Duke Ad Watch: Statewide campaigns use slogans to embrace the basics
Senate and congressional campaigns aim to influence voters with punchy taglines
By Julia Donheiser - October 13, 2016
Throughout the presidential campaign, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have spent millions of dollars on everything from Snapchat filters to personalized fact-checking sites. But state-level campaigns have relied on the basics, using trusty slogans that in many cases seem like a throwback to the simpler days of campaigning.
Some slogans pack the punch of an attack line while others use a more positive approach.
The Reporters’ Lab’s Duke Ad Watch team has spent the past two months working with the Political TV Ad Archive to identify factual claims in political ads. An analysis of the 263 ads with fact-checkable claims found that 36 commercials used slogans to either attack or promote a specific politician.
Only six ads used positive slogans, all of which were punchy sayings about a candidate being “right” for their state.
“Ted Strickland is Ohio’s heart and soul.”
“Pat Toomey is the clear choice for Pennsylvania.”
“Russ Feingold. Standing strong for Wisconsin.”
But a vast majority of slogans — 30 in total — were used to peg candidates as too risky, too liberal or too radical. Campaigns also attacked their competitors for putting Wall Street, profits or the Koch brothers over their constituents.
Below, find a breakdown of the types of slogans used in 2016 campaign commercials.
Taglines are punchy enough to catch viewers’ attention, but also vague enough that they can’t be fact-checked. After all, what does “too risky” mean? There’s no definitive test, which makes quippy slogans ideal for campaign ads hoping to leave viewers with a definitively negative or positive opinion of a candidate.
So, what are these slogans actually saying?
Many of the taglines we recorded appealed to trust, or lack thereof. Though many slogans didn’t directly use the word “trust,” they alluded to questionable motives and relationships with big money. Some examples include:
“Joe Heck puts Wall Street ahead of us.”
“Patrick Murphy. Fighting for special interests, not us.”
“Rob Portman. Can’t trust him to be for Ohio.”
“Hillary Clinton. Just can’t trust her.”
But the trust appeal is not new. A 1988 ad attacking Michael Dukakis finished with, “America can’t afford that risk.”
Similarly, an ad targeting John Kerry back in 2004 ended with “John Kerry cannot be trusted.” And then there’s the 2006 anti-Harold Ford ad claiming he was “just not right.”
Simply put, taglines are a tried and true method for attack ads and have been used since the early days of political advertising. Even as we find ourselves in one of the strangest election cycles, it is clear that the basics of political ads have not been thrown out the window just yet.
Candidates may change, but stale puns in political slogans are forever.
In live presidential debate coverage, fact-checkers draw similar conclusions
When multiple fact-checking organizations investigate the same claims, they typically reach comparable results
By Hank Tucker - October 12, 2016
As fact-checking grows, journalists don’t always agree about which claims to check, but when they do, they nearly always concur on whether it’s true or false.
A Duke Reporters’ Lab examination of seven fact-checking organizations during the second presidential debate — PolitiFact, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Bloomberg, NPR, Politico and CNN — found they examined 81 different claims, with 24 of the claims checked by more than one outlet. (Note: These are claims that were checked during and immediately after the debate. Our findings don’t include any fact-checks done long after the debate had ended.)
The Reporters’ Lab also found that fact-checkers nearly always reached the same conclusions. Of the 24 claims checked by multiple outlets, the fact-checkers disagreed for only three.
Whenever an outlet published a fact-check, student researchers from the Reporters’ Lab logged it in a spreadsheet with the statement, the rating and the link and grouped all the fact-checks of the same claim together.
The most common form of live fact-checking is within a liveblog or a single webpage that can be updated with each fact-check, a format that The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, Politico, CNN and PolitiFact used. These organizations provided brief analyses of the claims to justify how they rated them, if there were ratings at all. Several organizations also tweeted links to previous fact-checks.
The New York Times, Politico, CNN and PolitiFact all had articles or blog posts dedicated to fact-checking, while The Washington Post and Bloomberg interspersed fact-checks throughout their liveblogs with general analysis of the debate.
PolitiFact also wound up publishing 10 new fact-checks of statements made during the debate between the conclusion of the 90-minute spectacle Sunday night and the early morning hours Monday.
NPR maintained an annotated transcript of the debate, with a fact-check inserted wherever there was a questionable claim.
