Just the Facts?

The 2008 Democratic National Convention began Monday in Denver, signaling the beginning of the final, heated lap (at least, we hope!) of a very long and often tumultuous election season. As we count down toward Nov. 4, we can count on being inundated with more news articles, more blog and media commentaries, more conversation and more advertisements about candidates in nearly every race.

For thoughtful voters who are trying to bypass the sound bites in favor of the facts, it’s become quite a chore to sift past the mountain of posts on the news feeders. And not only do we have to make critical judgments about what the politicians, campaign officials and pundits are saying, but we even have to decide whether we can trust the news flotsam and jetsam that’s riding along the 24-hour news stream.

No one said being an informed member of the community was easy.

However, we’ve snagged from the Web a few resources that can take the toughness out of getting closer to the facts in the major political stories.

One site is FiveThirtyEight.com, a nonpartisan site that aggregates and analyzes national polling and political data to give readers the most accurate information possible. The major contribbutor of FiveThirtyEight (named, by the way, after the number of electors in the Electoral College) admits in the site’s FAQ that he leans Democratic in his political affiliations, but he also discloses the site’s methodology in order to let readers decide for themselves what his biases might be. A link to an example of FiveThirtyEight’s postings appears on The Xenia Institute’s In The Press section on Monday. In that article, FiveThirtyEight explained the “house effect,” or the way polling firms numbers tend to lean toward one politician over another, and how this effect differs from bias.

Another Web site that can clarify any confusion with current events is FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan site that monitors and examines for accuracy everything political campaigns issue to the public. It also examines articles and storylines picked up by the news media and commentators for accuracy and fairness.

For example, FactCheck.org recently took apart the rumors that Sen. John McCain had lifted the “cross-in-the-sand” story he told during the Saddleback Church forum from a story by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. According to the site:

There’s no such story in “Archipelago.” There is a somewhat similar story attributed to Solzhenitsyn, which we’ve traced back to Rev. Billy Graham by way of former Richard Nixon aide Charles Colson. But that’s not proof that McCain’s story isn’t true.

FactCheck.org not only determined that McCain likely had not “stolen” the story, but even diagramed how that rumor got started.

Aside from these sites, Xenia’s In The Press section features new stories daily that provide inside looks behind current events. It’s one of the tools at your fingertips that can help keep us informed on the issues and ready to take part in the process.