TRUTH IN NEWS ( REPORTS)

It is a new year, but many of our concerns are still with us and must be faced in the coming months. For example, the actual Health Care Bill has not been negotiated between the House Bill and the Senate Bill. We have made out so far, but must keep up with the changes that are possible. The Chapter Blog contains updates from NARFE National and links to comment to our Representative in Congress on our likes and dislikes. We might not be able to contribute directly to the solutions to many of the problems facing the country, but we can stay informed, objective, and open to the facts. The following comment by Ron Richardson addresses this very point.

Hi Bob,

After reading the comments, I have come to the conclusion that confusion and partisanship abounds. I follow politifact.com among other non-partisan sites to make some sense of what the pundits are espousing. I would recommend this site to anyone who is unaware of it.

This is the statistics that they reported: “Among the items we've checked on health care, here's how the ratings broke down:

True 14.7 percent
Mostly True 10.3 percent
Half True 19.2 percent
Barely True 16 percent
False 30.1 percent
Pants on Fire 9.6 percent
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(Total does not equal 100 percent due to rounding.)”

Obviously this does not include every statement made, but does include the most common. I suggest that people visit the site and make their own decision.

Ron Richardson

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(Truth-O-Meter ratings here at PolitiFact are about journalism, and not meant for social science. We select facts to check based on our news judgment. Still, it's interesting to look at how the ratings have broken down this year when it comes to health care. We fact-checked more than 160 statements about health care in 2009, and a lot of them were wrong.)

You can read about these news items and check their truth at this web-site. There are other sites that do the same kind of fact checking.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2009/dec/29/health-care-debate-2009/