Political Fact Checking

The U.S. Presidential election campaign has been a long, hard-fought process, and it surely will intensify in the remaining six weeks until the election. Pundits opine; candidates and their proxies hold forth on TV; and partisan (often nasty) email pass-arounds proliferate. As each side makes ever more dramatic claims about themselves and their opponents it becomes more and more difficult for the voters to discern what is truth, what is exaggeration, and what is patently false.

Enter FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania:

We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit, "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding.

The institution is funded by the Annenberg Foundation, and accepts no funding from business corporations, labor unions, political parties, lobbying organizations or individuals. Their stated goal is to bring a scholarly approach to public policy issues at the local, state, and federal levels.

Works for me!!

If you are interested in finding out which claims made by politicians are accurate, and which are not, go and have a look at FactCheck.org, and then look again often. You can access the site on line or via your mobile device. You can subscribe to their RSS feed or their email alerts. You can read their blog, The FactCheck Wire - "faster than the speed of spin."

Learn the truth, minus the hyperbole. Be an informed voter. Do it.