PunditFact

PunditFact is a project of the Tampa Bay Times and the Poynter Institute, dedicated to checking the accuracy of claims by pundits, columnists, bloggers, political analysts, the hosts and guests of talk shows, and other members of the media.

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Why we fact-checked Jon Stewart and The Daily Show, and 11 reasons we’re sad to see him go

Jon Stewart is wrapping up 17 years as host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show this week. That’s bad news for fact-checkers and all seekers of the truth. Stewart’s show was a catalyst for nearly 80 different fact-checks or stories for us in the last six years. To be honest, we at times wondered whether we should fact-check claims coming from Stewart’s show at all; was there room for serious analysis of what is described as a comedy show? In reality, Stewart is both a comedian posing as a newsman and a newsman posing as a comedian. That makes him ...

No. 3: He learned he can’t even trust the History Channel.

[midnight-raspberries-deactivate]

[midnight-raspberries-deactivate]

[jaketapper]

I do some public speaking here and there, always for free to college or high school students, occasionally at veterans’ events.

CNN has fairly stringent rules about reporters speaking for money, as is appropriate, so until today I have never taken a fee for speaking.

Today I did, so I want to...

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On Fox News Sunday, Ohio Gov. John Kasich wrongly claimed Abraham Lincoln once said, "You cannot build a little guy up by tearing a big guy down," in reference to raising taxes on the wealthy.

Lincoln never said that. Little known fact: He also never said Release the Kraken.

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Our colleagues PolitiFact are launching a Kickstarter campaign to live fact-check and annotate the 2015 State of the Union and GOP response. If you like holding politicians accountable to their words and promise, consider giving. 

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Vote now for the 2014 Lie of the Year. Lots of good options.

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"Fluoride in the water, that was originally done by the Nazis!"

Jesse Ventura

Dec. 2, 2014

Pants on Fire!

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On immigration, what reports say President Barack Obama "plans to do is roughly on the same scale" as what President George H.W. Bush did.

-- Rachel Maddow

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A Fox News host claimed the Keystone XL pipeline would create tens of thousands of jobs. But more than 99 percent are temporary. Read our fact-check.

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The conservative news website Breitbart got the wrong Loretta Lynch when it claimed over the weekend that President Barack Obama's nominee for attorney general "was a member of Bill Clinton's defense team during the 1992 Whitewater corruption probe." Pants on Fire!

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"America’s least-trusted news sources are also its most popular."

Leonard Pitts, Jr. in the Miami Herald

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There's usually no place like Kansas for Republicans. But independent Greg Orman is threatening to flip the script this year. The last time a Republican lost an election in Kansas to the U.S. Senate? Try 1932, seven years before The Wizard of Oz hit theaters.

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A new Colorado law "literally allows residents to print ballots from their home computers, then encourages them to turn ballots over to ‘collectors.’ "

— Megyn Kelly on Tuesday, October 21st, 2014 in a segment on "The Kelly File"

That's False.

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A blogger claims that Rand Paul -- who today says Ebola is incredibly contagious," "very transmissible" and "easy to catch" -- proposed big cuts to the CDC back in 2011. That claim rates True.