Australian Politifact

Membrella reports:

Peter Fray, the former publisher and editor-in-chief of The Sydney Morning Herald, has today launched his newpolitical fact checking website PolitiFact Australia and says he is close to announcing a media partner for the site.

Politifact Australia is based on the format of its US counterpart, created by the Tampa Bay Times, and seeks to test political statements categorising them along a ‘truthometer’, with different ratings from true to half true to “pants on fire” for completely untrue statements.

I’d love to see a NZ version of a site such as this of Fact Check.

What is absolutely key is those involved in the site must be absolutely non-partisan and aligned.

The Australian site is here. So far they have given the following ratings:

• Tony Abbott – a mostly true and a mostly false
• Julia Gillard – a mostly false
• Lee Rhiannon (Greens) – a mostly true
• ALP – an outright false