By running TV ads that recycled and repeated claims that journalists had previously found false, Kentucky Democrat Alison Grimes and the Republican Governors Association were [...]
“Shooting the messenger” is an especially loud way for newsmakers to respond to a pesky news organization. Another approach is a lot quieter. So quiet, [...]
Accusations of media bias are nothing new in political journalism. But those charges are particularly fraught for fact-checkers, whose roles require them to make factual [...]
Introduction Media fact-checking has become a fact of life for political professionals, especially at the national level and in places where local news organizations have [...]
Most newsrooms’ early efforts to referee political communication focused on the content of political advertising. During election seasons, just trying to keep up with those [...]
Of the various ways to respond to critical fact checks, perhaps the easiest is to simply modify or even drop a faulty message. But the [...]
Politicians talk about fact-checking — a lot. But “you don’t have to take my word for it,” as Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington once [...]
Even before PolitiFact’s Lou Jacobson contacted a congressional press secretary back in 2010, the spokesman’s boss had accumulated a disappointing series of low scores on [...]
As audiences gain more choices for news, they are increasingly turning to specialized sources. That represents a challenge to general-interest publishers but also creates an [...]
What you’re ultimately doing with a single-subject news site — to go back to the very beginning — is creating obsessives and superfans. “Cultivating many [...]