How A Tragic School Shooting Led To PolitiFact’s ‘Lie Of The Year’

Our weekly check-in with the Texas Truth-O-Meter.

By Alexandra HartDecember 19, 2018 2:05 pm,

After the horrific mass shooting at a Florida high school in February, student-survivors there reacted by starting a national campaign for gun control, and for political leaders to not be beholden to the National Rifle Association. False news stories about those survivors surfaced on the internet, ultimately resulting in inaccurate claims that PolitiFact has now declared its 2018 “Lie of the Year.”

Gardner Selby of the PolitiFact Texas fact-checking team says journalists, in general, and PolitiFact, specifically, often shy away from labeling a statement a “lie.” But once each year, PolitiFact chooses one particularly egregious falsehood as its Lie of the Year, and this year, it was about the Parkland shooting survivors.

Hear what PolitiFact determined to be the Lie of the Year in the player above.

Written by Shelly Brisbin.