Six outlets debunked Trump’s claim that he opposed the Iraq War from the beginning. But not all fact-checks were as straightforward as the conclusion for that claim, which Trump has continued to flaunt in the face of audio evidence and universal agreement among fact-checkers for his entire campaign.
Trump’s statement early in the debate that former president Bill Clinton “was impeached and lost his license to practice law and paid an $850,000 fine to one of the women, Paula Jones,” created some disagreement among fact-checkers.
Politico and The New York Times used the same evidence to come to different ratings. Politico’s primary conclusion in the first sentence of its analysis was that “Donald Trump is wrong to say Bill Clinton paid a fine,” arguing that the $850,000 payment was a “settlement” instead. The fact-check went on to acknowledge that Clinton was impeached and did have his license to practice law suspended.
The New York Times rated the same statement “mostly accurate,” choosing to focus on the impeachment and the suspension of Clinton’s license to practice law. Although the Times acknowledged the difference between a settlement and a fine, they did it toward the end of the fact-check and did not magnify that part of the statement as much as Politico did.
Politico and the Times also disagreed on Trump’s claim that Hillary Clinton deleted 33,000 emails after getting a subpoena, which Politico called “misleading” and the Times called “mostly true.” Although Politico acknowledged that Clinton did technically delete the emails after getting a subpoena, reporter Josh Gerstein pointed out that “she gave the instruction to erase those messages in late 2014, before she was subpoenaed.” The Times did not mention this detail.
PolitiFact split the difference on this statement and rated it Half True.
Duke Ad Watch: Clinton campaign commercials rely on feeling, not fact
The Democratic candidate's recent ads make emotional appeals to voters instead of focusing on policy
By Amanda Lewellyn - October 5, 2016
Many pro-Hillary Clinton ads aren’t saying anything new about Donald Trump, or even making fact-based claims about his policies. They’re literally using Trump’s own words against him.
If you believe everything Trump said during the Sept. 26 presidential debate — and PolitiFact says you shouldn’t — Clinton has spent “hundreds of millions of dollars” on “hundreds of millions” of attack ads in an effort to push key demographics to the polls.
Her ads typically contain snippets from Trump’s speeches and interviews, in order to draw attention to the instances where he has incited violence or insulted women (or veterans, or immigrants, or people with disabilities…). And in the ads, the targets of his comments are usually watching, shaking their heads and expressing hurt and indignation in reaction to the soundbites.
In each spot, we watch individuals react as their demographic comes up to bat. In an ad called “Watching”, a woman gets ready for work when a 1994 ABC interview with Trump comes on the TV. “Putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing,” he says. “I don’t want to sound too much like a chauvinist…”
Seconds later, a Korean War veteran looks up from his seat at the bar to watch as Trump says at the Iowa Family Leadership Summit earlier this year, “[John McCain is] a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”
In “Role Models”, unsupervised children watch while Trump makes claims on their TVs. Among other sound bites, the ad highlights the line, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters,” which was said during an Iowa campaign stop. What’s more, the children don’t seem fazed by the comments he’s making.
Some ads prove that his comments anger more than just their targets. In “Wall”, a diverse group of college-aged men and women glare into the camera as Trump is broadcast on a screen behind them. “When Mexico sends its people…they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists…,” he says in the speech announcing his intent to run for president.
With less than 35 days left in the campaign, Clinton’s camp is working to capture female, minority and millennial voters. The ads discussed target people that fit the bill — working women, parents of young children, immigrants and college students — and personalize Clinton’s message: Trump won’t really help you.
The groups responsible for these ads — Hillary for America, Priorities USA Action and NextGen California — are trying to illustrate how a Trump presidency would only disrespect their experiences and their voices.
But the Clinton campaign is stepping up to this challenge in an unusual presidential election cycle, one in which rhetoric is everything and concrete policy is seemingly irrelevant. Instead of using fact-based research and policy plans to convince voters of their abilities, Trump and Clinton are relying heavily on how voters are feeling as opposed to the candidates’ strengths and weaknesses.
You can see this phenomenon in the Duke Ad Watch database of campaign commercials. Just one-third of pro-Trump ads have factual claims in them — and the same statistic is true of pro-Clinton ads. One-third! For the reader who doesn’t transcribe political ads for 10 hours a week, I’ll put that into perspective for you:
In Iowa, Patty Judge is challenging incumbent Chuck Grassley for his seat in the U.S. Senate. Two-thirds of the pro-Grassley and pro-Judge ads that have aired contain factual claims about the candidate or their opponent.
