Day 18 - Ada Wiggins, Burlington High School Freshman

A Talk With Becky Bowers

For about a month now, my class, period 7  Freshman History with Mr. Parkin,  has been closely following the presidential debate. We’ve learned about how the voting process works and we’ve watched every single presidential debate and talked about them in class.

We’ve also been looking at numerous fact check websites such as Politifact so that everybody can sort out the lies and truths of each candidate and then ultimately determine for themselves which presidential candidate they really like. As we looked at Politifact, Mr. Parkin asked us if we thought the website was biased. After doing more research, we found out that Becky Bowers, the main writer for Politifact, had also written for the Tampa Bay Times which had endorsed President Barack Obama in the presidential race. Fully interested now, Mr. Parkin guided us through more research, and we found a number at which we could contact her. One student, Timmy Sullivan, immediately suggested that we call her and ask her if Politifact was biased. Everybody was so excited in doing something interesting and new and we were thankful that Mr. Parkin allowed us to call.

Though many of us doubted that Ms. Bowers would answer, but after a few rings she finally did. We asked her many questions, including the main one about whether Politifact is biased. She explained to us that the fact that she had worked for the Tampa Bay Times did not make Politifact biased because they are totally separate. She also explained that there may be more fact checks on one candidate than the other because one may have made more statements that were needed to be checked. In addition, the determining rating of true, false, or pants-on-fire consisted of very thorough research, and needs to be approved by five editors.

Ms. Bowers also explained to us about the process of determining if a statement was true or false. First, writers must contact the candidate that said the statement and give them a chance to try to prove the truthfulness of it. Secondly, a group of researches investigate the statement, which could include looking at records or talking to other people. Lastly, the writers rate the truthfulness. Afterwards, it must be looked at by many editors and must be approved by all the editors that the scaling is right, and then it may be posted.

Once the call ended, everybody was so excited and even more interested in Politifact. But mostly, we were still surprised that we had just talked to Becky Bowers! We were so glad we called and we were happy that Timmy jumped at the opportunity when it came. 

Thanks to Mr. Parkin allowed us to do something like this!