PoliTalking.US claims to be neutral, and a claim like that is worth very little without a method behind it. This page describes the method. The short version: we try to balance perspectives, we do not try to balance facts, and where we cannot source something we say so instead of filling the gap. The About page covers why this site exists. This one covers how it decides what goes in a post.
Which views get covered
A view earns coverage here when it has identifiable, non-trivial support. In practice that means one or more of the following: it is argued by people currently holding or seriously seeking office, it is the stated position of a substantial organization, or it shows measurable support in published polling.
That is a deliberately loose standard, because the alternative is worse. A tight numerical rule would exclude positions that are widely held but poorly polled, and it would let us quietly drop views we found inconvenient by pointing at a threshold.
Positions that fall outside that standard can still appear in a post. There is a difference between describing a position accurately and giving it a section of its own to make its best case. Fringe and extremist positions get the first treatment when they are relevant to the story, not the second.
How many sides
The number of sides is set by the issue, not by a template. This is the part of the site’s approach that departs most from how US politics usually gets covered.
Some questions really do have two sides. A single vote on a single bill is often close to binary. Other questions have four or five, and collapsing them into two loses the most interesting part. Immigration in the United States includes restrictionist positions, enforcement-first positions that accept eventual legalization, positions favoring expanded legal immigration, and a labor-oriented skepticism of high immigration levels that sits well to the left of the standard restrictionist argument. Presenting that as two camps would be inaccurate, not balanced.
So posts on this site do not have a fixed number of perspective sections. Where a genuine third or fourth position exists, it gets its own space. Where the argument really is bilateral, we do not invent a third position to look even-handed.
Facts are checked, not balanced
This is the most important thing on the page, so it gets stated plainly. When a claim is checkable, we check it and report what the check found. If the claim is false, the post says it is false. That is not partisanship, and treating a false claim as one legitimate side of a two-sided debate would not be neutrality.
The consequence is that some posts will look lopsided, because on some questions the checkable claims made by one side hold up better than the checkable claims made by the other. This happens in both directions across the archive, and it is a result of the checking rather than a thumb on the scale.
Opinions and predictions are handled differently. A judgment about whether a policy is a good idea, or a forecast about what a bill will do to prices five years out, is not something a fact-check can settle. Posts here separate those from checkable claims and leave them standing as positions.
What comparable scrutiny means
Equal rigor and an equal sourcing standard, applied to every side in a post. It does not mean equal word count.
Equal word count would be a promise we broke constantly. Sides say different amounts, make different numbers of factual claims, and articulate their positions at different levels of detail. A post that checks eleven claims from one side and six from the other, because that is what each side actually asserted, is being consistent. Padding the shorter section to match would mean either inventing arguments nobody made or repeating one argument in different words.
What is held constant is the standard: the same sourcing requirements, the same willingness to say a claim did not hold up, and the same refusal to characterize a position more or less charitably depending on whose it is.
When a side cannot be sourced
Sometimes one side simply has not said anything on a specific point, or has said something we cannot trace to a citable source. When that happens, the post says so.
We do not construct the argument a side probably would have made. Building the strongest version of an unstated position is a useful exercise in a debate, but on a site that presents itself as reporting what people actually think, it amounts to putting words in someone’s mouth. The honest version is a line noting that no clear position was found, which is itself information about the state of the debate.
The same rule governs voter and supporter views. Where posts describe what supporters of a position are saying, those views come from sources a reader can open: local and national reporting, published interviews and town hall coverage, published focus group work, and polling that includes open-ended responses. Anonymous social media comments do not qualify, because there is no way for a reader to check whether they represent anything.
Candidates in election coverage
Election posts that cover a specific race include every candidate polling above five percent, regardless of party. Independents and third-party candidates who clear that line get the same treatment as major-party candidates: the same fields of information, the same issue positions, the same scrutiny.
Some races, particularly US House races, have little or no independent district-level polling. Where no reliable polling exists, a candidate is included if they are on the ballot and meet at least one of three conditions: significant fundraising, a notable endorsement, or prior elected office.
Where this site falls short
A neutrality claim should come with its limits attached, so here are the ones we know about.
This is a small operation. For now, one editor makes the calls, much of the drafting is AI-assisted and human-edited, and there is no newsroom to argue with those decisions internally. The editor is an American who has lived outside the United States for a long time, which is useful for some things and a blind spot for others.
Source selection skews toward material that is available online and in English, which underrepresents local reporting in some regions and non-English-language commentary from immigrant communities in the US. Topic coverage skews toward whatever the news cycle is producing, which is why the archive is currently heavy on voting rights and foreign policy and thin on healthcare and economic policy. That imbalance is real and is not a statement about which issues matter.
If we got it wrong
Tell us. Specific complaints are more useful than general ones: the post, the passage, and what is missing or wrong. If a fact-check is mistaken we will correct it and note the correction on the post rather than editing it silently. If a perspective was left out that meets the standard above, that is a legitimate complaint and we would rather hear it than not.
Reach us through the contact page. The news sources guide lists the outlets used across the political spectrum, including their AllSides and Ad Fontes placements, if you want to see where the raw material comes from.
