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.
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, 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 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.
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.
PolitiFact scribes looked at two rankings for Georgia last week, along with some national reviews left over from the election and its fallout.
First up was a claim that voters overwhelmingly re-elected to Congress politicians they say they hold in low regard. Closer to home, we looked at how Georgia stacked up in the region and nation when it comes to what we pay at the pump. Also for Georgia, we examined a study that puts us among the top 10 states where women are murdered by men. Makes you almost miss election season.
Abbreviated versions of our fact checks are below. Full versions can be found at www.politifact.com/georgia/.
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Facebook meme, Nov. 10:
Congress has 11 percent approval ratings, yet 96.4 percent of incumbent lawmakers were re-elected in 2014.
A Facebook meme making the rounds had superimposed the words “11% approval ratings. 96.4% re-elected” over an image of the U.S. House chamber.
In other words, the claim goes, Congress has 11 percent approval ratings, yet 96.4 percent of incumbent lawmakers were re-elected in 2014.
It turns out that’s pretty much on the money. Taking five separate polls, an average of 14 percent of respondents approve of Congress.
Counting a late Democratic Senate loss in Alaska and a Senate runoff in Louisiana, the combined House-Senate incumbent winning percentage is 95 percent.
Both are slightly off, but the point is solid: Voters hold Congress in low regard, yet they re-elect almost everyone.
We rated the claim True.
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Former state Rep. Edward Lindsey in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution story Nov. 10:
Georgia has some of the highest gas taxes in the Southeast but one of the lowest taxes on gasoline for transportation in the nation.
Lawmakers have talked for years about raising the rates of either Georgia’s 4 percent sales tax on gasoline or 7.5 cents-per-gallon excise tax on gas.
This year, though, leaders have signaled that growing concern over traffic congestion and economic development may create the political will for action.
Into the debate, former state Rep. Edward Lindsey, who is on the panel that will recommend any changes, told the AJC that Georgia has some of the highest gas taxes in the region but among the lowest for transportation in the country.
He’s right on the first part, easily. Georgians pay 19.3 cents per gallon of gasoline to the state as of January. Only 14 states had lower rates, including our neighbors Alabama, Florida and South Carolina.
Where it gets tricky is when local taxes are added into the total. Some states, such as Florida, levy most of their taxes on the local level — driving up overall prices at the pump.
Georgia allows every county to levy sales taxes on gas that don’t have to go toward transportation costs. Those local taxes drive up the average so that Georgia has the third-highest gas taxes in the region.
One caveat: The ranking is a distant third. For instance, Georgia could double its state excise tax and still remain in third place.
Still, overall Lindsey is right looking at the rankings alone.
We rated his statement Mostly True.
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Violence Policy Center report, September 2014:
Georgia ranks No. 9 in the rate of women murdered by men.
An annual report released in September shows Georgia ranks ninth among all states when it comes to the number of women murdered by men.
Georgia’s rate of that specific crime was 1.66 per 100,000 women in 2012, the most recent year data are available. The national average is 1.16 per 100,000.
The FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Report confirms that calculation for an even more specific subgroup: a lone woman killed by just one man.
The study uses such a narrow slice of victims to also determine other factors such as age, race and relationship to the perpetrator.
Missing from that report is another key fact: Georgia is 10th in the nation for homicides among any victims.
We rated the claim True.
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Thom Hartmann during a segment on his RT show Nov. 7:
“The Kochs stand to make around $100 billion if the government approves the Keystone XL pipeline.”
Opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline are stoking fear about the project by connecting it to two of the biggest bogeymen in politics: Charles and David Koch.
The claim goes that the Koch brothers stand to make $100 billion if the pipeline gets built. The figure, which would effectively double the Kochs’ net worth, has bounced around liberal news organizations and was repeated this month by progressive radio talk show and TV host Thom Hartmann on his RT show.
The Kochs do hold oil leases in Canada, and we’re not ruling out that they could benefit in some ways from the Keystone XL pipeline.
But trying to extrapolate their oil-sands leases into a specific profit figure is sheer folly.
We rated it Pants On Fire!
