4 Websites That Fact Check the Debates

News organizations are monitoring the candidate’s claims

Graphic+by+Monica+Inouye%2FSAC.media.

Graphic by Monica Inouye/SAC.media.

Claim: The number of fact-checking organizations have increased 580% since 2014.
Answer: True!
This Tuesday, the first of three presidential debates is set to kick off at 6 p.m. PST and will run for an hour and a half. The two candidates, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, will stand on a socially distanced stage at Case Western University in Cleveland and engage in six 15-minute debate segments.
Last month, Joe Biden said that he would be fact-checking while debating President Trump and even suggested there be a “crawler” on the bottom of the screen correcting his every statement.
Just a few weeks ago, CNN’s fact checker Daniel Dale went viral after unleashing a string of fact checks for President Trump’s statements during the final night of the Republican National Convention.
So if you’re tuning in to the debates, here are four websites that you can look to which will be fact-checking the candidates’ statements.

Politifact

This Pulitzer Prize winning site posts daily audits of Instagram posts, blogsites, viral images, Facebook posts and individuals’ statements. The website uses a truth scale called the “Truthometer” which categorizes a statement by TRUE, MOSTLY TRUE, HALF TRUE, MOSTLY FALSE, FALSE or PANTS ON FIRE.
The website also has a Flip-O-Meter which rates a political candidate’s consistency on an issue, and a Promise Meter which rates how well a campaign has carried out said agenda.
Find their website here.

AP Fact Check

The Associated Press posts daily fact checks of statements made by political figures, nowadays by Biden and Trump, and debunks false news stories and images that have recently gone viral.
Unlike Politifact, the AP does not have a meter but simply restates the statement by the individual in question, then verifies, refutes, or elaborates the statement in the form:
(STATEMENT IN QUESTION):
THE FACTS:
Find their website here.

FactCheck.org

This website is a “nonpartisan, nonprofit ‘consumer advocate’ for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics.” FactCheck.org is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.
This website monitors the factual accuracy of statements from political figures in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and more, in a blog format.
Find their website here.

Washington Post Fact Checker

This website scrutinizes statements of political figures. The website also seeks to explain difficult issues, provide missing context and provide analysis and explanation of various “code words” by politicians, diplomats and others to obscure or shade the truth.
The site assigns a rating of Pinocchio’s, one Pinocchio being mostly truthful and four Pinocchio’s being blatantly false.
Find their website here.

Previous Debate Fact-Checkers in 2016

In 2016, a number of outlets either performed live fact-checking or published their own analysis of statements the following day during the debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, resulting in some of their highest web traffic days. Click below to see what they did during the last presidential candidate debates.
WIRED – Live Fact-Check of the First Presidential Debate
POLITIFACT – Fact-checking the first Trump, Clinton presidential debate
NPR – Fact Check: First Presidential Debate
The ONION – Fact-Checking The First Presidential Debate