[generaladm]

Originally Posted by DaytonBuck

Polifact

Excerpt from an op/ed piece by Jamison Foser:

So the recent announcement by PolitiFact.com, the St. Petersburg Times' political fact-checking operation, that it plans to closely track Barack Obama's progress in keeping his campaign promises is an encouraging sign that the news media will apply to Obama the kind of substantive scrutiny Bush too often escaped.
Unfortunately, PolitiFact's effort seems to lack a much-needed sense of perspective. PolitiFact has compiled a list of what it describes as 510 promises Obama made during his presidential campaign and plans to rate each a "Promise Kept," a "Promise Broken," or a "Compromise."
But PolitiFact does not distinguish between promises large and small, or between those that are urgent and those that might well be considered luxuries during times of economic crisis. Instead, it lumps them all together in a list of 510, topped by a box score tallying up the number of promises kept, broken, compromised, stalled, in the works, and with no action taken.
And so Obama's promise to "get his daughters a puppy" is given as much weight as his promise to "sign a 'universal' health care bill." His pledges to "push for a college football playoff system" and to "expand access to places to hunt and fish" are treated as though they are as important as his promises to extend unemployment insurance benefits and restore habeas corpus rights and end warrantless wiretaps. His promise to "expand the Senior Corps volunteer program" and his promise to "direct military leaders to end the war in Iraq" are given equal treatment.
President Obama has inherited a nation that faces serious problems. The news media will not serve their readers and viewers well if they obsess over whether Obama has kept 64 percent of his promises or 72 percent -- or if they pretend that a college football playoff system is as important as a successful economic recovery package.
To be clear: This is not an argument against holding Obama accountable; it is an argument for focusing such efforts on the things that matter most. Few Americans will mind if some of the less urgent promises go unfulfilled as long as the nation's economic conditions improve, the war in Iraq comes to an end, and we have a president who views the Constitution as something more than a list of optional recommendations. And few will be much impressed that Obama got his daughters a puppy if those other things do not come to pass.
The mess Barack Obama inherited constitutes a challenge not only for his administration and lawmakers of both parties, but for the media as well. Serious times require serious journalism -- an appropriate equilibrium between the outright hostility with which reporters covered Bill Clinton and the obsequiousness that marked their coverage of George W. Bush. But an appropriate level of scrutiny is not enough; it must be joined with sound judgment about where that scrutiny is most important.

Media Matters - Media Matters: Media menu: Scrutiny, with a side order of sound judgment