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 the 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 editors who debate the statement and the reporter’s recommended Truth-O-Meter ruling. The panel votes on a final ruling; majority prevails.
Election-year politics kept PolitiFact Georgia and the AJC Truth-O-Meter busy last week.
We fact-checked a statement by Jason Carter, a state senator and announced Democratic candidate for governor, on the impact of state budget cuts on public education.
We looked at the claim by the Attorney General’s Office that it cost less than $100 to prosecute state Sen. Don Balfour. That assessment came with a big caveat: The cost estimate did not factor in the time that four prosecutors spent on the case.
And we checked out a statement by Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed about the region as an economic powerhouse.
We also set the record straight on a fake Facebook post about a conservative congresswoman.
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Abbreviated versions of our fact checks are below.
Full versions can be found at www.politifact.com/georgia/.
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Lauren Kane, a spokeswoman for Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens:The prosecution of state Sen. Don Balfour cost less than $100.
Balfour, once chairman of the powerful Senate Rules Committee, stood trial in December on allegations he swindled taxpayers by submitting false state expense reports. He was acquitted after an 18-month investigation and a three-day trial.
On the day that the jury verdict came down, Kane, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Sam Olens, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in an email that the Attorney General’s Office, as a ballpark figure, spent “less than $100” on the case, not including the salaries of prosecutors.
Former prosecutors said staff time should be counted. We looked at that and found:
four prosecutors logged 570 hours on the case, at a combined cost in salaries of $22,667.
We also looked at the time invested by the GBI, which launched a criminal investigation at the request of the AG. The GBI told us that the special agent in charge of the investigation worked 371 hours on the case and a forensic auditor logged 620 hours, costing about $19,203 in salaries.
The numbers provided were on target. But some critical information was excluded.
The statement from Kane was rated Half True.
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State Sen. Jason Carter: “Since 2009, Georgia’s public schools have lost nearly 9,000 classroom teachers while the number of students has gone up.”
Carter, a Democrat from Atlanta and an announced candidate for governor, called for Georgia to do more to support its teacher workforce.
He based his statement on a November report published by the left-leaning Georgia Budget & Policy Institute. But other state data produced similar results — more than 9,000 teaching positions have been eliminated.
He was also correct that enrollment has increased in that period.
We rated Carter’s statement True.
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Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed: The annual gross domestic product of metro Atlanta is “bigger than 28 states in the union.”
Reed was using U.S. Commerce Department data as the basis for this claim, which he made while speaking to the Atlanta Press Club. We looked at the data, and the most recent statistics we found show the mayor’s statement might be conservative.
In 2012, the Atlanta region had a GDP of nearly $295 billion, according to the Commerce Department. Reed used that same number in his remarks.
Metro Atlanta also beat out the rest of the state. The region makes up about two-thirds of the state’s GDP, the Commerce Department data show. The Atlanta region does have a larger population than the rest of the state.
PolitiFact Georgia looked at other categories of gross domestic product, and the Atlanta region fared as well, if not better, in those areas.
We rated the mayor’s statement True.
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Facebook post: Republican Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann said “English was good enough for Jesus when he wrote the Bible.”
“If English was good enough for Jesus when he wrote the Bible, it should be good enough for Coke,” Bachmann is quoted as saying in a graphic posted by “Christians for Michele Bachmann.”
The post came after Coca-Cola aired a Super Bowl ad that featured “America the Beautiful” being sung in numerous languages.
The post attributes the alleged quote to a Fox News appearance a day later.
Bachmann, a former presidential candidate, has supported making English the official language of the U.S. But we found no evidence that she uttered the “good enough for Jesus” line.
Bachmann spokesman Dan Kotman told us by email, “Congresswoman Bachmann never said that quote, and actually didn’t even appear on Fox News that day. It’s 100 percent fake.”
It’s not only fake — it’s not even new. A hoax-debunking blog called Waffles at Noon collected versions of the Bachmann meme made in 2013. It said the earliest one also bore the logo of “Christians for Michele Bachmann,” which it described as a satirical Facebook page.
But the quote didn’t start with Bachmann. We found that the “Bible written in English” line is so old it was used as far back as at least 1881.
We gave the Facebook post a Pants On Fire!
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