Annenberg Pubic Policy Center Websites Cut Through the Political Rhetoric

Factcheck.org & factchecked.org
Useful web sites to get to the heart of public policy, with lesson plans to help students develop critical thinking skills while exploring timely issues.

Here is a description of the web sites, in their own words.

You may think there are already plenty of Web sites devoted to teaching kids one thing or another, from elementary to obscure. Our goal is a little different. We believe that truth is an elusive commodity in our world of ceaseless communication, a world in which information is transmitted in huge helpings and in a virtual instant. All of us are overwhelmed with messages, many of them attempts to persuade us to do or buy something.

Our aim is to help students learn to be smart consumers of these messages, not to accept them at face value; to dig for facts using the Internet, not to stop looking once they get to Wikipedia; and to weigh evidence logically, not to draw conclusions based on their own biases.

The materials on this site, then, are meant to help students acquire the skills to see through the spin. Under the heading Tools of the Trade we’ve outlined a five-step framework for analyzing information and avoiding deception. That process is the essence of what we do at FactCheck.org, where we have been debunking false and misleading claims in politics since 2003.

Some of our Lesson Plans present students with a message, such as an advertisement, and guide them through a process of discovery leading to the facts. All of the ads are real, and students probably have encountered some of them already. For example, many students and teachers will have seen ads on the Internet and television for a dietary supplement called Hoodia, which supposedly helps users lose weight by suppressing their appetites. Our lesson plan encourages students to ask such questions as, “Is there any scientific evidence that Hoodia works?” and to hunt for some answers.

Political messages are at the hub of a number of our lessons. We are strictly nonpartisan. We found long ago that misleading statements aren’t the purview of Democrats or Republicans alone. So, for example, you’ll find a lesson dealing with misleading claims made by Republican presidential candidates during a debate, as well as one framed around out-of-context assertions in an ad by a group opposing the Iraq war. We’ll post these topical lesson plans on an ongoing basis to keep up with current events.

Another group of lessons teaches some of the basic concepts of reasoning, giving students the building blocks that will help them parse others’ arguments and strengthen their own. Using Monty Python skits and clips from other popular television programs and films, we’ve created engaging lessons on deductive versus inductive reasoning, picking out logical fallacies and similar subjects. These are our core lesson plans.

Straight from the Source is our go-to list of Web sites, the places we visit when we’re looking for information, along with our synopses of what they offer. Official government sites can be terrific fonts of facts, like the U.S. Senate’s Office of Public Records, which identifies companies that have hired lobbyists trying to influence government policy on, say, offshore oil drilling, and the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports site is a reliable source for finding out something like how many murders occurred in Chicago last year. We also include a number of think tanks and issue advocacy groups with rundowns on their political leanings and reliability.

Our Dictionary helps decode bureaucratese as well as legal, political, economic and other terms of art that often plague discussions of policy and politics.

Click on Ask FactCheck to see our answers to commonly asked questions about politics, government and current affairs, which we select from queries submitted by users of this site and FactCheck.org. You may also e-mail us directly at Editor@FactCheckEd.org.

The techniques we use at FactCheck.org, and those we try to convey here at FactCheckED.org, are essentially those used by any good investigative reporter, researcher or logician (all of which we have on staff). We try to be skeptical but not cynical. When we review a new claim, we neither accept it at face value nor do we assume it is false. We listen carefully, look for evidence and weigh that against what’s being said or implied. We think those are good habits to teach anybody. We hope you agree.

Viveca Novak
Project Director, FactCheckEd.org
Deputy Director, FactCheck.org

Brooks Jackson
Director, FactCheck.org