Highlights of PolitiFact's Reddit AMA from August 2, 2019

PolitiFact newbie Daniel Funke, former fact check reporter for the International Fact-Checking Network, represented PolitiFact for a Reddit AMA on Aug. 2, 2019.

We always look forward to public Q&A sessions with PolitiFact staff, for it nearly always provides us with material.

Funke stuck with PolitiFact boilerplate material for the most part, even channeling Bill Adair with his answer about PolitiFact's response to critics who suggest PolitiFact is biased.

Funke's chief error, in our view, was his repetition of a false PolitiFact public talking point:

As far as corrections: We're human beings, so we do make mistakes from time to time. That's why we have a corrections process. You can read our full corrections policy, but the bottom line is that we fix the wrong information and note it. If we give a new rating to a fact-check, we archive the old version so people can see exactly what we changed. Everything that gets a correction or an update gets tagged - see all tagged items.

We've pointed out dozens and dozens of mistakes at PolitiFact, and though we've prompted PolitiFact to fix quite a few mistakes the majority of the time PolitiFact ignores the critique and doesn't bother to fix anything. We tried to get PolitiFact Georgia not to interpret "pistol" as a synonym for "handgun" because revolvers count as handguns but do not count as pistols. No go. The mistake remains enshrined in PolitiFact's "database" of facts. And Funke's recent mistake in using a number PolitiFact found wanting as the deficit figure handed off from Bush to Obama still hasn't been fixed. Nor do we expect PolitiFact to break tradition by fixing it.

PolitiFact fixes mistakes if and only if PolitiFact feels like fixing the mistakes.

So Funke is wrong about the bottom line at PolitiFact. The PolitiFact "database" has more than its share of bad information.

As for archiving the old version of a fact check when the rating changes, contrary to what Funke says readers can't necessarily find the archived version. Here's an example from 2017. The new version contains no link to the old version. A reader would have to figure out how PolitiFact structures its URLs to track down the archived version (assuming there is one).

Finally, Funke repeats the falsehood that "Everything that gets a correction or an update gets tagged," complete with a link to the very incomplete list of corrected items. PolitiFact does not use tags on many of its articles, particularly those that do not feature a rating. Corrections on those articles do not get tagged and do not appear on the list of corrections. Moreover, PolitiFact simply neglects to tag corrected fact checks on occasion.

Apparently it's too much to ask that PolitiFact staffers know what they're talking about when they describe PolitiFact's corrections process.