PolitiFact.com is an American nonprofit project operated by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, with offices there and in Washington, D.C. It began in 2007 as a project of the Tampa Bay Times (then the St. Petersburg Times), with reporters and editors from the newspaper and its affiliated news media partners reporting on the accuracy of statements made by elected officials, candidates, their staffs, lobbyists, interest groups and others involved in U.S. politics. Its journalists select original statements to evaluate and then publish their findings on the PolitiFact website, where each statement receives a "Truth-O-Meter" rating. The ratings range from "True" for statements the journalists deem accurate to "Pants on Fire" (from the taunt "Liar, liar, pants on fire") for claims the journalists deem "not accurate and mak[ing] a ridiculous claim".
PunditFact, a related site that was also created by the Times editors, is devoted to fact-checking claims made by political pundits. Both PolitiFact and PunditFact were funded primarily by the Tampa Bay Times and ad revenues generated on the website until 2018, and the Times continues to sell ads for the site now that it is part of Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a non-profit organization that also owns the newspaper. PolitiFact increasingly relies on grants from several nonpartisan organizations, and in 2017 launched a membership campaign and began accepting donations from readers.
In addition to political claims, the site monitors the progress elected officials make on their campaign promises, including a "Trump-O-Meter" for President Donald Trump, an "Obameter" for President Barack Obama, and a Biden Promise Tracker for President Joe Biden. PolitiFact's local affiliates review promises by elected officials of regional relevance, as evidenced by PolitiFact Tennessee's "Haslam-O-Meter," which tracked former Tennessee governor Bill Haslam's rhetoric, and Wisconsin's "Walk-O-Meter," which tracked former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's efforts.
PolitiFact won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for its reporting during the 2008 United States presidential election, and has been praised and criticized by independent observers, conservatives and liberals alike. Both liberal and conservative bias have been alleged at different points, and criticisms have been made that PolitiFact attempts to fact-check statements that cannot be truly "fact-checked".Claiming persistent bias, Democratic Party to stop taking PolitiFact's calls ; Milwaukee Magazine; Erik Gunn; June 14, 2011PolitiFact RI once again shows right-wing bias ; Rhode Island's Future; Samuel Bell; May 25, 2013
A survey of 511 stories from 2010 to 2011 found that statements made by Republicans were almost three times as likely to be labeled false as those of Democrats. A larger 2016 analysis by the American Press Institute found that PolitiFact was statistically more likely to be critical of Republicans, while a text analysis by Carnegie Mellon and University of Washington computer scientists in 2018 was "not able to detect any systematic differences in the treatment of Democrats and Republicans in articles by PolitiFact", but noted that the analysis "cannot determine whether there are partisan biases in Politifact's judgments about truthfulness [or] selection of which statements to examine."
History PolitiFact.com was started in August 2007 by Times Washington Bureau Chief Bill Adair, in conjunction with the Congressional Quarterly. In January 2010, PolitiFact expanded to its second newspaper, the Cox Enterprises-owned Austin American-Statesman in Austin, Texas; the feature, called PolitiFact Texas, covered issues that are relevant to Texas and the Austin area. In March 2010, the Times and its partner newspaper, The Miami Herald, launched PolitiFact Florida, which focuses on Florida issues. The Times and the Herald share resources on some stories that relate to Florida. Since then, PolitiFact expanded to other papers, such as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Providence Journal, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The Plain Dealer, Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Knoxville News Sentinel and The Oregonian. The Knoxville News Sentinel ended its relationship with PolitiFact after 2012.
In 2013, Adair was named Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy at Duke University, and stepped down as Bureau Chief at the Times and as editor at PolitiFact.Bill Adair, PolitiFact Editor, Named Knight Professor at Duke ; April 5, 2013 The Tampa Bay Times senior reporter, Alex Leary, succeeded Bill Adair as Bureau Chief on July 1, 2013, and Angie Drobnic Holan was appointed editor of PolitiFact in October 2013. Adair remains a PolitiFact contributing editor."New editors named for PolitiFact and PunditFact" Tampa Bay TimesOctober 10, 2013. Angie Drobnic Holan PolitiFact Editor Staff bio In 2014, The Plain Dealer ended its partnership with PolitiFact after they reduced their news staff and were unwilling to meet "the required several PolitiFact investigations per week".
The organization was acquired in February 2018 by the Poynter Institute, a non-profit journalism education and news media research center that also owns the Tampa Bay Times. In March 2019, in preparation for the 2020 United States presidential election, PolitiFact partnered with Noticias Telemundo for fact-checking of information given to the Spanish language audience. In April 2019 PolitiFact joined forces with Kaiser Health News (KHN), for health-news fact checking. In October 2019 insight was given into PolitiFact's Truth-O-Meter's step-by-step process of assessing an item's truth, as considered true by the Politifact team, revealing confirmed facts and including accreditations.
