In political truth-telling, being in the ballpark is no small thing.
PolitiFact Georgia published 257 fact checks in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2015 that were written by the PolitiFact team here, our Washington, D.C., office or by our PolitiFact partners in other states.
Of that, 50 were rated Mostly True. Put another way, 19 percent of the claims needed just a bit of additional information to be on target.
Many of the mostly accurate statements were claims about the economic health of Georgia, and the health of residents in particular, as you’ll see below.
Full reports can be found at www.politifact.com/georgia.
Comments are always welcome, and suggestions taken, at our Facebook page and on Twitter.
Elton John on Oct. 13 on CNN
Fulton County Health and Wellness in a June 6 press release
The ongoing battle against HIV and AIDS was in the news in Atlanta this year after it was revealed that Fulton County’s health department had to give back between between $7 million and $8.7 million of the $20 million it received in federal grant money because the department didn’t have enough programs to help stop the spread of HIV.
But while the issue captured headlines, some on-target claims were made.
Fulton’s Health and Wellness Department participated in a Test Atlanta campaign this summer, in a bid to encourage people from age 13 to 64 to know their HIV status.
A press release explained the seriousness of the issue. “It’s estimated almost 40 percent of people with HIV are not diagnosed until they have developed AIDS,” it stated.
That specific statistic reportedly came from a national organization that is no longer in operation and appears high compared with the 24 percent figure reported by the state and Centers for Disease Control.
But that still supports the health department’s overarching point about the need for early testing and treatment.
This fall, we found a similar quibble with the numbers when part-time Atlanta resident Elton John said he would ask presidential candidates what they are doing to help stop the disease.
He noted, “In spite of great progress, HIV/AIDS is actually dramatically on the rise in the U.S. South.”
Data from 2012-13 show new HIV diagnoses on the rise in most of the country, with the largest —- a 7.5 percent increase —- in the South. The quibble was whether there is enough of a trend line to term this a dramatic jump in cases.
Nathan Deal on Jan. 13 in a press release
Interim DeKalb CEO Lee May in the State of the County address Jan. 22.
American Petroleum Institute in an Aug. 27 blog post
The long recovery from the Great Recession has meant our scribes and readers alike have listened carefully when claims are tossed around about jobs in Georgia.
The newly re-elected Gov. Nathan Deal kicked off the year with a big announcement that Mercedes-Benz USA was moving its headquarters to Sandy Springs.
The move, Deal said, would create “at least 800 jobs.”
We found promises that the relocation would in fact mean 800 jobs that didn’t exist in Georgia at the time.
But considering many of the jobs would simply be moved with the headquarters, there were realistically only 480 new jobs for Georgians to vie for, not 800.
The number was right but needed that context.
DeKalb County’s interim CEO, meanwhile, touted in a January speech that DeKalb had “attracted and retained more than 2,300 jobs” in the past year.
By the state’s broad definitions, we found that the county’s Workforce Development Office backs him up on the number of people working. That’s not the same thing as the number of jobs.
That means some people working part-time, or on specific projects, could either boost or underestimate the actual jobs.
The county acknowledged that hiccup, giving it and us a best guess we decided was mostly accurate.
The eye-popping claim about jobs came this summer, in a series of blog posts from the American Petroleum Institute designed to draw attention to the economic impact of the oil and gas industry on every state.
Georgia, it said, has 141,600 jobs provided or supported by oil and gas.
A 2011 report by PricewaterhouseCoopers backs up the number by looking at direct positions in the industry, supportive jobs and, accounting for most of the workers, all the positions created from the industry and its supply chain.
The math and economics are right —- to a point.
Careful examination of the report shows that 68 percent of the jobs counted as directly working in the oil and gas industry could just as easily be classified as retail workers.
Adjusting the base number up by 29,146 workers, then, amplifies the number of jobs that support the industry or caters to its whims.
The report is clear that it counts those positions, though. And the claim takes care to say the industry “supports” that large number of workers.
We found it accurate but somewhat misleading without that additional information.
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