Special Reports

Support FactCheck.org in the 2010 Webby Awards

Dear readers: For three years running, we have been voted the best political site on the Web in the annual Webby Awards competition. These awards, which have been called the Oscars of the Internet, represent a welcome show of support for our mission: holding politicians accountable for factual accuracy. We’d …
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RSS Feed

Those of you who follow FactCheck.org via RSS may have noticed some temporary glitches with the feed last night. Indeed, several of our more observant readers wrote to us to let us know that our feed was apparently redirecting to a squatter site. We apologize for the mix up. The …
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Welcome to Our New Look

You might have noticed that things look a little different around here. We’ve given the site a bit of a makeover. Some of the effects are pretty obvious, like the rotating picture gallery on our homepage. That’s where we’ll feature our newest and most-talked-about content. You can click the picture …
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Our election coverage wins a Clarion Award

We’re going to have to get a bigger trophy case. FactCheck.org’s 2008 election coverage has been selected by the Association for Women in Communications for one of its Clarion Awards. We’re both honored and pleased by this additional recognition, which comes on the heels of our third consecutive Webby "People’s …
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Welcome!

You might have noticed that things look a little different around here. You’ve probably already noticed some of the cosmetic changes, like the rotating picture gallery on our homepage, where we’ll feature our newest and most-talked about content. But we’re just as excited about some of the things that you …
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Our Disinformed Electorate

We saw more aggressive fact-checking by journalists in this election than ever before. Unfortunately, as a post-election Annenberg Public Policy Center poll confirms, millions of voters were bamboozled anyway. More than half of U.S. adults (52 percent) said the claim that Sen. Barack Obama’s tax plan would raise taxes on …
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That Chain E-mail Your Friend Sent to You Is (Likely) Bogus. Seriously.

I’ve noticed that chain e-mails, particularly those about politics, have a lot of things in common: urgent and frightening messages; spelling errors; a tendency to blame mainstream media for not telling the real story; and false, misleading, utterly bogus, and completely off-base claims. If there was ever a case where …
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Cognitive Science and FactCheck.org, or Why We (Still) Do What We Do

Have you heard about how Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet? What about how Iraq was responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center? Or maybe the one about how George W. Bush has the lowest IQ of any U.S. president ever? Chances are pretty good that …
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False Ads: There Oughta Be A Law! – Or Maybe Not

(This article was originally posted June 3, 2004. We are reissuing it now, updated only to fix bad links and such. Politicians still can lie legally, and the high volume of ads expected in 2008 campaigns makes it likely that voters will be exposed to more deception than ever. —B.J.) …
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Kerry Really Could Produce 10 Million New Jobs. (So Could Bush.)

John Kerry has promised that, if elected, his economic policies will produce 10 million new jobs. Some FactCheck.org subscribers have asked us why we haven’t de-bunked that claim, given that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) counted only 8.4 million who were unemployed as of March. Most recently, "Rich" wrote …
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