In Other Words

Checking facts

I don’t see why any of you would be interested in this link, but I’m going to put it up here nonetheless. It’s a link to an American website that debunks the lies that the two political camps are hurling at each other. I find it interesting because it shows me how many lies go into day to day politics and why the American people are so confused about this upcoming election.

Its just incredible how much the Internet seems to have added to partisanship. If you want you can go online and find somebody that supports your position exactly, with worked out lies and all. That’s an interesting side effect of the ‘free flow of information’. I guess free flowing information isn’t all the useful if you don’t have an easy way to glide through it and get what you need (not want). Of course that’s becoming easier and easier nowadays and non-partisan groups are springing up to fill the words to information gap. Still, there is a long way to go.

There is also a desperate need for groups and organisations to scan the Internet and rate what they find. Not ban or censor, but rate. So that the average consumer would be able to say ‘ah, most of this stuff has been debunked’ or ‘hey, this site scores pretty high’. In that way people would have an easier time telling deceptive lies from revealing truth. What I wonder at is who’s got the resources to actually start something like that up and keep it going.

Fact check goes part of the way, but only monitors one specific element. Everything should be monitored and examined as best as possible through one or two entities, rather than thousands. Otherwise you would get exactly the same problem with the checking groups as we now have with the internet.

Of course then the check up people could end up becoming partisan, or tainted and then we would be back to square one.

The truth is damn hard to handle.

posted by Symbol @ 12.8.04