The stark difference in fact usage signals that the Iowans’ conversation is not focused on whether Grassley is brash or Judge is likable. It means they’re zeroing in on what each candidate has — or hasn’t — done for Iowans: whether they’ve created jobs, or fostered a wind energy economy, or enabled Congress’ inaction throughout Barack Obama’s presidency.
So what are Trump and Clinton talking about in their ads, if not the facts?
They’re exploring whether each candidate feels like a trustworthy choice for president. Whether they’re racist, sexist or just really earnest (“Does Trump really speak for you?” asks an ad called “Speak”). Whether each candidate has the compassion, worldview and energy necessary to understand communities’ — voters’ — daily challenges.
They’re working to convince you that they’ll be your relatable, down-to-earth champion through thick and thin.
Duke Ad Watch: Minnesota campaign ad takes cues from HBO’s Veep
Our Duke Ad Watch team finds a Minnesota commercial remarkably similar to a fictional spot from the HBO series
By Rebecca Iannucci - September 22, 2016
When Julia Louis-Dreyfus, star of HBO’s political comedy Veep, took the stage at the Primetime Emmy Awards on Sept. 18, she had something to get off her chest as she accepted the win for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series.
“I’d also like to take this opportunity to personally apologize for the current political climate,” Louis-Dreyfus joked. “I think that Veep has torn down the wall between comedy and politics. Our show started out as a political satire, but it now feels more like a sobering documentary.”
Last week, the Reporters’ Lab’s Duke Ad Watch team found that to be true — perhaps truer than Louis-Dreyfus intended.
Stewart Mills, a Republican vying for the 8th Congressional District seat in Minnesota, released a campaign ad on Sept. 14 that depicts Mills as an outdoorsman. In a voiceover, Mills vows to “clear out the dead wood” in Congress and “chop career politicians down to size” — ha, ha — as he demonstrates his wood-chopping skills by splitting stump after stump with an axe.
Just a few months before Mills’ commercial hit the airwaves, a very similar campaign ad launched — on Veep.
In the HBO series’ fifth season, Jonah Ryan — an irksome White House liaison who so badly wants in on Washington, D.C.’s inner circle — runs for Congress in New Hampshire. One of his campaign spots is eerily comparable to Mills’ ad, showing him chopping wood and vowing to change the state of politics. (Watch it below.)
Given that Veep’s ad debuted long before Mills’ real-life commercial, it seems likely that the Republican took some inspiration from Jonah, right down to his criticism of “D.C. insiders.”
But maybe not. According to Veep showrunner David Mandel, this may not be a cut-and-dry case of life imitating art. In fact, when Mandel and the series’ writers began brainstorming the ideal TV spot for Jonah, they intentionally sought out overused ad tropes that would fit in well with Jonah’s brand.
“Our ad was a wonderful amalgam of terrible campaign ads and clichés,” Mandel said. “We thought the idea of Jonah, a true creature of the Beltway, selling himself as an outdoorsman would be spot-on perfect. I honestly think [Mills] is simply running plays from the same terrible playbook we were trying to mock.”
And Mandel isn’t just being humble. The producer — who had first seen Mills’ ad via a tweet from Jonah’s portrayer, Timothy Simons — admits that Jonah isn’t a character worth emulating, regardless of whether Veep had an effect on Mills’ campaign.
“I was just amazed,” Mandel said. “I can’t imagine that anyone who watches Veep saw Jonah’s ad and thought, ‘That’s what I should do when I run for office.’ Nobody ever thinks, ‘I want to be more like Jonah.’”
Our Duke Ad Watch has found this is part of a larger trend — “manly” campaign ads, many of which feature political hopefuls wielding guns, shooting guns and otherwise earning their NRA membership cards.
There’s Eric Greitens, Republican nominee for Missouri governor, who contributed to this year’s masculinity trend back in June with his “Taking Aim” ad, which features Greitens firing shots from a rifle into a field.
Then came Kansas State Senator Tom Holland, a Democrat up for re-election this year. And, as fate would have it, he’s also “Taking Aim” at his political rivals, and the commercial shows Holland wielding a shotgun while discussing his policy ideas.
