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Viral Spiral
FactCheck Mailbag
FactCheck Mailbag, Week of May 7-13.
See letters from previous weeks“ Why is that worth noting? Does it change the facts? ” -
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2012 Players Guide
Monthly Archives: September 2008
Energetically Wrong. Still.
Last Friday, we wrote an article debunking Sarah Palin’s claim that Alaska “produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy.” That’s false. The state’s share of U.S. energy production is actually 3.5 percent. Palin has now changed her tune: Palin (Sept. 15, Golden, Colorado): My job has …
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Did McCain Invent the BlackBerry?
John McCain is having his very own Al Gore moment. McCain’s top economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, waved his BlackBerry to a room full of reporters, explaining that "you’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create.” Gore was widely mocked for his claim that “I took the initiative in …
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More on the Phantom 62 Percent
In our recent article “Sliming Palin,” we addressed the pervasive rumor that Gov. Palin slashed funding for special needs education. She didn’t. Instead, she increased funding. Here’s more detail on how an increase got mistaken for a 62 percent decrease. The evidence that’s been cited to support the false decrease …
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Under FactCheck’s Hood: A Note on Methodology for our Palin – 20% Energy Piece
Last Friday, we pointed out that a Palin-McCain talking point stating that Alaska “produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy” was false. The actual figure was 3.5 percent. Within the story, we allowed (several times) that Palin and McCain may have misspoken and meant to say …
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Posted in The FactCheck Wire
Tagged Alaska, calculations, energy, factcheck.org, John McCain, Sarah Palin
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Population of Wasilla
Q: What was the population of Wasilla, Alaska, when Sarah Palin was mayor? A: When she took office, it was about 5,000. The population has been growing since.
Fact-Checking Is Useless
Well, okay, they’re not actually saying that it’s useless. Just potentially counter-productive. An article last September pointed to cognitive science research showing that debunking myths can have the effect of reinforcing the very myths you’re trying to refute. That’s because the human brain is hardwired with a lot of shortcuts. …
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Distorting Our Findings, Part II
On Sept. 10, we objected when the McCain-Palin campaign released an ad implying that we’d criticized Obama for “completely false” and “misleading” claims about Sarah Palin. We did use those words, but we used them to criticize anonymous Internet rumormongers, not Obama. Now that same claim from the McCain-Palin camp …
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Posted in The FactCheck Wire
Tagged factcheck.org, Internet rumors, John McCain, Sarah Palin, TV ads
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One Bridge, Two Bridge
Once upon a time, there were two Bridges to Nowhere. There was the Bridge to Nowhere, and the Bridge to Nowhere’s brother, the Bridge to Nowhere. Or, if you prefer, there was the Gravina Access Project, which would connect the town of Ketchikan to the island of Gravina for purposes …
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