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Truth-O-Meter rulings
The goal of the Truth-O-Meter is to reflect the relative accuracy of a statement.
The meter has six ratings, in decreasing level of truthfulness:
TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing.
MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.
HALF TRUE – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.
MOSTLY FALSE – The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.
FALSE – The statement is not accurate.
PANTS ON FIRE – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.
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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 Georgia kicked off 2015 with fact-checks on issues affecting the bottom line for Georgians.
The Truth-O-Meter ruled on a senator’s claim that the U.S. has surpassed Saudi Arabia to become the No. 1 producer of oil in the world. It was a timely fact-check, given that falling oil prices are causing celebrations at the gas pumps and heartburn on Wall Street.
We also checked forecasts that Georgia needs to be producing more college and tech school graduates, if its workforce is going to be ready for the demands of the jobs that will be available as soon as 2020.
And we took a look at the economic impact of the state’s agriculture industry industry.
We’re forecasting a flurry of fact-checks as we move deeper into the new year. Lawmakers are back in Atlanta on Monday for the 2015 General Assembly. They could be taking up bills on transportation, religious liberty, medical marijuana and education funding.
We’ll be watching the Legislature. And we’ll be awaiting your Truth-O-Meter suggestions.
Abbreviated versions of this week’s fact checks are below. Full versions can be found at www.politifact.com/georgia/.
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Hank Huckaby on Tuesday, December 16th, 2014 in a civic club speech:
Only 42 percent of young Georgians have a college certificate or degree, but soon 60 percent of jobs will require some college credential.
State officials are pushing to graduate more students from the state’s technical colleges, colleges and universities — feeling pressure to make sure Georgia’s workforce is job-ready.
They’re basing the push on two statistics — by 2020, 60 percent of all Georgia jobs will require workers with some college credential; and and only 42 percent of young Georgians currently have a college certificate or degree, Chancellor Hank Huckaby said in a speech to the Valdosta North Rotary Club.
The first statistic was derived largely by researchers at Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce and the nonprofit Complete College America.
The Complete College America report found Georgia with a 27 percent skills gap based on forecasts that 61 percent of the state’s jobs in 2020 would require a career certificate or college degree and, at the time, only 34 percent of Georgia adults had an associate degree or higher.
The second statistic — that only 42 percent of Georgians had college experience — was based an analysis from the University System of Georgia and the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems in Summer 2011.
They specifically found that, among Georgians, 20.9 percent had bachelor’s degrees; 8.2 percent had a graduate or professional degree; 6.7 percent had an associate degree; and 6.6 percent had certificates from college programs that were at least one year, but less than two years.
We rated Huckaby’s statement as True.
Amy Klobuchar on Sunday, January 4th, 2015 in comments on NBC’s “Meet the Press”:
“We’re now the No. 1 producer of oil in the world. We’ve surpassed Saudi Arabia.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. said the decision on building the Keystone XL pipeline should rest with President Barack Obama, not Congress. She said the debate has become a “symbolic” one that ignores America’s healthy energy market.
“We’re now the no. 1 producer of oil in the world,” Klobuchar said. “We’ve surpassed Saudi Arabia.”
The latest global oil production statistics back up Klobuchar’s claim.
In the third quarter of 2014 — the most recent available data — the United States produced 14.2 million barrels of oil per day; Saudi Arabia produced 11.7 million per day; and Russia produced 10.5 million per day.
There is at least one piece of context to keep in mind when looking at the United States’ oil production compared to Saudi Arabia, noted Leonardo Maugeri, an associate at Harvard University’s Geopolitics of Energy project. Saudi Arabia has a higher capacity than the United States to produce oil, but it chooses not to use it all — so as not to inundate the global oil market.
“In other words, if Saudi Arabia produced at full capacity — as the U.S. does — its production would be higher than the U.S.,” Maugeri said.
We rate Klobuchar’s statement True.
Georgia Farm Bureau website post:
Agriculture contributes $71 billion to Georgia’s economy annually, making it the state’s largest industry.
The new year brings with it a new legislative session and updated annual figures on agriculture statistics such as the acreage of farmland and average yield of, say, peanut farms.
Those two factors combine play into the state’s annual budget process. An alert reader had that process in mind when asking PolitiFact Georgia to check an oft-repeated claim by the Georgia Farm Bureau and politicians: Agriculture is the Peach State’s top industry.
How big? The headline on a Georgia Farm Bureau web page touts, “Georgia Agriculture – The state’s $71 billion industry.” A bullet point underneath is a bit more nuanced. “Agriculture contributes more than $71.1 billion annually to Georgia’s economy,” it reads.
The Center for Agribusiness & Economic Development at the University of Georgia.conducts an annual survey that allows farmers to report acreage, yield, crop price and other details. The 2013 concludes the direct economic value of agriculture is $13 billion.
Two pages later, it states that direct value, combined with the values along the supply chain from fertilizer and seed to first-line processing plants, “generated a total economic impact of $71.1 billion” for Georgia.
How?
Center officials told us they add to the $13 billion the actual economic value (using federal data compiled by a private firm) of the businesses along the ag supply chain. In 2011, the tally was $44 billion.
It then induces a multiplier, adding in what workers in all of those jobs spend on daily living, to arrive at the $71 billion figure.
“We are looking at the contribution of all the sectors related to agriculture,” said center economist Sharon Kane. “It’s so much more meaningful to report the overall impact.”
We rate the claim Mostly True.
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