Last week, I joined a newsroom meeting in which three editors were discussing whether a statement made by a politician was true, false or somewhere in between. The discussion was earnest and nuanced: What was the backing for the statement about the Obama health care plan? What was the average voter likely to think he meant? Did he include sufficient context so the statement could be fully understood?
It was the kind of conversation that has been had in our newsroom more than 300 times since the launch of the AJC Truth-O-Meter in 2010. Politifact Georgia is one of our most popular features, and has researched statements of everyone from the PETA animal protection folks to Gov. Nathan Deal.
The original Politifact was developed by the St. Petersburg Times in 2007 and in 2009 won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the 2008 presidential election. It’s since spread to news organizations in nine states and will certainly keep growing. Founding editor Bill Adair ensures that each state’s Politfact operates with the same standards by training local news organizations in the fact-check and decision-making process. We generally produce four local fact-checks a week and publish one by Politifact National in Washington. On Sunday we print a roundup. Politifact Georgia editor Jim Tharpe says he’s not surprised the feature is popular. “The political landscape is littered with half-truths and outright falsehoods,” Tharpe says. “There’s a lot of screaming. We attempt to turn down the volume and get behind the soundbites to provide some clarity in the midst of the chaos.” If you are a regular Truth-O-Meter reader, you probably understand the process. Ideas for fact checks come from news stories, political ads, debates and even reader suggestions. A reporter decides to verify something that would be of interest to readers, then contacts the source to find the basis of the statement. The reporter then does research with experts, studies and other sources to determine how truthful it is.
The reporter makes a recommendation for a ruling on a sliding scale — from absolutely truthful to “pants on fire,” or ridiculously false. The majority of rulings are in the middle — mostly true, half true, or mostly false. On a political party basis, Tharpe says the AJC Truth-O-Meter is pretty equally hard on both parties, though it reviews more Republican statements because Republicans dominate state politics.
A panel of three editors — the “tribunal” — reviews the ruling in the kind of meeting I attended last week. Tribunal editors might send the story back for more research or ask questions, but ultimately they vote on whether to accept the reporter’s recommendation or go with some other ruling.
Eric Stirgus, one of two Truth-O-Meter reporters who works with Tharpe, says the reporting is more research-intensive than other news reporting he has done. “Because we are making judgment calls about the accuracy of someone’s claim, you want to be sure that you have all the facts and pertinent information.. You’d hate to be a fact-checker and not have your facts right.”
Willoughby Mariano, another Politifact reporter, says she has to become fairly expert on a topic in a matter of days or hours and has been pleased that so many readers are willing to become expert themselves by following Politifact’s deep research. “Readers don’t want journalism that underestimates their intelligence or plays to the lowest common denominator.” Mariano and all the Politifact journalists are aware that their work raises concerns about bias, so they work hard to check their own assumptions.
Ultimately, of course, the Truth-O-Meter involves a judgment call, so there is some subjectivity involved in deciding a ruling. The votes by the tribunal are not always unanimous and I have more than once found myself disagreeing with the ruling. But the beauty of the Truth-O-Meter format is that all the evidence is outlined in the story. So even if I disagree, I have the facts I need to understand the basis for the ruling and make up my own mind as a reader.
So what did the tribunal ultimately rule in the meeting I attended this week? They rated the statement “half-true,” meaning it was partially accurate but left out important details or took things out of context.
The tribunal editors told me that while politicians don’t particularly like getting a “half-true” ruling, it’s not a big surprise that it happens often. That’s sort of the nature of politics, they noted, to emphasize the facts that support your position and leave out the details that tend to contradict it.
Luckily, the Truth-O-Meter is around to dig for the rest of the story.
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or write McIntosh at insideajc@ajc.com.
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