[Air-l] factcheck.org

[Jonathan Marshall]

Michael Gurstein <mgurst at vcn.bc.ca>writes

> It does look interesting, but I think the real power of the net would
> come (wait for it, it will come...) when rather than have one person
> attempt to do the "fact checking", the ads/claims are packaged in 
> such a
> way that they are thrown open to the whole world for fact checking
> (somebody more adept at working with RSS feeds than myself could
> probably devise the input on this in a few hours).
> 
> Then one would have 24/7, thousands of eyeballs from every walk and
> every corner checking the statements/mis-statements as they roll 
> out... 

I'm cyncical about this.  The result would probably be that you would accumulate heaps of slurry and dis-info.  Companies, political groups, and so on would make sure their spin doctors got in.  Volume of confirmation would be important (it might make confirmation in fact), so they would flood these sites, and eventually it would be impossible to work anything out other than by the biases you already brought to the subject.  

The more checking up could occur, the more confusion becomes necessary.

jon



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