But perhaps no “manly” campaign ad has made more waves this election season than “Background Checks,” from Democratic Missouri Senate hopeful Jason Kander. In an attempt to take, uh, shots at Senator Roy Blunt, Kander assembles an AR-15 rifle while blindfolded. As he puts the gun together, he discusses his support for the Second Amendment and background checks on firearm purchases. (Blunt has since responded with an attack ad of his own.)
Of course, it remains to be seen if these candidates’ macho promises will have any effect on the votes come Election Day. But one thing is certain: Jonah Ryan, fictional though he may be, would fit right in with this year’s candidates.
Duke Ad Watch: We view the campaign ads so fact-checkers don’t have to
Reporters' Lab students will watch the campaign ads this fall in an effort to assist fact-checkers nationwide
By Rebecca Iannucci - September 8, 2016
With the fall political campaign underway, students in the Duke Reporters’ Lab are involved in an unusual project to help the nation’s fact-checkers. The students spend hours every day watching campaign commercials.
The goal of the Duke Ad Watch is simple: We watch the ads so fact-checkers don’t have to.
The project is a partnership with the Political TV Ad Archive, which is compiling a database of campaign ads airing nationwide. Students in the Reporters’ Lab are watching each ad to find the most interesting, provocative and important claims that are worth fact-checking. The Lab then alerts fact-checkers every day with a list of claims that could be checked.
Reporters’ Lab students will also be writing occasional articles about the trends and themes they see in the campaign ads. Are candidates using the same grainy news footage in cookie-cutter ads? Are many campaigns using the same ominous narrator? Duke students will spot those trends because they’ll be seeing so many ads.
The Duke Ad Watch officially began in January, but the project became dormant during the summer months. Now that classes have resumed, students will be working with the campaign ads through Election Day, Nov. 8.
You can see a running list of the claims we find in our open database. And watch for articles about trends and themes here in the Reporters’ Lab blog. For more information, contact Rebecca Iannucci at rebecca.iannucci@duke.edu.
Fact-checking Twitter feeds offer new way to follow 2016 campaigns
New Reporters’ Lab feeds track false claims, all checks of Clinton and Trump
By Erica Ryan - August 25, 2016
The Duke Reporters’ Lab has created three new Twitter feeds to help voters keep up with fact-checking during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The Twitter feeds feature fact-checks from three partner sites: PolitiFact, The Washington Post’s Fact Checker and FactCheck.org. All three are part of the Share the Facts project, an effort to expand the reach of fact-checkers using a shareable widget that summarizes their conclusions.
The feeds allow you to follow fact-checks of both major party presidential candidates, as well as falsehoods from across the political spectrum:
Share the Falsehoods (@sharefalse): This feed automatically tweets a Share the Facts widget any time a claim is determined to be:
- False or Pants on Fire (PolitiFact)
- Four Pinocchios (The Washington Post’s Fact Checker)
- False (FactCheck.org)
Share Trump Facts (@share_trump): This feed includes all fact-checks of Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Share Clinton Facts (@share_clinton): Like the Trump feed, this account will update with all fact-checks of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
These three new Twitter feeds join the main Share the Facts Twitter account (@sharethefact) and the project’s Facebook page in offering easy ways to find and share fact-checking.
The facts about fact-checking across America
Local media is cranking up the scrutiny in 22 states and D.C. as the 2016 campaign season intensifies
By Mark Stencel - August 3, 2016
The U.S. presidential candidates aren’t the only ones getting scrutinized by political fact-checkers. A growing number of state and local media watchdogs are keeping a close eye on the statements of politicians closer to home, too.
The Duke Reporters’ Lab global database of fact-checking ventures counts 34 active state and local fact-checkers across the country. These initiatives vet the accuracy of the people holding and seeking office in 22 states and the District of Columbia. That includes 18 of the 34 states electing senators in 2016, three of which — Missouri, New Hampshire and North Carolina — also happen to be holding some of the year’s closest governor’s races.
These state and local efforts represent more than two-thirds of the 47 active fact-checking efforts across the United States. The other 13 primarily focus on national politics. They include long-running sites and columns, such as FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, the Washington Post Fact Checker and the Associated Press, as well as the work of other big media companies that pay attention national political players, especially when there’s a presidential election.
