We're going to need a bigger databaseBuckle up. President Trump is on the cusp of making 5,000 false or misleading claims since his inauguration. The total reached 4,713 on Labor...
| |  | | Democracy Dies in Darkness | | | | | | | | | | The truth behind the rhetoric | | | | | | We're going to need a bigger database Buckle up. President Trump is on the cusp of making 5,000 false or misleading claims since his inauguration. The total reached 4,713 on Labor Day, according to our latest update of The Fact Checker's database tracking every suspect statement uttered by the president. Because Trump's daily rate keeps jumping, the big Five-K is just around the corner. The president averaged 15 false or misleading claims per day over the last three months. Doing the math, Trump will be crossing the 5,000-claim rubicon within a few short weeks. We don't hand out prizes for these dubious milestones, but the president doesn't seem to mind. In fact, things have accelerated rather sharply this summer. In June, 534 claims. In July, 448. In August, 469. Those are the top three by far. Trump has been president for more than a year and a half, yet one-third of all his faulty claims came in these summer months. All 4,713 claims are categorized and fact-checked in our searchable database. When he hits 5,000, we'll let you know. |  | | Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this e-mail was forwarded to you, sign up here for the weekly newsletter. Hear something fact-checkable? Send it here, we'll check it out. | | | Chasing mass-shooters around the world Statistics can be sliced and spun until they tell a useful story, as our regular readers know. We ran into a similar problem measuring the number of mass shootings in the United States against those in other countries. Two researchers who studied this question arrived at starkly different totals and conclusions, partly because one included terrorism cases and the other did not. On one hand, we have Adam Lankford of the University of Alabama. He said his data showed the United States had significantly more mass shooters, with 90 between 1966 and 2012, compared with 202 in the rest of the world. But he won't release the actual data he compiled, which makes his work tough to evaluate. On the other hand, we have John R. Lott Jr., an economist who has researched crime for years. Lott produced a dueling study claiming to undercut Lankford's claims. We questioned some features of Lott's methodology, and he revised it. He also shared all his data. In the end, when measuring the top five countries, the two tallies were not as far apart as they seemed at first. Lankford counted 54 mass-shooters outside the United States from 1966 to 2012. Lott found a smaller number, 21, but over a much shorter period, from 1998 to 2012. Still, we wish there was a consistent definition of "mass shooting" to go by, since it would make these comparisons easier. We also think Lankford should release his data so others can review his work. |  | | The ebb and flow of fake news A fascinating study by Oxford University's Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism shows that people are on high alert for fake news around election time, but not so much after the votes are counted. Using poll data from the Reuters Institute's Digital News Report for 2018, Oxford professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen found that 85 percent of respondents in Brazil were concerned that they were reading fake news online. (Brazil has upcoming elections.) Meanwhile, in post-election Germany, only 37 percent of people were concerned about fake news on the Internet. | | | Scroll down for this week's Pinocchio roundup. — Salvador Rizzo | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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