The St. Petersburg Times enters the political fact-checking game

Yes, the newspaper that puts its readers supposedly "In the Know" has joined Annenberg Fact Check (factcheck.org) and Media Matters in the political fact-checking game.

The folks at Annenberg have established a solid reputation for their fact checking enterprise. Media Matters skews left to the point where the site is near worthless.

I expect "PolitiFact" (catchy name?) to perform somewhat worse than Annenberg, but better than Media Matters by quite a bit.

One feature I do not like is the graphic they use to rate the accuracy of a claim overall. The graphic tends to predispose the reader to judgment regardless of the justification used in the explanation. Looks like a decision influenced by the design department. The Annenberg method of providing a brief explanation of the findings risks less distortion.

I had heard about the project awhile back, but I was prompted to visit after the SPT posted one of its PolitiFact summaries on the front page. It featured Rudy Giulianni speaking on cancer and nationalized healthcare. I'm not sure I trust their rating.

It will also be interesting to see which fact checks rate a location on page 1.

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