Sunday, February 18, 2018

PolitiFact partially unveils spectacularly transparent description of its fact-checking process

"The Week in Fact-Checking," an update on the latest fact-checking news posted at the Poynter website, alerted us to the fact that PolitiFact has updated its statement of principles:
PolitiFact made their methodology more transparent, in keeping with other fact-checkers around the world. (And ICYMI,  PolitiFact has moved its headquarters to Poynter, earning a not-for-profit designation.)
We were surprised we had missed PolitiFact's welcome improvement to its methodological transparency. So we visited PolitiFact.com to check it out.

So ... where is it?

PolitiFact created multiple pages of transparent new content and apparently neglected to equip its website with internal links leading readers to the new content.

Clicking "About Us>>Our Process" on the main menu takes the reader to PolitiFact's 2013 statement of principles.

Clicking "Our Process" on the footer takes the reader to PolitiFact's 2013 statement of principles

There's no apparent way to use PolitiFact's main page to find the new even-more-transparent(!) statement of principles.

But people can see PolitiFact's latest extreme transparency through the Poynter.org website. Or maybe via links posted to Twitter. We haven't noticed any yet, but it's possible.

So there's that.

The new material published on Feb. 12, 2018. As of Feb. 18, 2018, PolitFact.com still funneled readers to its 2013 statement of principles.

We see that as illustrative of the PolitiFact bubble. PolitiFact judges its transparency according to its belief it has published a new statement of principles. Those outside the PolitiFact bubble, unaware of the new statement of principles thanks to PolitiFact's oversight, do not likely take the same view of PolitiFact's transparency.

Why are those outside the bubble so ignorant of PolitiFact's extreme transparency?

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