"Lie of the Year"
From 2009 to 2024, PolitiFact declared one political statement from each year to be the "Lie of the Year".
2009 In December 2009, PolitiFact declared the Lie of the Year to be Sarah Palin's assertion that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka PPACA, ACA, Obamacare) of 2009 would lead to government "death panels" that dictated which types of patients would receive treatment.Holan, Angie Drobnic, "PolitiFact's Lie of the Year: 'Death panels'" , PolitiFact.com, December 18, 2009
2010 In December 2010, PolitiFact dubbed the Lie of the Year to be the contention among some opponents of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that it represented a "government takeover of healthcare". PolitiFact argued that this was not the case, since all health care and insurance would remain in the hands of private companies.Adair, Bill, and Angie Drobnic Holan, PolitiFact's Lie of the Year: 'A government takeover of health care' , PolitiFact.com, December 16, 2010
2011 PolitiFact's Lie of the Year for 2011 was a statement by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) that a 2011 budget proposal by Congressman Paul Ryan, entitled The Path to Prosperity and voted for overwhelmingly by Republicans in the House and Senate, meant that "Republicans voted to end Medicare".Lie of the Year 2011: 'Republicans voted to end Medicare' , PolitiFact.com, December 20, 2011 PolitiFact determined that, although it is true the Republican plan would change Medicare fundamentally by forcing the elderly to use private health plans (the very thing Medicare was intended to substitute for), a radically transformed program could still be termed "Medicare", so it was not technically true that "Republicans voted to end Medicare". PolitiFact had originally labeled nine similar statements as "false" or "pants on fire" since April 2011.
2012 For 2012, PolitiFact chose the claim made by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney that President Obama "sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China" at the cost of American jobs. The "Italians" in the quote was a reference to Fiat, who had purchased a majority share of Chrysler in 2011 after a U.S. government bailout of Chrysler. PolitiFact had rated the claim "Pants on Fire" in October. PolitiFact's assessment quoted a Chrysler spokesman who had said, "Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China." As of 2016, 96.7 percent of Jeeps sold in the U.S were assembled in the U.S., with roughly 70 percent North American parts content. The vehicle with the most North American parts content came in at 75%.
2013 The 2013 Lie of the Year was President Barack Obama's promise that "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it". As evidence, PolitiFact cited analysts' estimate of 4 million cancellation letters sent to American health insurance consumers. PolitiFact also noted that in an online poll, readers overwhelmingly agreed with the selection. This stands in stark contrast to its October 9, 2008, statement that Obama's "description of his plan is accurate, and we rate his statement True."
2014 PolitiFact's 2014 Lie of the Year was "Exaggerations about Ebola", referring to 16 separate statements made by various commentators and politicians about the Ebola virus being "easy to catch, that illegal immigrants may be carrying the virus across the southern border, that it was all part of a government or corporate conspiracy". These claims were made in the midst of the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa when four cases were diagnosed in the United States in travelers from West Africa and nurses who treated them. PolitiFact wrote, "The claims – all wrong – distorted the debate about a serious public health issue."
2015 PolitiFact's 2015 Lie of the Year was the "various statements" made by 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Politifact found that 76% of Trump's statements that they reviewed were rated "Mostly False", "False", or "Pants on Fire". Statements that were rated "Pants on Fire" included his assertion that the Mexican government sends "the bad ones over" the border into the United States, and his claim that he saw "thousands and thousands" of people cheering the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11.Holan, Angie Drobnic, and Linda Qiu, "2015 Lie of the Year: the campaign misstatements of Donald Trump", PolitiFact.com, December 21, 2015
2016 PolitiFact's 2016 Lie of the Year was "fake news" referring to fabricated news stories including the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.
2017 PolitiFact's 2017 Lie of the Year was Donald Trump's claim that Russian election interference is a "made-up story". The annual poll found 56.36% of the 5080 respondents agreed that Trump's "Pants on Fire" statement deserved the distinction. Raul Labrador's statement that "Nobody dies because they don't have access to health care", and Sean Spicer's statement that "[Trump's audience] was the largest audience to witness an inauguration, period," came in second and third place getting 14.47% and 14.25% of the vote respectively. In its article, PolitiFact points to multiple occasions where Donald Trump stated that Russia had not interfered with the election despite multiple government agencies claiming otherwise.
2018 Politifact's 2018 Lie of the Year was that survivors of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting were crisis actors. These conspiracy theories were spread on blogs and social media by sources including Infowars, and targeted students including X González and David Hogg, who became prominent gun control activists in the wake of the shooting and helped organize the March for our Lives.
2019
Politifact's 2019 Lie of the Year was Donald Trump's claim that the anonymous whistleblower who reported possible presidential misconduct got the report of his phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy "almost completely wrong." The whistleblower complaint alleged that President Trump urged President Zelenskyy to conduct an investigation into Trump's political rival in return for promised military aid.
2020