PolitiFact

PolitiFact.com is an American nonprofit project operated by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, with offices there and in Washington, D.C. It began in 2007 as a project of the Tampa Bay Times (then the St. Petersburg Times), with reporters and editors from the newspaper and its affiliated news media partners reporting on the accuracy of statements made by elected officials, candidates, their staffs, lobbyists, interest groups and others involved in U.S. politics. Its journalists select original statements to evaluate and then publish their findings on the PolitiFact website, where each statement receives a "Truth-O-Meter" rating. The ratings range from "True" for statements the journalists deem accurate to "Pants on Fire" (from the taunt "Liar, liar, pants on fire") for claims the journalists deem "not accurate and mak[ing] a ridiculous claim".

PunditFact, a related site that was also created by the Times editors, is devoted to fact-checking claims made by political pundits. Both PolitiFact and PunditFact were funded primarily by the Tampa Bay Times and ad revenues generated on the website until 2018, and the Times continues to sell ads for the site now that it is part of Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a non-profit organization that also owns the newspaper. PolitiFact increasingly relies on grants from several nonpartisan organizations, and in 2017 launched a membership campaign and began accepting donations from readers.