About the Fact Checker

By washingtonpost.com Editors

"Comment is free, but facts are sacred." -- C.P. Scott, editor Manchester Guardian, 1921

About the Fact Checker

In an award-winning journalism career spanning nearly three decades,Glenn Kessler has covered foreign policy, economic policy, the White House, Congress, politics, airline safety and Wall Street. He was The Washington Post's chief State Department reporter for nine years, traveling around the world with three different Secretaries of State. Before that, he covered tax and budget policy for The Washington Post and also served as the newspaper's national business editor. Kessler has long specialized in digging beyond the conventional wisdom, such as when he earned a "laurel" from the Columbia Journalism Review* for obtaining Federal Aviation Administration records that showed that then President Bill Clinton had not delayed any scheduled flights when he had a controversial haircut on an airport tarmac. Kessler helped pioneer the fact-checking of candidates' statements during the 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns, when he was chief political correspondent for Newsday, and continued to do it during the last three presidential campaigns for The Post. In 2007, St. Martins Press published his widely acclaimed book on Condoleezza Rice, The Confidante. Kessler appears frequently on television and has lectured widely on U.S. foreign policy.

Our Goal

Welcome to the new Fact Checker column. My colleague Michael Dobbs started the column during the 2008 campaign and now The Washington Post is reviving it as a permanent feature.

We will not be bound by the antics of the presidential campaign season, but will focus on any statements by political figures and government officials--in the United States and abroad--that cry out for fact-checking. It's a big world out there, and so we will rely on readers to ask questions and point out statements that need to be checked. Over time, we hope to build this page into a more interactive feature than the blog it has been.

The purpose of this website, and an accompanying column in the Post, is to "truth squad" the statements of political figures regarding issues of great importance, be they national, international or local. As the 2012 presidential election approaches, we will increasingly focus on statements made in the heat of the presidential contest. But we will not be limited to political charges or countercharges. We will seek to explain difficult issues, provide missing context and provide analysis and explanation of various "code words" used by politicians, diplomats and others to obscure or shade the truth.

The success of this project depends, to a great extent, on the involvement of you--the reader. We will rely on our readers to send us suggestions on topics to fact check and tips on erroneous claims by political candidates, interest groups, and the media. Readers can even vote on what topics they need to have addressed. Once we have posted an item on a subject, we invite your comments and contributions. You can follow us on Twitter at GlennKesslerWP and also make comments and suggestions via tweets. If you have facts or documents that shed more light on the subject under discussion, or if you think we have made a mistake, let us know. We also want to make sure that the authors of questionable claims have ample opportunity to argue their case. We plan to issue our own opinion on factual disputes (see our rules on the "Pincocchio Test" on this web page) but it can be revised and updated when fresh evidence emerges.

A Few Basic Principles
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• This is a fact-checking operation, not an opinion-checking operation. We are interested only in verifiable facts, though on occasion we may examine the roots of political rhetoric.
• · We will focus our attention and resources on the issues that are most important to voters. We cannot nitpick every detail of every speech.
• · We will stick to the facts of the issue under examination and are unmoved by ad hominem attacks. The identity or political ties of the person or organization making a charge is irrelevant: all that matters is whether their facts are accurate or inaccurate.
• · We will adopt a "reasonable man" standard for reaching conclusions. We do not demand 100 percent proof.
• · We will strive to be dispassionate and non-partisan, drawing attention to inaccurate statements on both left and right.

The Pinocchio Test

Where possible, we will adopt the following standard in fact-checking the claims of a politician, political candidate, diplomat or interest group.

One Pinocchio

Some shading of the facts. Selective telling of the truth. Some omissions and exaggerations, but no outright falsehoods.

Two Pinocchios

Significant omissions and/or exaggerations. Some factual error may be involved but not necessarily. A politician can create a false, misleading impression by playing with words and using legalistic language that means little to ordinary people.

Three Pinocchios

Significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions.

Four Pinocchios

Whoppers.

The Geppetto Checkmark

Statements and claims that contain "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" will be recognized with our prized Geppetto checkmark.

Withholding Judgment

There will be many occasions when it is impossible to render a snap judgment because the issue is very complex or there are good arguments on both sides. In this case, we will withhold our judgment until we can gather more facts. We will use this website to shed as much light as possible on factual controversies that are not easily resolved.

All judgments are subject to debate and criticism from our readers and interested parties, and can be revised if fresh evidence emerges. We invite you to join the discussion on these pages and contact the Fact Checker directly with tips, suggestions, and complaints. If you feel that we are being too harsh on one candidate and too soft on another, there is a simple remedy: let us know about misstatements and factual errors we may have overlooked.

Follow The Fact Checker on Twitter @GlennKesslerWP