Did They Just Set Up a Skating Rink in Hades? PolitiFact Changes a Ruling

As I just remarked via e-mail to GoLocalProv's Dan McGowan, I had almost wrapped up a stinging post this evening about PolitiFact's latest rating of a statement by Brendan Doherty. The post would have been entitled

Doherty Was Right; PolitiFact Is Wrong - Cicilline "Volunteer" Ramirez Not The Source of the Funds That Repaid His PEDP Loan

Alas, the world will never see that brilliant and hard-hitting post because it has now been pre-empted by a substantial "update" to the PolitiFact ruling that would have been its subject. A new preamble to the ruling summarizes. (Emphasis added.)

EDITOR's NOTE: On Sept. 16, 2012, PolitiFact Rhode Island rated as Mostly False a statement by Republican congressional candidate Brendan Doherty that was directed at U.S. Rep. David Cicilline. Doherty said: "The Providence Economic Development Partnership . . which you [Cicilline] chaired, loaned $103,000 in taxpayer funds to one of your campaign workers. The worker never paid back the loan." In light of additional evidence, we are changing our rating to Mostly True and providing this new analysis.

As the updated version of this PolitiFact ruling carefully states, the person and outlet who brought about this hitherto unthinkable change of a PolitiFact ruling is Dan McGowan at GoLocalProv with his story of August 30 - more precisely, the very good digging by Dan that preceded and comprised it.

Kudos to PolitiFact for being big enough to run a thorough correction.

Major congratulations to GoLocalProv's Dan McGowan for bringing about the correction with some excellent research.