But that scrutiny is increasing in down-ballot races too.
Here are a few trends worth noting among the state and local fact checkers, including some of the similarities and differences with those doing the same kind of work nationally and around the world:
The News Media’s Role
Most U.S. fact-checkers are professional journalists. All but two of the 34 state and local fact-checkers are affiliated with regional media organizations, including 18 that are linked to newspaper companies and 12 that are tied to local TV news stations.
The fact-checking team in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is both — a joint project of the Gazette newspaper and local ABC affiliate KCRG-TV. And one site, PolitiFact Florida, involves two newspaper partners — the Miami Herald and PolitiFact’s owner, the Tampa Bay Times. Two others are tied to radio stations, and three are linked to digital news projects.
The leading role that newspapers, TV newsrooms and digital media outlets play in fact-checking is also true at the national level, but that is far less common outside the United States. About 60 percent of the international fact-checking initiatives the Reporters’ Lab tracks are stand-alone projects affiliated with or funded by civic non-profits and philanthropies focuses on government accountability.
In the United States, only two state and local fact-checkers are not connected to a news organization: Michigan Truth Squad, a reporting project that the non-profit Center for Michigan produces for its online journal; and the TruthBeTold.news, whose fact checks are part of a website staffed mainly by students in Howard University’s Department of Media, Journalism and Film in Washington, D.C.
At the national level, only three of 13 fact-checkers are not affiliated with other news companies: Verbatim, a project of the online encyclopedia Ballotpedia; FactCheck.org, which is based at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center; and Snopes.com, the independent debunking project launched by a husband-and-wife team 21 years ago.
Local Competition
Voters can now get analysis from multiple local fact-checkers in at least nine states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — all of which are holding U.S. Senate races this year.
In North Carolina, a presidential swing state where an incumbent Republican is up for re-election in both the governor and Senate race, the battle will likely be just as intense between the fact-checking teams at Raleigh’s WRAL-TV and its longtime newspaper rival, the News & Observer. But the local competition may be most intense in California, where politicians can expect scrutiny from three different news organizations: the Sacramento Bee, Voice of San Diego and Capital Public Radio in Sacramento.
PolitiFactication
The biggest player in the growth of state and local fact-checking is PolitiFact. After relying on newspapers for its initial partnerships, PolitiFact now has arrangements with local news sites, public radio and the E.W. Scripps TV chain.
Sacramento’s public radio station and the Raleigh-Durham newspaper are two of 18 local media partners that do state-level reporting under the PolitiFact banner. That’s more than half of the 33 U.S. state and local fact-checking initiatives.
In the past year, PolitiFact added 10 state affiliates to its roster, reviving its presence in Ohio and building new sites with partners in Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania.
PolitiFact’s push at the state level also helped drive the growing role of local TV news in the fact-checking business. Four of the nine new sites in its network are part of the partnership with the the Scripps stations, which the companies announced last October.
New local digital partners include BillyPenn in Pennsylvania and Reboot Illinois.
(Full disclosure: I used to work for the site’s parent company, which previously owned Congressional Quarterly and Governing magazine. Also, PolitiFact was founded by Bill Adair, a Duke media professor who still works for the site as a contributing editor and also oversees my work as co-director of the Reporters’ Lab. But PolitiFact’s effect on the numbers is impossible to ignore.)
Durability
A lot of fact-checkers are in it for the long haul — which is a good thing since politicians keep talking even after the voters have had their say.
Yes, if past election cycles are any indication, some local fact-checking initiatives will inevitably fold after Election Day, as will many of their counterparts in national media (the Reporters’ Lab database also includes a 12 inactive local fact-checkers in 11 states).
But nearly a third of the state and local fact-checkers in our database opened for business before the last presidential election in 2012.
One of the oldest, WISC-TV (News 3) in Madison, Wisconsin, has been at it for 12 years — longer than all but two of the national fact-checkers.
Implications
The growing role of TV newsrooms in the fact-checking movement is significant since political advertising is such a critical revenue source for local broadcasters. That means some owners are investing heavily in fact-checking projects that scrutinize one of their biggest revenue sources.
And since many politicians at the national level get their start running for office in down-ballot races, the growth of fact-checking at the state and local level could have long-term effects on political discourse. Perhaps local fact-checking will produce a generation of careful politicians who are already used to having to reporters examine every word they say long before they decide to seek national office. Or perhaps it will create a breeding ground for the kind of politicians who are most immune to intense media scrutiny.
