How does PolitiFact Georgia’s Truth-O-Meter work?
Our goal is to help you find the truth in American politics. Reporters from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution fact-check statements by local, state and national political leaders, including lobbyists and interest groups. We then rate them on the AJC Truth-O-Meter.
To fact-check a claim, reporters first contact the speaker to verify the statement. Next, the research begins. Reporters consult a variety of sources, including industry and academic experts. This research can take hours or a few days or even longer, depending on the claim. Reporters then compile the research into story form and include a recommended Truth-O-Meter ruling.
The fact check then moves on to a panel of veteran editors who debate the statement and the reporter’s recommended Truth-O-Meter ruling. The panel votes on a final ruling; majority prevails.
Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Georgia’s top cop, Vernon Keenan.
They all took a recent ride of the AJC Truth-O-Meter, courtesy of PolitiFact and PolitiFact Georgia.
Want to see how their faried? Abbreviated versions of our fact checks are below.
Want to comment on our rulings or suggest one of your own? Just go to our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/politifact.georgia). You can also follow us on Twitter (http://twitter.com/politifactga).
Full versions can be found at www.politifact.com/georgia/.
Donald Trump on Saturday, May 7th, 2016 in a rally in Washington:
Says Hillary Clinton “wants to abolish the Second Amendment.”
We found no evidence of Clinton ever saying verbatim or suggesting explicitly that she wants to abolish the Second Amendment, and the bulk of Clinton’s comments suggest the opposite. She has repeatedly said she wants to protect the right to bear arms while enacting measures to prevent gun violence.
Gun advocates say Trump’s claim is backed up by Clinton’s openness to a gun buyback program and her disagreement with a Supreme Court decision on the Second Amendment. But whether or not these two cherry-picked comments actually reveal Clinton’s intentions is a matter of interpretation.
For this claim to hold water, the support for Second Amendment abolition needs to be more direct.
We rated Trump’s statement False.
Joe Biden on Friday, April 29th, 2016 in a speech at the Vatican:
“In the United States alone we lose more than 3,000 people a day to cancer.”
Actually, that’s the number of deaths for the Americas as a whole, not for just the United States. After we contacted Biden’s office, they changed the number listed in the Medium article to the correct number, “more than 1,600.”
While we laud speedy corrections, it is PolitiFact’s policy to rate statements on the Truth-O-Meter in their initial version, which, in this case, could not be corrected in its original setting, a high-profile international speech.
We rated the original statement False.
GBI Director Vernon Keenan on Tuesday, April 26th, 2016 in Newspaper interview:
The city of Clarkson “can’t decriminalize marijuana. Only state legislators and Congress can do that.”
Keenan is correct on that point — even the mayor of Clarkston, a small city in DeKalb County, agrees with him.
Clarkston can change its pot ordinance, and it can instruct its police officers to make pot enforcement a low-level priority. This, however, would not preclude the district attorney from bringing charges in State Court, which is beyond Clarkston’s control.
We rated Keenan’s statement True.
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