Fact-checks focus on famous politicians, not partisans

Abstract Does the fact-checking enterprise focus its attention on one party? If Republican or Democratic politicians were systematically more likely to have their statements evaluated, that would call into question both the impartiality of the fact-checking enterprise and the results of the many papers that rely on fact-checks to drive other measurements. Despite frequent claims that fact-checking organizations are biased against Republicans, there is little systematic evidence regarding political bias in this industry. We address these gaps using data on how often each member of Congress was fact-checked from 2018 to 2021. We construct measures to account for multiple factors theorized to influence fact-checking, including a member’s partisanship, prominence, and the quality of the news sites they link to. We find that Republican elected officials are not fact-checked more often than Democratic officials. Politician prominence predicts fact-checking, but partisanship does not. Our findings suggest it is unlikely that the selection approach used by fact-checking groups creates partisan bias in fact-check-derived measures.