Politifacts.com: Truth O’ Meter
During the recent political primaries, successive campaigns and bids for election, I got really bunged up watching the newscasts and trying to figure out what was true, what was media spin and what was political double-axle tricks.
It honestly shocked me how often the same obviously twisted facts were trotted out during this last election season even after say, a debate happened and the facts were dissected by the opposing candidate and answered. I hated seeing that. Both candidates did it, some to a larger degree than others…I just don’t get it. So many of us watched the debates and now have access via the web to information…why did the candidates continue twisting the facts? It made them look stupid and I think affected the outcomes of the respective campaigns. With all the fact checkers we have at our fingertips you’d think that they’d get wise that we are not stupid and change the message, or try a new tactic. It was aggravating. What’s a responsible citizen to do?
I watched all the news station: MSNBC (which I think, tends to lean more toward Democratic and liberal and/or progressive candidates. I watched FOX NEWS which leans toward the Republican, Conservative agendas (I even watched Hannity and Colmes, which wasn’t easy as Hannity screams a lot and it bugs me).
I also watched CNN (mostly Anderson Cooper’s 360) and sometimes CNN Headline News which I think has a bit of both agendas (although Glenn Beck is now going to FOX so, the political conservatives are less represented…unless they have someone waiting in the wings to take his place. CNN still has Lou Dobbs so the more conservative voice still is represented.) CNN and Anderson Cooper (who I really think tries to be objective) had this spotlight called “Keeping Them Honest”. This helped quite a bit as they looked at everyone’s statements and tried to see how true (or not) they were and were also trying to state the correct facts. (I think) They used the service called the Truth O’ Meter provided by politifacts.com -see link–
www.politifacts.com which I found very helpful. I constantly used this website to check the facts I was most concerned about and included it in my links section in this blog, but I wanted to talk a bit about it on my blog as I think it’s a great resource. There may be others and if you have some worth mentioning, I’d be glad to post them…trying to be a good citizen.
Just a thought I caught flying by…what do you think?
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