Fact-checking ABC News’ “This Week”

The economy was a major topic on ABC News’ This Week.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said that the economy is recovering, and we know this because  “We’ve seen six months of positive job growth by the private sector.” We checked the numbers and found job growth has been positive this year, so we rated his statement True.

We also looked into a statement from conservative pundit Stephen Hayes about the Obama administration’s plan to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Hayes said, “these so-called wealthy, most of them are small-business owners.” We looked into the numbers and found he is extrapolating from tax numbers on reported business income. But other data indicate only a small minority of the wealthy get a majority of their income from potential small business sources. So we rated his statement Barely True.

Hayes also said that Shirley Sherrod “was forced to resign before anybody on Fox said a word about this.” We found that Fox News reported the news on its website, but Sherrod was indeed forced out hours before Fox’s prime time pundits began criticizing her on the air. So we rated his statement Mostly True.

We have at least one more fact-check in the works from the July 25 show; we hope to post it in the next day or so.