...

The Christian satire site Babylon Bee has been fact-checked by Snopes and threatened by Facebook after it published an Onion-style article about CNN about purchasing a washing machine to “spin the news.” The Babylon Bee openly advertises itself as a satire site. Recent headlines include, “Local Pastor Hoping Curling Metaphors Go Over Big This Sunday,” “Nation That Calls Trump ‘Hitler’ Demands He Take All Guns Away,” “Calvinist Dog Corrects Owner: ‘No One Is A Good Boy’,” and “New Exercise Bike Forces You To Watch Christian Movies Until You Hit Your Calories Goal.” Not only is this fairly anodyne stuff, but...

President Trump’s explosive allegation that former president Barack Obama wiretapped him is based on — what? We’re still waiting for the evidence. In the meantime, Trump earns Four Pinocchios

On Thursday morning, Politifact announced that it would be hiring former Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson to help its team of fact-checkers as a "reader advocate." Just two hours later, however, Politifact publicly severed their agreement with Grayson after receiving sustained and intense backlash on social media. We sought out a Democrat and Republican to critique our work in order to try to improve the trust and credibility in fact-checking and PolitiFact. It has become clear our choice of Alan Grayson did not meet that threshold to many. pic.twitter.com/uJuoHhiObI— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) February 1, 2018 Most of the opposition to Grayson's hire...

Google, the most powerful search engine in the world, is now displaying fact checks for conservative publications in its results. No prominent liberal site receives the same treatment. And not only is Google’s fact-checking highly partisan — perhaps reflecting the sentiments of its leaders — it is also blatantly wrong, asserting sites made “claims” they demonstrably never made. When searching for a media outlet that leans right, like The Daily Caller (TheDC), Google gives users details on the sidebar, including what topics the site typically writes about, as well as a section titled “Reviewed Claims.” Vox, and other left-wing outlets...