As a Politifact reporter, Umhoefer and his coworkers look for intriguing statements made by politicians and fact check their accuracy to the nth degree. He stressed that his job isn't for everyone. You need to have a love for investigative reporting and politics in order to succeed.
Umhoefer explained that Politifact prides itself off of being unbiased and analytical. He explained that the goal of Politifact is not to look for false statements from one politician to another, but rather look at statements from both sides that have questionable validity.
"If it makes us say 'really?' then we take a look at it," he said.
I really appreciate this type on long-form investigative reporting. Many traditional news reporters will write articles based about a political speech, issue or event, but very few off them boil politicians' statements down to a true or false rating. Without sources such as Politifact doing the digging that many citizens are too lazy to do themselves, people would be forced to mistake false statements as true or get up and do their own research for once. Maybe the latter wouldn't be such a bad thing....