PolitiFact Rhode Island marks a milestone today -- our 500th Truth-O-Meter ruling.
When The Providence Journal began our partnership with PolitiFact.com in June 2010, few in Rhode Island had heard of the organization, and few other news organizations had formal fact-checking operations.
More than four years later, PolitiFact has become a verb in the Ocean State, as in "I’d better be careful what I say or they might ‘PolitiFact’ me.
Singer John Legend rocked the Academy Award show Sunday night with his stirring song "Glory," which won the award for Best Original Song.
In his acceptance speech, Legend talked about continuing racial discrimination in the United States, which he called "the most incarcerated country in the world," saying there are more black men "under correctional control than were under slavery in 1850."
PolitiFact Rhode Island examined a similar claim in December, from Diego Arene-Morley, president of Brown University Students for Sensible Drug Policy.
"There are more African-American men in prison, jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850," Arene-Morley said.
PolitiFact Rhode Island ruled Arene-Morley's claim True.
During her long campaign for governor, Gina Raimondo talked at length about Rhode Island’s problems and what she’d do about them if elected.
She made promises on issues ranging from jobs, education and transportation to gun control, business regulations and aid for veterans.
Will she keep them?
To help voters keep score, PolitiFact Rhode Island has launched the Gina-Meter to track Raimondo’s progress.
From beach fees to marijuana, from pensions to slavery, PolitiFact Rhode Island covered a lot of ground in 2014, a year that was also marked by hard-fought political campaigns that generated many dubious claims.
Overall, we issued 90 rulings that hit every stop on our Truth-O-Meter, from True to Pants on Fire.
As the year ends, we thought we’d take a moment to review our most widely-read PolitiFact items of 2014. Here they are, in descending order, as determined by page views on our PolitiFact Rhode Island website:
More than 2,000 years ago, the Greek playwright Aeschylus observed that in war, truth is the first casualty.
In today’s political wars, if truth is not the first casualty, it’s definitely in harm’s way.
In the eight weeks since the September primary, we’ve examined 21 claims from candidates or their supporters.
We rated 11 Mostly False or worse on our Truth-O-Meter’s six-point scale. Nine were True or Mostly True, one was Half True.
But recently, as the campaigns ramped up their attacks with increasingly harsh commercials and mailers, the ratings have definitely trended downward.
Over the past few months, PolitiFact Rhode Island has been busy fact-checking the many claims and counterclaims that have been made in the 2014 primary races. Not surprisingly, we found many to be untrue.
We checked statements made by candidates for many different offices, but spent most of our time on the highest profile races -- the Democratic and Republican primaries for governor.
In the end, when the last TV attack ad has aired, the last campaign mailer has arrived in the mailbox, the last robocall has landed in your voicemail, you -- the Rhode Island voter -- will have to decide who the best candidates are.
As you make your choices, you can see all our rulings on our website, PolitiFactRI.com, which is searchable by candidate name, office sought, and subjects, such as "taxes," or "jobs."
Here are summaries of our rulings in the governor’s races.
Clay Pell, Gina Raimondo and Angel Taveras have at least two things in common.
They’re all running in the Democratic primary for governor.
And they’ve all faced PolitiFact Rhode Island’s Truth-O-Meter, with varying outcomes.
As the candidates prepare for Tuesday night’s Providence Journal/WPRI-12 debate, we thought we’d take a look at their PolitiFact scorecards.
U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., joined other Democrats on the Senate floor this week to stay up all nigh tand talk about climate change. Whitehouse actually gives weekly speeches about climate change, and PolitiFact Rhode Island has been fact-checking him.
U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, one of more than two dozen senators who took part in an all-night talkathon this week on the Senate floor to warn about the dangers of climate change, was on familiar territory.
Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, has now made 60 Senate speeches on climate change, returning to the floor each week the Senate is in session.
He comes armed with facts and figures, and staff-produced charts and posters, to back up his warnings of drastic environmental and social consequences if serious actions aren’t taken to address global warming.
Whitehouse and the other senators took turns from late Monday through Tuesday morning to call attention to an issue he says has largely been ignored.
PolitiFact Rhode Island has fact-checked many of Whitehouse’s claims about climate change; overall, he has fared well with the Truth-O-Meter. Here's a sample:
In the past year, PolitiFact Rhode Island has published nearly 100 Truth-O-Meter rulings on such weighty issues as gun control, same-sex marriage and climate change.
Not surprisingly, all of those topics were represented in our Top 10 rulings of 2013, along with some subjects that were, shall we say, slightly less serious.
We thought we’d look back on our most popular items of the year -- and our most popular item of all time, which involved Congress. And baboons.
It's been a busy few months for PolitiFact Rhode Island, and it's not even an election year.
We’ve checked claims on school test scores, whether the U.S. military prohibits donations to the Tea Party, Obamacare and a host of other topics.
And many of our readers have let us know what they think of our rulings. We thought we’d share some of their comments with you.