August 3, 2012 09:05 pm
Today, Everybody's a Fact Checker
Hugh Pickens writes "Since the beginning of the republic, politicians have resorted to half-truths and bald-faced lies. While tenacious reporters and informed citizens have tracked these falsehoods over the years, David Zweig writes that until now they've lacked the interconnectivity and real-time capabilities of the Web to amplify their findings. Today, sites like the Washington Post's Fact-Check column and the Annenberg Foundation Public Policy Center's FactCheck.org, which draws hundreds of thousands of unique visitors each month, often provide fodder for public fascination with fact-checking. And don't forget Snopes, the grandaddy of online truth-telling. But perhaps the biggest and easiest target for IEEs (Internet Error Exposers) are period piece television shows and films. Blogs like Prochronisms look at 'historical changes in language by algorithmically checking historical TV shows and movies.' They utilize tools like Google Ngram viewer to bust Mad Men, for example, for using terms or phrases in dialogue that didn't yet exist. Then there's sports, where Charley Casserly, a member of the NFL's competition committee, says he voted against releasing All-22 footage because he worried that if fans had access, it would open players and teams up to a level of criticism far beyond the current hum of talk radio. 'Perhaps the masses don't care about inaccuracies. Many Democrats and Republicans alike will believe what they want and ignore or disregard the truth,' writes Zweig. 'But there are enough experts within a variety of fields rabidly conversing about errors that content-creators — be they politicians, journalists, or filmmakers — are now forced to be on their toes in a way they never have been before. And that's a good thing.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/EprZQF4iHEE/today-everybodys-a-fact-checker
Share this article:
Slashdot was originally created in September of 1997 by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. Today it is owned by Geeknet, Inc..