Great Ideas Department: Fact checker uses primarily liberal audience to crowd-source the keeping of political promises

What could go wrong?

Our Obameter has been cited frequently in blogs, news stories, television shows and books as the authoritative source about Obama's promises.

We'll be updating the promises in the next few months, particularly the ones rated In the Works or Stalled, and we'd like your help. If you have information about developments on a particular promise, please send it to us. We'd love to get links to news stories, press releases, appropriations documents -- anything that shows the outcome.

This is the type of helping that Media Matters was born to do.

To be sure, journalism finds itself in a tough spot these days.  It's hard not to sympathize with PolitiFact for pawning off some of its research on the crowd.  Can PolitiFact help it if its audience is predominantly liberal?

Though the answer to that question is probably "yes," we can't assume PolitiFact sees it that way.

The crowd-sourcing strategy is understandable, but it will serve as just one more among many factors that skew PolitiFact toward the left.