Brooks Jackson, Author at FactCheck.org

A Big, Fat Mistake

February 28, 2011

Mike Huckabee cited a bloated statistic, claiming obesity disqualifies three out of four young Americans from military service. The actual total is closer to one in four.
The former Arkansas governor (and possible GOP presidential contender in 2012) was on "Fox News Sunday" on Feb. 27, explaining why he has defended First Lady Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity campaign against attacks by some fellow Republicans.

Huckabee: What Michelle Obama has proposed is that we recognize that we have a serious obesity crisis,

Sorry Statistics

February 25, 2011

Q: Do statistics in a chain e-mail give an accurate “report card” of President Obama’s first two years?
A: Not exactly. The author made many minor mistakes and some major omissions in describing the terrible economic conditions he attributes to the president.

Prison for Lying?

February 15, 2011

A former candidate is going to prison for lying — but not for lying to voters.
We’ve often pointed out that the First Amendment gives candidates the right to say pretty much whatever they want to voters — whether it’s true or not. That’s why we make it our mission to help voters sort out fact from fiction.
But on Feb. 14, a federal judge sentenced former House candidate Tan Nguyen to one year and one day in federal prison for lying —

FactChecking Dodgy British Claims

January 28, 2011

Every now and then, we like to check in on what our British cousin is up to, just to remind ourselves that Americans have no monopoly on political spin.
The FactCheck Blog is a project of a TV network, Channel 4 News, and it regularly skewers British politicians for false, misleading or exaggerated claims. It’s written by political correspondent Cathy Newman. The politicians’ names are different, but the issues and the malarkey will sound familiar.

The head of Britain’s biggest labor union claimed the United Kingdom’s budget deficit is "not high by either historical or contemporary standards.”

FactChecking Obama’s Address

January 26, 2011

We found no outright false factual claims in Obama’s State of the Union address, but we did note some that were arguable, and some promises that may prove unrealistic. He called his Race to the Top initiative “the most meaningful reform of our public schools in …

A ‘Budget-Busting’ Law?

January 19, 2011

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office states that repealing the health care law would worsen the federal deficit over the next 10 years — by $230 billion. So how does …

A ‘Job-Killing’ Law?

January 7, 2011

When it comes to truth in labeling, House Republicans are getting off to a poor start with their constantly repeated references to the new health care law as “job-killing.” We find: Independent, nonpartisan experts project …

A New Home for FactCheck.org

January 1, 2011

With the New Year we are getting new GPS coordinates.
FactCheck.org is moving to the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s new headquarters building on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. Our web address, of course, remains unchanged.

Our new physical address:

FactCheck.org
c/o Annenberg Public Policy Center
202 S. 36th St.
Philadelphia, PA 19104-3806

Our telephone numbers:

Annenberg Public Policy Center: (215) 898-9400
FactCheck.org News Desk: (215) 573-7070

Annenberg’s Washington, D.C., office — which has been our home since we began operations in 2003 —

Holiday Announcement

December 23, 2010

Both the Washington and Philadelphia offices of FactCheck.org will be closed from Dec. 24 through Monday, Jan. 3, in observance of Christmas and New Year’s.
When we resume, we will be taking a different approach to our coverage of weekend public affairs shows. We will continue to monitor them and to research any dubious factual claims by public officials and political candidates. And we will post separate items on any that we discover to be false or misleading.