When we first decided to start The Fact File, one of the most common questions we received was… Why? Numerous sites already exist that do exactly what we seek to do—that is, analyze political discourse in order to separate fact from outright obfuscation —so why should we waste our time by duplicating these efforts?
Theoretically, this is a valid argument. If these fact-checking sites conducted their research using rigorous scientific standards—including, most importantly, by ignoring politics and simply letting the facts and data speak for themselves—our site would be unnecessary. However, in the caustic political environment that has been prevalent in the past few years, this has simply not been the case. These sites often try to remain “centrist,” leading to a distortion of facts so that they avoid appearing partisan.
It is our opinion that such an approach provides the public a major disservice: the American people deserve honest information on which to base their beliefs, and the failure by the media to call out our leaders (whether Democrat, Republican, or other) leads to a misinformed public that bases their beliefs on opinion rather than fact. And the tentativeness of fact-checking sites to call a spade a spade has the unintentional consequence of allowing our politicians to get away with more and more comments that are misleading at best, and outright lies at worst.
The Fact File will fill this void by ignoring the political spin on the issues in order to parse out the facts. And as ex-academics, should we get the facts wrong ourselves (or should the facts change), we will admit our mistakes and update our statements. As such, we actively welcome feedback from our readers, who we hope will use the same rigor when reading our posts that we do in researching and writing them.
