PolitiFact walks back inaccurate “half-true” fact-check of claim by President Obama

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For the second time in as many months, PolitiFact show-runner Bill Adair is having to publicly defend PolitiFact.

Most of the time, we make the right call. Occasionally, we don’t.

Such is the case today with a rating on a claim by President Barack Obama that “In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than 3 million jobs. Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005.” After Obama’s State of the Union speech, we rated the claim Half True. But this morning we reviewed our work and decided to change it to Mostly True because we concluded Obama was not crediting his policies as directly as we originally thought.

As one critic noted, between this and this, Politifact increasingly can’t be trusted.

Of course, I’ve always thought that.

Peter Schorsch is the President of Extensive Enterprises and is the publisher of some of Florida’s most influential new media websites, including SaintPetersBlog.com, FloridaPolitics.com, ContextFlorida.com, and Sunburn, the morning read of what’s hot in Florida politics. SaintPetersBlog has for three years running been ranked by the Washington Post as the best state-based blog in Florida. In addition to his publishing efforts, Peter is a political consultant to several of the state’s largest governmental affairs and public relations firms. Peter lives in St. Petersburg with his wife, Michelle, and their daughter, Ella.