As far as I can tell, PolitiFact is the only ongoing fact-checking research project focused on keeping politicians accountable for the veracity of their statements. Considering we are livi through a “post-truth” era in politics dominated by figures like Donald Trump who are not particularly interested in facts per se, shouldn’t we have more robust measures for honesty in our democracy?
The "big three" would be Politifact, Factcheck.org, and the fact checker section of the Washington post. As far as having more robust measures, it would be nice, but I'm not entirely sure what would be viable as all fact-checking organizations hold their own biases and there is often a push for false neutrality and the avoidance of controversy. For instance, just recently it was revealed that Facebook held back an article from ThinkProgress because of a conservative organization they have involved in fact checking for balance (this is not to say conservative groups should not be involved in fact-checking but this was clearly a political move). Obviously no organization is going to be flawless, but simply pushing for a more robust system and adding more barriers/fact checkers isn't going to lead to more positive results.
Nathan,
Thanks for your answer. I feel like we need more fact checking organizations to scrutinize. There are so few at the moment and their work is so piecemeal that I'm not sure its adding up to anything near what the public needs at the moment given the condition of our political rhetoric (much less all the rest of the news). I doubt government will step into this realm anytime soon. Does anyone know of projects based in academia that are trying to produce regular fact-checking analyses of politicians? It seems like the time would be ripe.
Ellis
Well, government fact-checking would be a whole other bag of worms. But Kathleen Hall Jamieson is behind Factcheck.org