Here & Now

PolitiFact's Greg Borowski Fact-checks Senate Campaign Ads

Frederica Freyberg:
Well, PolitiFact Wisconsin has been humming with fact checking this election, especially with the dead heat U.S. Senate race between Republican Tommy Thompson and Democrat Tammy Baldwin. This week, an advertising brawl broke out between the candidates over resolutions honoring 9/11 victims. Greg Borowski is the PolitiFact Wisconsin editor and joins us to talk about the fact checking on these commercials, and Greg, thanks a lot for being here.

Greg Borowski:
Happy to do it.

Frederica Freyberg:
Well, first things first, let’s take a look at these campaign commercials back-to-back, Tommy Thompson’s first.

Tommy Thompson:
I’m Tommy Thompson, and I approve this message.

Janet Gaedkat:
Tammy Baldwin had the opportunity to vote to honor the victims of 9/11. And she voted against it.

Ron Amato:
It’s a slap in the face to every one of their families and anyone who has ever served in the United States military. Tammy Baldwin’s extreme far left approach leaves this country in jeopardy.

Timothy Thiers:
It’s a very dangerous path Tammy’s leading us on.

Ron Amato:
What would you do if these were your children? How would you feel?

Tammy Baldwin:
I’m Tammy Baldwin, and I approve this message.

Announcer:
Tommy Thompson’s ad is a disgrace. The truth, time and again, Tammy Baldwin has supported honoring victims of 9/11, and Tommy Thompson, he got a government contract to provide healthcare to 9/11 first responders. But Tommy took advantage, leaving them without the care they were promised. Tommy Thompson personally made over three million dollars off the deal. Tommy Thompson should be ashamed.

Frederica Freyberg:
Well, Greg, you ran the truthometer on these ads. What did you rate the Thompson ad?

Greg Borowski:
We rated that ad mostly false, and it’s important to think about the definition for that, that there’s an element of truth, but leaves out a lot of information that would give a different impression. In this case, the element of truth was there was a vote that Tammy Baldwin took where she had the opportunity to vote and to Memorialize the victims, and, instead, opposed it, but that was a vote she said was politicized by other information in that resolution, and she voted nine other times to recognize the 9/11 victims. We felt that definition certainly fit.

Frederica Freyberg:
Now, a competitor of yours, factcheck.org, called that ad false and vicious, and yet you didn’t go that far?

Greg Borowski:
Well, it’s important to understand, too, that different scales and things that are used, and that’s why I started with our definition for mostly false. We’re not rating the viciousness of the ad. We’re trying to rate the facts behind it. And we’re not trying to rate the strategies by the campaign. We’re just trying to provide the clear information for voters, and they did word it pretty carefully that she had an opportunity to do this and didn’t, so I think if we said that that was completely false, it would ignore the fact that there was this resolution, and there was this vote by the congresswoman.

Frederica Freyberg:
On the other hand, on the Baldwin ad, where once again she harkens back to his money-making ventures, this time claiming he profited off these 9/11 victims, what was your take on that?

Greg Borowski:
We actually came down with the same mostly false rating on that for many of the same reasons. But there was some truth to the ad and to the claim. There was a contract. It was a firmed that Tommy Thompson was president of. There were problems. He did make three million dollars, but if you start to pull it apart, you find that yes, he made three million dollars, but it wasn’t specifically for that deal. It was due to stock options when the company sold. And yes, there were problems, but they were fixed in very short order and even those who complained at the time now say that things are running fine. So you put all that together and it had the same very much flavor that the Thompson ad did that there’s some facts there, but they’re distorted and stretched to give the wrong impression, in this case that Tommy Thompson somehow was taking advantage of this situation when that just doesn’t appear to be supported.

Frederica Freyberg:
Okay. So once again, both these ads rated mostly false by PolitiFact Wisconsin.

Greg Borowski:
Correct.

Frederica Freyberg:
Now, do you expect to do some fact checking in tonight’s final debate between these two?

Greg Borowski:
Yeah, we certainly will. And we invite readers to send us some E-mails with suggestions if they hear things. That would be [email protected]. This is time of the campaign, it’s sort of like the change in seasons, the days get shorter and the claims get a little bit wilder at this time, so we’re going to be on our toes and try to get as many facts checks done as we can before election day.

Frederica Freyberg:
There’s one more thing of note, the Journal Sentinel we read is not endorsing in either the U.S. senate or in the presidential election. Why not, if you can tell us.

Greg Borowski:
Well, I can tell you what I read from the editorial page, and that's kind of instructive here. We weren’t part of that decision in the news room, but the decision they came to was that, in a way, it was sort of an anachronism. People have a lot of ways to get information about candidates. They don’t want to be pigeon-holed, just picking one side or the other. I can say from my perspective, we frequently get readers who say, oh, you’re doing this because the Journal Sentinel has this position, and we don’t know what the position of the editorial page is until it’s out there. I learned about this on Facebook yesterday, not through any internal announcement or discussion.

Frederica Freyberg:
And so you’re suggesting that there is in reality a fire wall between the editorial nature of the paper and the news room.

Greg Borowski:
There certainly is. And that’s why it’s hard for readers to understand that because they’ll see the Journal Sentinel endorses and they’ll say wait, you work for the Journal Sentinel, don’t you do that or aren’t you part of that. And we take very strict approaches in the news room to not be involved in politics, to not sign petitions, to not put yard signs in your front yard because that credibility is so vitally important.

Frederica Freyberg:
Absolutely correct. Greg Borowski, thanks very much for your work.

Greg Borowski:
Okay. Thank you.