
Inside the World’s Largest Fact Checking Operation - Tomte
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/inside_the_worlds_largest_fact.php?page=all&resubmit=hn
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aaronkrolik
If you're interested in fact checking, be sure to check out
[http://www.politifact.com/](http://www.politifact.com/) . They put a lot of
care and effort into what they do. They are run by the Tampa Bay Times. If you
have any questions, I can pass them on to the founder (Bill Adair) and he'd be
happy to answer them for you.

~~~
sparkzilla
As part of a project I worked on, I did a daily review of fact-check sites.
Politifact is great if you're a liberal and want fact checks to suit your
partisan view of the world. This is easily proven by looking at the people who
comment on their fact checks on Facebook, who are overwhelmingly liberal. If
you are actually looking for unbiased fact checks, you should look elsewhere.

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coolgeek
Fact checks. Fact. Checks.

If they don't suit your partisan view of the world, where exactly does the
problem lie?

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sparkzilla
When you start to look at how the fact checkers operate you'll see the same
things over and over again, starting with leading questions, selective
targeting of opponents, the use of selective data, selective interpretation of
the data, ambiguous metrics (what does "half true" mean?) and in many cases
wilful distortion of the conclusion that does not fit the agenda. Here's a
couple of examples, the first being biased, and the second "Lie of the Year"
being totally incorrect. There are literally hundreds of examples similar to
these.

[http://newslines.org/fact-checks/did-barack-obama-vote-to-
de...](http://newslines.org/fact-checks/did-barack-obama-vote-to-deny-rights-
to-infant-abortion-survivors/)

[http://newslines.org/fact-checks/is-jeep-moving-u-s-
producti...](http://newslines.org/fact-checks/is-jeep-moving-u-s-production-
to-china/)

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aaronkrolik
I'll just point out that your examples are not from politifact. I've never
heard of newslines.org, but i'd trust their no-bylined factchecks about as
much as I would trust a fact check from a random facebook commenter. I'm not
defending every shitty news site out there pretending to do 'journalism', I'm
defending Politifact's work.

~~~
sparkzilla
Sorry, I didn't explain but those were my analysis of those particular
Politifact fact checks. You can verify the facts yourself. In both cases
Politifact is clearly biased, and misleading. BTW, I also did fact checks on
the fact checks about Romney too. In any case it seems you have drunk the
kool-aid so I'll leave the discuss here.

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hliyan

        Roughly eighty full-time people work in fact checking 
        and the research/library at Der Spiegel. It calls this
        its “Dokumentation” department. Another thirty or so
        part-timers also do duty at the magazine.
    

In an advertising/click-driven 'news' outlet, this would probably be
considered, at best, not worth the investment, and at worst, ridiculous. The
business case for fact checking (beyond the bare bones you need to avoid law
suits) seem to be dying.

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Dirlewanger
This is over 5 years old. I wouldn't be surprised if they have substantially
reduced their fact checker numbers.

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germanier
They still employ around 70 people in that department, see for example these
2014 slides: [http://www.fjum-wien.at/wp/wp-
content/uploads/2014/02/FactCh...](http://www.fjum-wien.at/wp/wp-
content/uploads/2014/02/FactChecking_Wien_2014.pdf)

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rkrzr
I wonder if any of them are working for their online publication "Spiegel
Online"[1] as well. It certainly doesn't feel that way, given that spell-
checking their articles often already seems like too much work.

EDIT: Quote from the article: "AP: … In the German press, there’s newspapers
that are more reliable than others"

I wonder how high "Spiegel Online" ranks in their internal reliability
ranking.

[1] [http://www.spiegel.de](http://www.spiegel.de)

~~~
germanier
Spiegel Online traditionally had a whole different news desk. Nowadays they
work closer together but Spiegel Online quality in reporting is much worse
than the print articles (which are mostly also put on Spiegel Online).

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chuckcode
I wonder how many journalists are employed by news organizations compared to
fact checkers. Seems to me like the main thing keeping journalist's facts
correct is not wanting to lose their reputation points.

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jkot
> Inside the World’s Largest Fact Checking Operation

Spiegel has 1M prints / week, which is not so high number. I would expect
'world largest' editorial staff at some bigger news paper.

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germanier
I don't know another publication that employees 70+ fact checkers. Even The
New Yorker which has a similar circulation and is well-known for their fact
checking has less than 20.

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sciurus
It sounds like they operate as reference librarians more broadly instead of
just fact checking.

