Real-Time Fact Checking With "Truth Teller"

The Washington Post has announced a prototype news application called "Truth Teller", that displays “TRUE" or “FALSE” in real time next to video of politicians as they speak. The Knight Foundation-funded program automatically transcribes speeches and checks the statements against a database of facts. From the article: "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."

Fact check

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. This will never be abused. Now we are spoon feeding low information voters?

Me pappy always said...

[FatLittleMonkey]

if(lips_move)
then
display("FALSE");

Automated editorializing?

[starworks5]

Have you ever heard of the concept of garbage in - garbage out? If you ask the majority of people they think that things like return on investment as 'facts', but yet infinite growth in a finite system is impossible, and all economic activity is premised on energy and thermodynamics.

When politicians say things like 'high taxes are hurting business' will the system be 'hand fed' the appropriate answer, regardless of mountains of evidence showing otherwise because it discourages 'non-productive consumption', and that the high taxes pay for government infrastucture, welfare, and investment?

  Similarly there have been lots of propaganda referred to as facts in terms of tax policy, by the likes of the 'chicago boys' and people like milton friedman et al, however these people don't believe that economics can be studied empirically, and tax policy as an extension of economic policy.

I have had my share of problems with my local oregon newspaper distorting facts of even its 'politifact', and generaly attacking the institution of government itself as bad, so that it can meet the expectations of the patrons which keep it in business.

Is is any suprise that news media that are conservative make way more ad revenue per viewer than liberal, say for example rachel maddow or the daily show vs fox primetime, even when they have better age demographics of viewership for advertisers?

Re:Check truth in political speech

[Anonymous Coward]

This is WaPo. They'll use this to selectively enforce or dispute statements per their agendas. They're a bit like the MSNBC of the print world.

Who if you haven't seen, was caught AGAIN this week, editing video to create a damning situation consistent with their political motives.

Not much is Black and White

[eddy_crim]

Sound like total rubbish to me. Politicians do lie sometimes and they even occasionaly tell the truth but mostly they bend the truth out of all proportion. If they make a statement its not TRUE or FALSE usually the answer would be "WELL... ITS COMPLICATED.. it depends how you look at it" In the UK we have a radio show dedicated to statistics called More or Less http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qshd [bbc.co.uk] These folks can spend half the show discussing the truth behind a single political statement and then sometimes dont come to a firm conclusion

Re:Check truth in political speech

[arbiter1]

they don't exactly lie, they do speak the truth if you look at numbers they usually quote in a certain way. they just usually leave out the ones that would make them look bad. The truth they speak of is just on the numbers that make them look good. Like the 4 million job's Obama claims to have created. This video explains it all. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQLreUCRYXM [youtube.com]