PolitiFact Georgia is celebrating its fifth anniversary this week with a look today at claims that have ended up on the wrong end of the AJC Truth-O-Meter over the years.
The Truth-O-Meter arrow struck False in these cases, even if the speaker didn’t always admit to an error.
In other instances, we received the email or phone call that essentially said: Oops. My bad. I was wrong. Mea culpa.
Summaries of a few of our favorite False rated statements through the years can be found below.Full versions can be found at: www.politifact.com/georgia/
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Full versions can be found at: www.politifact.com/georgia/
City of Atlanta on Monday, September 23rd, 2013 in a press release
The crime rate in some Atlanta neighborhoods has dropped by 35 to 51 percent.
Atlanta officials defended themselves when a federal audit concluded the city mismanaged federal grants designed to combat crime in poor neighborhoods plagued by illegal drug activity.
“From 2009 to 2013, in the Pittsburgh and Mechanicsville neighborhoods, crime is down 42 and 35 points, respectively. In English Avenue and Vine City, major crimes are down 51 percent and 50 percent, respectively, between 2007-2011, ” the city said in a news release.
A city spokesman called us back a couple of days after our initial inquiry about the accuracy of those numbers. The city’s numbers in the news release were incorrect, he said. The greatest disparity involved Mechanicsville’s rate was actually up 35 percent, not down 35 percent as first reported.
The city posted the corrected crime statistics in a news release on its website.
We rated the city’s initial claim False.
Jody Hice on Friday, January 24th, 2014 in a Facebook post
Thomas Jefferson said, “That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.”
In 2014, we checked a Facebook post by then-10th District congressional candidate, and now Congressman Jody Hice.
Hice, a syndicated radio show host and Southern Baptist pastor, was showcasing what he called his Constitutional conservatism via quotes from political idol Thomas Jefferson on his Facebook and Twitter pages.
“That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves,” reads the quote attributed to Jefferson, over the image of a waving American flag.
A reader asked PolitiFact Georgia to check out the quote.
Anna Berkes, the research librarian at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello in Virginia, “That sounds like something that he might have said or written, but in fact, he did not.”
We found out that line — or something akin to it — has been incorrectly attributed to Jefferson as early as 1853.
We rated Hice’s statement False.
Paul Broun on Tuesday, April 12th, 2011 in a speech before Congress
Says President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sent his advisers to study socialism with Soviet dictator Josef Stalin so the president could replicate it in the United States.
During congressional discussions of the federal budget, U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga. claimed the late President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, architect of the New Deal, strove to import the socialism of Soviet Union dictator Josef Stalin.
“Franklin Delano Roosevelt sent his advisers, his close-held friends, his Cabinet people, to go visit with Stalin in communist Russia to study what … Stalin was doing there so that FDR could replicate it here in the United States,” Broun said on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.
This was like no version of history PolitiFact Georgia scribes had heard.
A Broun spokeswoman referred us to “The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression,” a 2007 book that is critical of New Dealers.
We read it. It does not even suggest Roosevelt sent his aides to Stalin to learn about communism.
We rated Broun’s statement as False.
Charley English on Wednesday, January 29th, 2014 in a press release
“It still had not gotten terrible on the roads” by 2 to 3 p.m. Tuesday.
A day after Snow Jam 2014 turned I-285 into a parking lot and retailers into makeshift campgrounds for stranded motorists, state officials were before reporters to explain their response.
“At two and three o’clock (Tuesday), it still had not gotten terrible on the roads,” Georgia Emergency Management Agency director Charley English said at a midday news conference Wednesday, Jan. 29.
Gov. Nathan Deal, standing nearby, was asked if he agreed with English’s assessment. The governor politely said he did not.
“I was on the roads about that point in time, and it was getting to be gridlocked. The interstates were already experiencing major difficulties. Side roads that people were taking to get off were experiencing difficulties.”
The PolitiFact Georgia team decided to look for evidence. Real-time traffic maps showed traffic moving smoothly at 12:15 p.m., but at 1:25 p.m., the Georgia Department of Transportation’s navigator site showed nearly every interstate in metro Atlanta as red for snarled.
We talked to Georgia State Patrol officials, who said troopers were called to 341 crashes statewide and 91 in metro Atlanta between noon and 3 p.m. Tuesday.
We heard similar reports from other police agencies and so placed a call to English.
About an hour later, English was at a news conference aired live on CNN from the governor’s office.
“I made some inaccurate and regretful comments at the press conference Wednesday,” English told reporters.
The director added in response to a follow-up question about road conditions, “Sure it was bad. There was terrible traffic.”
We rated English’s initial statement as False.
Larry Elder on Friday, June 28th, 2013 in an online op-ed
Paula Deen supported and campaigned for Barack Obama.
The controversy surrounding Southern cuisine queen Paula Deen got hotter than a pan of bacon grease.
Deen confirmed she had used a racial slur in the past. The testimony was part of a lawsuit filed by a former manager of one of her restaurants.
To counter critics, political commentators have noted her supposed support of President Barack Obama.
“For what it’s worth, Deen supported and campaigned for Barack Obama,” conservative radio host Larry Elder wrote recently in an op-ed posted on Investors.com (Investors Business Daily).
Elder said his claim about Deen’s political affiliation was based on a feature in Us Weekly entertainment magazine looking at 40 celebrities and their political involvement.
We could find no evidence Deen or her husband gave to Obama’s campaign or voted for him.
We rated Elder’s claim False.
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