The Pulitzer Prize-winning website PolitiFact.com is taking heat from liberals and conservatives alike these days. In my latest for the Huffington Post, I argue that the problem is with the genre itself: perceptions about politicians aside, there just aren’t enough lies to feed the fact-checking beast.
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Stephen Stein
Good article. I would observe, however, that holding *voting* on Lie of the Year doesn’t really prove much. The issue is, rather, on assigning a “lie” rating to something that is (at best) a matter of opinion.
Paul Bass
I think funders like the PolitiFact concept more than the concept’s ability to deliver. (In other words, I agree, Dan.) The alternative, IMHO: Those wonderful stories the NYT pioneered analyzing candidates’ commercials. Here’s a version we tried in New Haven, sort of in between those other two models:
http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/category/truth-o-meter/