Wigwam Jones

I love FactCheck.org. They're the antidote to my friends, family, and others who pummeled me daily during this past election with one nonsensical claim after another, via email and online discussion forums.

One thing I noticed early on. If I mentioned to them that resources like FactCheck.org and VoteSmart.org were great reference tools, where they could do their own research and find out actual answers to questions, instead of relying on stupid emails from anonymous dirtbags (on the left and the right, folks, no one had a monopoly here), they all said the same thing - they're biased and can't be trusted.

From the extreme left wing (BoingBoing) to the extreme right (Together We Served), discussion forum participants universally informed me that FactCheck and VoteSmart were not to be trusted. Funny thing is, they each claimed that they were biased - to the other side. Folks, they can't be biased BOTH WAYS.

So, somebody maybe has their own little bias going on, eh? Maybe my online discussion forum friends and my relatives?

Maybe.

So let's look at it.

VoteSmart is a listing of the way elected officials voted, answers to questionnaires they have filled out, and ratings given to them by various (biased) special-interest groups like the NRA, MADD, NOW, and so on. It is what it is. If you have doubts about how a candidate will vote in the future, it is only common sense to look at how they have voted in the past. Then make up your own mind. Gosh, what a concept!

FactCheck is run by the, well, I'll let them tell it:

The Annenberg Political Fact Check is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The APPC was established by publisher and philanthropist Walter Annenberg in 1994 to create a community of scholars within the University of Pennsylvania that would address public policy issues at the local, state and federal levels.

The APPC accepts NO funding from business corporations, labor unions, political parties, lobbying organizations or individuals. It is funded primarily by the Annenberg Foundation.

They just completed an annual survey by their subscribers:

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/our_subscribers_speak.html

FactCheck.org's subscribers report to us that they find our articles clear, helpful and unbiased.

More than 15,000 who responded to an online survey invitation also told us that they are exceptionally well educated. More than one in three hold an advanced degree, and 84 percent have at least some college education. The average age is 55, and 98 percent reported that they voted in this election. One in 10 is a teacher, and nearly 2 percent are journalists, most of whom say they find our articles useful when preparing their own news reports.

I had to come to this conclusion - if your friends think that FactCheck and VoteSmart are biased, your friends are the ones who are biased. There just is no other answer.

You can be biased, too - in fact, it is hard for any of us to avoid our own built-in biases and prejudices. But if you are willing to look for vetted, unbiased, information, you can at least have a chance of arriving at conclusions that, while they may not conform with your world view, will at least have some logical basis in reality.

So there you go. Two fun tools for the next election for you. Sorry I did not mention these in my blog earlier, an omission on my part, mea culpa.

I'm also rather fond of www.sourcewatch.org, but I do not have clear evidence that it is unbiased. I just use it as yet another source of information.