Historians have a responsibility to ensure the validity of their source materials. The legitimacy of their source materials determines how accurately they tell the “story of history.” Similarly, an important part of citizenship today is being informed about current events, and to evaluate the validity of sources of news. This exercise is designed to gave you a chance to practice evaluating sources.
Write an essay about the website Politifact.comLinks to an external site. in which you address the following items:
On the site’s home page, scroll to the bottom and click on the item, “Our Process.” Write a paragraph describing in YOUR own words three things this website does to ensure its neutrality and lack of bias.
Using the search menu in the top left portion of the home page, do a search for ONE of the following topics: “Covid-19,” “Health Care,” “Immigration,” “Supply Chain.” For each of these you’ll find hundreds of facts the website has checked. (Some of them will appear to be more related to the topic than others.) Pick one “fact” that is rated “Mostly False,” “False” or “Pants on Fire” from 2021. Write a paragraph summarizing, in your own words, what “fact” was checked and why it was given the “false,” rating. Click on “see the sources for this fact-check,” and conclude your paragraph with descriptions of at least two of the sources Politifact used to do their fact-check.
In paragraph three, give me your overall assessment of the reliability of Politifact.com. Is this a reliable fact-checker? Why/why not?
Save your essay in either Word or Rich Text Format and submit as a file.
Last Completed Projects
| topic title | academic level | Writer | delivered |
|---|