The State of the Union address is in the books. President Obama talked about everything from the economy, to Cuba, and his agenda for the next two years.
While he was talking, and the GOP was giving their response, the Politifact team was busy inside Tampa Bay Times headquarters, fact checking in real time.
“Combined we heard over 8,000 words in two speeches," said Aaron Sharockman.
Along with fact-checking both speeches in real time, the team created a line-by-line annotation by 5 a.m.
That included the president's comments about creating jobs and improving the economy. The Politifact team looked at national deficit numbers.
“In some ways you could look at it and say he created the problem he's now solving. Now, others would say we needed to spend that money in order to get us out of the recession. So that's one example of something we looked in to," said Sharockman.
It was also the first time Polifact asked readers for help to pay for their un-budgeted all-nighter. The team raised $20,000.
"This was a case where we wanted to do something new, fact check the state of the union in a new way. But, we weren't really sure readers wanted us to do it. And so, this was a perfect opportunity to say 'hey, here's an idea we have, you know, do you want to support it' and the readership obviously came back and said yes we do," said Sharockman.
The team a raised $5,000 more than they asked for. They're using the extra money to send fact-checkers to cover the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.