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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.
PolitiFact and PolitiFact Georgia truth-tested claims last week on education, jobs and gun deaths last week.
We looked at a statement from the left-leaning Georgia Budget & Policy Institute that Georgia has the 9th highest rate of adults, ages 18 to 64, without a high school diploma or GED.
We checked out claims from Democrat Hillary Clinton that she’s the only presidential candidate with a plan for cutting rising college costs and one from Republican Donald Trump that American companies with the itch to move are packing up and heading to Mexico. And in the aftermath of the on-air slayings of two TV journalists in southwestern Virginia, we revisited a claim about gun deaths vs. battlefield deaths.
Abbreviated versions of our fact checks are below.
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Full versions can be found at www.politifact.com/georgia/
Melissa Johnson on Thursday, August 6th, 2015 in a report
Georgia has the 9th highest rate of adults, ages 18 to 64, without a high school diploma or GED.
With all the expectations placed on workers today, it’s hard to think that hundred of thousands of Georgia adults are lacking what many consider a basic necessity: a high school diploma.
But in a recent report, Melissa Johnson, a policy analyst with the left-leaning Georgia Budget & Policy Institute, said the Peach State has the ninth highest rate of adults, ages 18 to 64, without a high school diploma or its equivalent, the GED. We’re talking about roughly 866,000 working age Georgians, Johnson said.
Disturbing? Yes. Accurate? PolitiFact decided to do some checking.
Johnson based her statement on a report from the Working Poor Families Project, an initiative funded by the Ford Foundation, Annie Casey Foundation and others, and drawn from research that the organization has produces annually based on an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau information. Data for 2013 shows that about 865,706 — or 13.7 percent of Georgians — ages 18 to 64 — lack either a high school diploma or GED.
That’s significant because the educational expectations for employees is being raised. Researchers say the percentage of jobs requiring a high school diploma or less fell from 72 percent in 1973 to 40 percent in 2007. By 2018, it’s expected to be 30 percent, and the people who land those jobs may not be able to sustain a family on their salaries.
We rated Johnson’s statement True.
Nicholas Kristof on Thursday, August 27th, 2015 in his column in The New York Times
“More Americans have died from guns in the United States since 1968 than on battlefields of all the wars in American history.”
In a column published shortly after the on-air slayings of two TV journalists in Virginia, the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof offered some “data points” about the pervasiveness of gun violence in the United States.
One of them was: “More Americans have died from guns in the United States since 1968 than on battlefields of all the wars in American history.”
That sounded familiar. Really familiar. As it turns out, the web version of Kristof’s column sourced a PolitiFact article from Jan. 18, 2013, that fact-checked commentator Mark Shields’ claim that since 1968, “more Americans have died from gunfire than died in … all the wars of this country’s history.” (Shields used the year 1968 because it was the year presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated by gunman Sirhan Sirhan.)
We rated the claim True.
Two and a half years later, we wondered whether the statistic still held up, so we took a new look at the data.
Even using a significantly higher estimate for Civil War deaths than we did the last time we fact-checked this claim, the comparison still holds up. The number of gun deaths since 1968 — including, as Kristof was careful to note, both homicides and suicides — was higher than war fatalities by roughly 120,000 deaths, or almost four years’ worth of gun deaths in the United States.
We rate the claim True.
Hillary Clinton on Sunday, August 23, 2015 in a tweet
“Not one of the 17 GOP candidates has discussed how they’d address the rising cost of college.”
Hillary Clinton is contrasting her plan to overhaul federal assistance for tuition at public colleges with her potential GOP rivals by saying Republicans haven’t even considered the issue.
“Not one of the 17 GOP candidates has discussed how they’d address the rising cost of college,” said in an Aug. 23, 2015, tweet. “Disappointing, but not surprising.”
What is a little surprising to PolitiFact Florida is that Clinton’s tweet omits at least one candidate who has made college costs a major platform plank — Florida’s Sen. Marco Rubio.
Clinton’s own idea is a 10-year, $350 billion plan called the “New College Compact.” Clinton proposed in August to allow students to attend public colleges without taking out loans to pay tuition. But Rubio has been talking about the issue since at least February 2014 and has given several specific ideas.
Some other candidates have also brought up tuition increases, student debt and federal spending on higher education. In June, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie laid out several ideas for reforming post-secondary education with an eye on reining in costs.
We rated Clinton’s statement False.
“Our companies are moving into Mexico more than almost any other place right now.”
— Donald Trump on Wednesday, August 19th, 2015 in an interview on CNN.
Among Donald Trump’s most talked-about immigration policies is his proposal to make Mexico pay for a border wall.
Trump laid out the rationale for why Mexico would agree in an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo.
“You know what, because they make a fortune with us,” Trump explained on Aug. 19. “Our companies are moving into Mexico more than almost any other place right now. We are losing our industry. We’re losing our business to Mexico.”
We were curious about Trump’s claim that more U.S. companies are relocating south than almost any other place in the world. (China, anyone?)
There’s no direct measure of how many companies are moving plants from the United States to Mexico. When we look at outsourcing through official metrics (imports, foreign direct investment, and the number of U.S. business housed in a certain country), Mexico places near the top but not at the top. Experts said China was the top outsourcing destination.
Trump used the qualifier “almost,” which makes his statement partially accurate, but it still needs additional context and information.
We rated it Half True.
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