Either way, fact-checking still seems to be a growing market.
Perhaps that’s why we should note that our tallies above do not count the work of U.S. fact-checkers at all levels, nationally and locally, who occasionally do fact-checking reports without establishing the kind of sustained, systematic effort the Reporters’ Lab database aims to track. But recent political history suggests at least a few more nascent and dormant fact-checkers across the country will spin up their efforts in the weeks ahead. When they do, we’ll be counting them — just as a growing number of voter will be counting on them.
Student researcher Hank Tucker contributed to this report. Here’s more information on how the Reporters’ Lab identifies the fact-checkers included in our global database and here’s a form you can use to tell us about a fact-checker we’ve overlooked.
5 share-worthy fact-checks of Clinton’s acceptance speech
Use our widget to share the facts behind the nominee’s talking points
By Erica Ryan - July 29, 2016
As Hillary Clinton became the first female presidential candidate to accept the nomination of a major political party on Thursday night, fact-checkers dug into the talking points and attack lines that peppered her speech.
PolitiFact, The Washington Post and FactCheck.org were among those sorting the truth from the fiction. Here’s a roundup of five of their fact-checks that you can share on Facebook and Twitter using the Share the Facts widget, created by the Duke Reporters’ Lab and Jigsaw, a technology incubator within Alphabet, the parent company of Google. You can also embed them in articles and blog posts.
1. “Don’t believe anyone who says: ‘I alone can fix it.’ Those were actually Donald Trump’s words in Cleveland.”
Clinton used this line to contrast her style with that of her opponent, Republican Donald Trump. But FactCheck.org found it’s not so cut-and-dried: “In fact, Trump said that as a political outsider only he can fix a ‘rigged’ system. He has spoken about working with others many times, including in that same speech.”
2. Trump ties are made “in China, not Colorado. Trump suits in Mexico, not Michigan. Trump furniture in Turkey, not Ohio. Trump picture frames in India, not Wisconsin.”
PolitiFact was able to verify all of the examples Clinton cited – except for the picture frames made in India. It also found some Trump-branded products made in the U.S., such as his signature “Make America Great Again” hats.
3. “More than 90 percent of the gains have gone to the top 1 percent, that’s where the money is.”
These numbers are based on older data, according to The Washington Post.
“There is increasing evidence that income imbalance has improved in recent years as the economy has recovered from the Great Recession,” it reports. The most recent calculations show the top 1 percent got 52 percent of the income gains between 2009 and 2015.
4. “Nearly 15 million new private-sector jobs” have been created since President Obama took office.
FactCheck.org found this number to be inflated: “In fact, since January 2009, when Obama took office, the private sector has added 10.5 million jobs.”
5. Trump “claimed our armed forces are ‘a disaster.’”
PolitiFact tracked down this quote from the Republican candidate during a January debate: “I’m very angry because our country is being run horribly and I will gladly accept the mantle of anger,” Trump said. “Our military is a disaster.”
He doesn’t seem to have repeated this wording, PolitiFact found, and in more recent comments has focused more on what he sees as a lack of resources, calling the military “depleted.”
Want to embed fact-checks like this in your articles and blog posts? Contact us for the easy instructions.
6 Clinton claims you’re likely to hear in Philly
Use our Share the Facts widget to highlight fact-checking during the Democratic convention
By Erica Ryan - July 25, 2016
The Republicans kept fact-checkers on their toes during their convention in Cleveland. Next, it’s the Democrats’ turn as they gather in Philadelphia to nominate Hillary Clinton.
Below is a preview of some talking points you may hear during the Democratic convention and how the fact-checkers at PolitiFact, FactCheck.org and The Washington Post have rated their accuracy.
You can share these fact-checks – and many more – using the Share the Facts widget created by the Duke Reporters’ Lab and Jigsaw, a technology incubator within Alphabet, the parent company of Google.
We encourage you to post the widgets on Facebook and Twitter, or even embed them in articles and blog posts.
On Trump’s finances
On the first night of the convention, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is slated to speak. She has previously painted GOP nominee Donald Trump as a “small, insecure money-grubber,” and she’s likely to repeat previous attacks on his finances.
