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Viral Spiral
FactCheck Mailbag
FactCheck Mailbag, Week of March 19-25.
See letters from previous weeks“ Criticizing the Democrats for citing the only available study on gun purchases for its age seems wide of the target. ” -
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2012 Players Guide
Yearly Archives: 2012
Viral Spiral 2012
We’ve long warned our readers to make good use of the delete key when emails spreading sketchy claims pop up in their inboxes. But we’ve found that old viral emails, unfortunately, never die — and new ones spread like a highly contagious disease. These overwhelmingly anonymous messages are, by and large, bogus.
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Firefighters, Fact-Checking and American Journalism
When I came to Annenberg and launched FactCheck.org in December 2003, I had a single research assistant and practically no competition. Now, nine years later, FactCheck.org has an excellent staff, and so many other journalists are fact-checking politicians that one media critic calls it “the ever-growing factchecking industry.” So I think …
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Gun Rhetoric vs. Gun Facts
The mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., has reignited a national debate on gun control. As elected leaders begin the dialogue, some facts are clear — there has been a massive increase in gun sales. Some things are not so clear — such as whether there is causation between more guns and more violent crimes. And some …
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Our Annual Year-end Appeal
During the presidential campaign, the Obama campaign emailed fundraising appeals with subject lines such as “This is critical” and “Absolutely urgent” to lament how the Democrats were being outraised and outspent by Republicans. But here’s something to consider: The Obama and Romney campaigns combined raised a record amount of more …
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Posted in The FactCheck Wire
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Fiscal Cliff Air Wars
The presidential election ended last month, but the partisan air wars continue with competing fiscal cliff ads from the conservative Crossroads GPS and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Most of what is in the ads falls into the realm of opinion, but we found a couple points to quibble with …
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Chained Explained
Using a more accurate cost-of-living adjustment for federal benefit payments and tax brackets would cut the federal deficit by perhaps $300 billion over the next 10 years. But it faces opposition from both right and left. Economists generally agree …
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Posted in Articles
Tagged budget (27), CPI, debt (28), deficit (24), inflation, Social Security (57), taxes (135)
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Dueling Fiscal Cliff Deceptions
A fog of misinformation has settled on the fiscal cliff, as both House Speaker John Boehner and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner have traded conflicting, misleading and false statements in recent days on the president’s deficit-reduction plan: Geithner falsely claimed on “Fox News Sunday” that the president’s proposals to slow Medicare …
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Posted in The FactCheck Wire
Tagged Fiscal Cliff, John Boehner, medicare, spending cuts, taxes, Timothy Geithner
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