From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. With the Iowa caucus approaching like a tornado, the state is a churning

urn of political advertising. Here's one from a group called Working for Working Families.

This October, Maytag closed its doors forever.

1,800 jobs lost, while our government gives tax breaks to companies that move jobs offshore.

John Edwards knows the Maytag closing jeopardizes a way of life.

Tell John Edwards he's right.

Even if Edwards is right, this ad got it wrong.

According to the website factcheck.org, the Maytag jobs were sent to Ohio, not overseas,

and tax breaks didn't have much to do with it.

Nowadays, we all have the means to know when things are wrong and know it fast

because of an explosion of fact-checking websites and units at many major news outlets.

Factcheck.org is one of the oldest and most prominent.

It's also resolutely nonpartisan, so much so that director Brooks Jackson won't pass judgment even while trolling for untruths.

But I'll tell you, we are very careful never to characterize something

as a lie unless we can prove somehow that the person who said it absolutely knew what they said

was false. A lot of the things candidates say that we find to be untrue, they believe. They've

deceived themselves. And I hear this quite often.

Well, you know, regardless of what the facts are, you know, we're telling the truth.

This is what Stephen Colbert calls truthiness.

Yes. Well, truthiness isn't quite good enough for us. As I say, many of these falsehoods are also lies, but I'm not a mind reader.

And I'm also not there to pass judgment on the character of a candidate, just on the accuracy of what they're telling the voters.

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