The Facts about Politics
September 10th, 2004
With the election in less 2 months away I have been trying to get the facts together behind all of the spin you see in the political ads. You see 87 votes for this and a memo about that and a flurry of response to support it or discredit it by people you have never seen before and may never see again.
This week on Slashdot a new politics section was opened. It will be interesting to see how things unfold since the Slashdot crowd can be pretty diverse. And since you can make comments and others can moderate up the best comments it is a great way to distill what people are thinking.
An early post asked about getting accurate political information about the ads the candidates and PACs are running. The person submitting the question had a couple of websites but many were suggested in the comments. I found from reading them that it is still difficult to come across as unbiased. And I wonder how unbiased some of them even try to be.
I created a list of some sites to read occasionally and tried to weed out the extremely biased sites.
And finally there is the Wikipedia which lists the two candidates.
A post on Slashdot claims that since Wikipedia can be moderated by anyone and only what can be cited with solid sources will survive on the site it should provide factual information. It should be a good source but it will not directly address the claims made in political ads like FactCheck.org does. Even though I now have a starter list I still would like to find a website which can demostrate to me that it is even handed between the liberal and conservative viewpoints. I am open to suggestions. Please comment.
September 17th, 2004 at 8:28 pm
I'm worried about all the information that's being dispersed on these web sites and blogs. There is no journalism integrity enforced in these things at all. People are going to be influenced by the uninformed opinions of people that get their information from other misleading blogs, etc, etc. It really scares me.
September 19th, 2004 at 7:23 pm
Before blogs people were still getting their information from family, friends and strangers on the street. Anyone can share their opionions and usually do. With or without blogs, poor and incomplete information will still be pervasive. The real thing that should scare us is that people to do not get their facts straight before they vote. But that will always be an issue. With blogs it should be easier for people to directly link to legitimate sources to back up their blog entries.
October 13th, 2004 at 12:51 pm
It appears that Factcheck.org is a solid website maintained by a University. When I first showed it to a co-worker who is is fairly right leaning he felt it was baised against the current adminstration because it refute more of their claims than the Democrats. But in the Cheney-Edwards debate the website was recommended by Cheney himself as a source to get the facts. He mistakenly said Factcheck.com but he meant Factcheck.org. If you go to the wrong website you will be redirected to an extremely biased website as it was adjusted the day after the debate by the owners who did not appreciate having their server overloaded with traffic.
So do like Cheney suggests. Go get the real facts for yourself. And you may also notice that the TV networks are also doing their own fact checks of claims made in ads and the debates as well. I am finding that ABC News is doing a great job. After each debate they do not even allow comments from the spinsters who will try to talk up their side. Wow, how about that. A journalist maintaining an unbiased position. FOX and CBS could learn from them.