Tag Archives: the St. Petersburg Times

Award-winning American political website launches ‘Obameter’

It seems that – for President Elect Obama – ‘Change’ will come at the cost of incredible scrutiny.

American newspaper journal Editor & Publisher has posted news on its website of a new addition to feature on the PolitiFact website: The Obameter.

The idea is simple: to keep track of the progress made by the 44th President of the United States on every single policy promise made during his electoral campaign. According to PolitiFact, that’s 510 promises in total.

Three status rankings, ‘stalled’, ‘in the works’ or ‘no action’ will be used to indicate how well these promises are developing. Once the action is deemed to be complete, PolitiFact rates whether the promise has been kept or broken.

Even though the President Elect doesn’t officially take office until tomorrow’s inauguration, already PolitiFact claims two promises have been kept, while one is stalled and nine are ‘in the works’ (including Promise No. 502: ‘Getting his daughters a puppy’).

The Obameter will run in parallel to PolitiFact’s established, Truth-o-Meter, which examines official statements from Washington DC and public official consistency yardstick, the Flip-O-Meter.

The site, developed by the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly, won the National Press Foundation’s 2008 online journalism award last month.

PolitiFact wins National Press Foundation award

PolitiFact has scooped the National Press Foundation’s 2008 online journalism award, according to a release from the foundation.

The site, which was developed by the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly used its Truth-O-Meter to rank candidates’ statements during the US presidential campaigns.

It was previously recognised by the Knight Batten Award for Innovation in Journalism and though it’s been on a break since the elections, a statement on the site says it will return in January.