Realtime Political Fact-Checking Becomes A Reality With WaPo’s ‘Truth Teller’ [View all]
http://m.techcrunch.com/2013/01/29/realtime-political-fact-checking-becomes-a-reality-with-wapos-truth-teller/
Realtime Political Fact-Checking Becomes A Reality With WaPos Truth Teller
We are coming closer to a reality where no politician can ever spread well-known lies.
Today, exclusively with TechCrunch, The Washington Post has announced a fully automated fact-checking program, Truth Teller, that displays TRUE or FALSE in real time next to video of politicians and pundits as they speak. Given the fact that almost one-fifth of registered voters still believe Obama is a Muslim, a tool to curb widespread myths could benefit our democracy
The Knight Foundation-funded Truth Teller program automatically transcribes speeches and checks the statements against a database of well-known facts. For example, when House Speaker John Boehner claims that raising taxes on the top 2% would kill 700,000 jobs, Truth Teller pops a big red FALSE next to him, after cross-checking his statements against The Washington Posts own list of curated facts and other popular fact-checker databases.
For now, the early beta prototype has to be manually hand-fed some facts, and thus only works on topics it has been specifically designed to recognize. Since Congress has yet to pass a budget, and financial discussions are prone to widespread lies and misstatements, Truth Teller is being piloted on the issue of tax policy.
Eventually, The Washington Posts digital team hopes that Truth Teller can automatically draw from wisdom of the entire Internet and be available for citizens on their smartphones to fact-check politicians as they hold backyard BBQs during campaign season. Indeed, National Political Editor, Steven Ginsberg tells TechCrunch that he was inspired to pursue the project after witnessing Republican candidate Michele Bachmann spread lies to a small crowd of unsuspecting Iowans.
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