Overall, our fact-checking and journalism partners—the Center for Responsive Politics, the Center for Public Integrity, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, and the Washington Post’s Fact Checker—wrote 57 fact- and source-checks of 50 ads sponsored by presidential campaigns and outside groups. (The American Press Institute and Duke Reporters’ Lab, also partners, provided training and tools for journalists fact checking ads.)
Of the 25 fact checks done by PolitiFact, 60 percent of the ads earned “Half True,” “Mostly True,” and “True” ratings, with the remainder earning “Mostly False,” “False,” and “Pants on Fire” ratings. The Washington Post’s Fact Checker, the other fact-checking group that uses ratings, fact-checked 11 ads. Of these, seven earned ratings of three whatsapp lead or four Pinocchios. A series of ads featuring former employees and students denouncing Trump University, from a “dark money” group that doesn’t disclose its donors, earned the coveted “Geppetto Checkmark” for accuracy. Those ads aired widely in Florida and Ohio leading up to the primaries there.
The ad that produced the most fact checks and source checks was this one from the very same group, the American Future Fund, for an attack ad on John Kasich. Robert Farley of FactCheck.org wrote, “An ad from a conservative group attacks Ohio Gov. John Kasich as an ‘Obama Republican,’ and misleadingly claims his budget ‘raised taxes by billions, hitting businesses hard and the middle class even harder.'” PolitiFact Ohio reporter Nadia Pflaum gave the ad a “False” rating; Michelle Ye Hee Lee of the Washington Post’s Fact Checker awarded it “Three Pinocchios.” The Center for Public Integrity described the American Future Fund as “a conservative nonprofit linked to the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch that since 2010 has inundated federal and state races with tens of millions of dollars.”