Fact Checking the 'Fact Checkers'

The work of PolitiFact is slipshod and generally less than honest, shown in its rumpswabbery for Hillary Clinton.

Readers of THE WEEKLY STANDARD have been treated over the years to countless examples of malpractice from so-called media fact checkers. Some of those fact checkers are worse than others. It's an open secret, and one the media don't want to acknowledge, that PolitiFact in particular is horribly biased. Surveys done by the University of Minnesota and George Mason University have shown that the supposedly impartial organization rates Republican claims false three times as often as Democratic claims.

But something even more troubling than liberal bias might be at work at PolitiFact. The Daily Caller News Foundation recently published a detailed investigation into a Clinton Foundation initiative to provide AIDS drugs in Africa and concluded that the program may have been responsible for dispensing ineffective watered-down drugs. PolitiFact turned around and fact checked the conservative website, saying it wrongly ties the Clinton Foundation to bad HIV/AIDS drugs. However, a subsequent response from the Daily Caller News Foundation pointed out quite convincingly that PolitiFact's critique was riddled with errors.