FactCheck Mailbag, Week of Jan. 26-Feb. 1

I dropped the 60+ people a polite complaint about their way with the "facts," and the URL to your story. Turns out they bill themselves as "non-partisan," another "fact" that looks like … a deliberate untruth (yes, that’s the same meaning as the "other L word").  

 

Keep up the great work. 

 

 

 

That may be true what you state, but you neglect to give wait times in U.K. They are horrendous for everything. I was born and raised there.

 

 

 

I just finished reading your report on the State of the Union ["Obama’s State of the Union Address," Jan. 28]. Most of the report is up to your normal "above average" fairness, but your analysis of President Obama’s comment on the Supreme Court ruling is well below expectations. 
 
You report his comment. 
 
You admit the ruling does nothing to the current law forbidding the very thing President Obama said would not happen.
 
Then you say, "Well, he only said ‘I believe’ so it was just an opinion."
 
The law prohibited such action before the ruling — the law was not changed, so it still prohibits what the president claimed could now happen. To say that something could now happen when it was not touched by a ruling is simply false and to call it anything else is bias reporting on your part. 
 
Do better — we need it. 

 

 

 

 

 

What is your obsession with false e-mails? I thought the purpose of the site was to "Fact Check" the spin of the politicians. Not the fringe element that spreads innuendo and rumor. The entire home page of the site has nothing but fluff regarding these types of emails. As of 12:30 the day after the State of the Union address you still have not posted any fact-checking on the speech. Other news organizations have posted fact checks. Please, in the future, focus what comes out of the mouths of those that run the country, not the ones on the fringe that want to spread ideological falsehoods.

 

 

 

Thanks for all the work you do on your site. I appreciate when you get the gist of it into the first sentence and also when you’re clear in the first sentence about what is true or not true. I like it when you make the major statement first and add any small differences later.

 

You provide an important service!

Marilynn Wadden
Des Moines, Iowa

 

I made a "window sticker" for my car (taped to the inside). It says "Just because it’s on the ‘news,’ it doesn’t mean it’s true. factcheck.org."

I wish you had a professional one made up to sell on your site. Also, love to see you have a group of factcheckers behind the scenes of some of these (for instance) Sunday programs with feeds to the moderators. The viewers would know that you are helping facilitate. These moderators often know less than I do, very sad.

Keep up the excellent work.

Kim Cox
Jacksonville, Ore.

You’re showing this quote from the "FactCheck Mailbag, Week of Jan. 19-Jan. 25" section all over your site:

"I am disgusted, dispirited and, frankly, concerned for our democracy."

Yet, in your response to that email, you don’t point out that the United States is a republic, not a democracy.

Dave Hersey
Hollis, N.H.