One claim we might hear is that Trump was “hoping for” a crash in the housing market back in 2006 so he could profit – which PolitiFact rated Mostly True.
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Another claim Democrats have repeated – that past federal tax returns show Trump “hasn’t paid a penny in taxes” – didn’t hold up as well to PolitiFact’s checking. While Trump has declined to release recent tax returns, records show that he did pay income taxes in some years during the 1970s.
On children and families
The second night of the convention is scheduled to focus on how “Hillary has spent her entire career working to make a difference for children, families and our country,” according to the convention website. One campaign-trail claim Clinton has made on that theme is that she worked with Democrats and Republicans to create the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
While The Washington Post verified that Clinton played a role in the effort during her time as first lady, it was mostly behind the scenes at the White House and not as “a public advocate who directly worked with lawmakers in both parties.”
On the economy
President Obama is set to speak on the convention’s third night, which will have a theme of “Working Together” – something the president and his one-time rival have had to do many times since 2008.
One argument Clinton has made for extending her party’s control of the White House is that the economy has fared better under Democratic presidents than Republican ones. While an analysis by two Princeton economists bears that out, FactCheck.org ruled that Clinton is putting a spin on the facts because “the authors of that report do not credit Democratic fiscal policies for the economic growth.”
Another economic claim Clinton has made is about her Republican opponent’s opposition to the federal minimum wage. While Trump has suggested he’d like to see workers earn more than $7.25 an hour, PolitiFact reports, he has said he would prefer to leave that up to the states, without any federally mandated minimum.
On foreign policy
Clinton will take the convention stage on Thursday night. As the former secretary of state, Clinton has compared her own foreign policy chops to Trump’s, which she considers lacking.
However, FactCheck.org found she goes too far when she claims that Trump said he boosted his foreign policy experience by running a Miss Universe pagent in Moscow. What he really said was he knew Russia well because of it.
Bonus: What you won’t hear in Philly
We imagine no Democrat in Philadelphia will even say the word “email” if they can avoid it. But if you want to separate fact from fiction when it comes to the scandal that engulfed Clinton after leaving her post as secretary of state, multiple fact-checkers have broken it down.
- The Washington Post: Fact checking the Hillary Clinton email controversy
- PolitiFact Sheet: Hillary Clinton’s email controversy
- FactCheck.org: A Guide to Clinton’s Emails
Want to embed fact-checks like this in your articles and blog posts? Contact us for the easy instructions.
Fact-checking Trump’s speech with the Share the Facts widget
A tool from the Reporters’ Lab can help counter politicians’ distortions
By Erica Ryan - July 22, 2016
Republican nominee Donald Trump’s 75-minute acceptance speech on the last night of the GOP convention sent fact-checkers into overdrive.
PolitiFact, The Washington Post and FactCheck.org all produced roundups of their research into dozens of Trump’s claims. Here’s a look at four of those claims and the resulting fact-checks, which you can share using the Share the Facts widget.
The widget was created by the Duke Reporters’ Lab and Jigsaw, a technology incubator within Alphabet, the parent company of Google. We encourage you to use the widget to share fact-checks on Facebook and Twitter, or even embed them in articles and blog posts.
1. “Household incomes are down more than $4,000 since the year 2000.”
Here’s how the three fact-checking organizations currently using the Share the Facts widget weighed in on this Trump claim. Click “Read More” on each widget to see the facts behind their conclusions.
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2. “America is one of the highest-taxed nations in the world.”
According to the fact-checkers, this claim from Trump had serious problems.
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3. A “550 percentage increase in Syrian … refugees … [Democrat Hillary Clinton] proposes this despite the fact that there’s no way to screen these refugees in order to find out who they are or where they come from.”
While Clinton has proposed allowing as many as 65,000 Syrian refugees into the U.S., fact-checkers find Trump’s claim that “there’s no way to screen” is not true.
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4. “Decades of progress made in bringing down crime are now being reversed by this administration’s rollback of criminal enforcement. Homicides last year increased by 17 percent in America’s 50 largest cities. That’s the largest increase in 25 years.”
While the fact-checkers note that Trump has a credible source for his numbers (The Post, in fact), they find he’s guilty of cherry-picking data to give the impression of a scary trend.
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Share the Facts Widget Embed
Share the Facts Widget Embed
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