Program Description

In the heated, sometimes confusing environment of the 2012 presidential campaign, learn how to use two website resources, FactCheck.org and FlackCheck.org, to teach
political literacy skills with real examples from the campaign trail.

The award-winning political fact-checking website FactCheck.org monitors the factual accuracy of what is said by major US political players in ads, debates, and speeches. Its sister site, FlackCheck.org, provides a guide to political literacy and engagement.

Videos such as FlackCheck.org’s “Patterns of Deception” and “Could Lincoln Be Elected Today” illustrate fallacies and related ways in which political campaigns deceive, and help classes examine criteria for evaluating candidates—past and present—for the presidency.

About FactCheck.org and FlackCheck.org

FactCheck.org is a nonpartisan, nonprofit consumer advocate for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in US politics. FactCheck.org monitors the factual accuracy of what is said by major US political players in the forms of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. Its goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding.

FlackCheck.org uses parody and humor to debunk false political advertising, poke fun at extreme language, and hold the media accountable for their reporting on political campaigns.

FactCheck.org and FlackCheck.org are projects of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

About the Presenters

Dr. Kathleen Hall Jamieson is the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center and the Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. She has written extensively on the press, politics and presidential campaigns. Her research into deceptive political TV ads produced techniques that are now in common use in TV adwatch stories.

Among the many books she has authored or co-authored are: Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction, and Democracy (Oxford University Press, 1992); Everything You Think You Know About Politics…and Why You’re Wrong (Basic Books, 2000); unSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation (Random House, 2007); and The Obama Victory (Oxford, 2010), winner of an American Publishers Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence in government and politics and the ICA outstanding book award. She is co-founder of FactCheck.org and founder of FlackCheck.org.

Eugene Kiely is the Philadelphia director of FactCheck.org at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a journalist who has covered government and politics for more than 20 years. Before joining FactCheck.org, Kiely was a Washington assignment editor at USA Today, leading a team of reporters that focused on Congress, politics, and government accountability. Previously, he worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer as a Statehouse reporter in Trenton, NJ. He also worked at The Record in Hackensack, NJ, where he served as the Statehouse bureau chief in Trenton.