Jason Unger

Who Fact Checks the Fact Checkers?

Posted by junger - 11/25/09 at 07:11:28 am

Why did the Associated Press, an organization that recently laid off dozens of employees, assign 11 staffers to fact check Sarah Palin's new book, Going Rogue?

Is it because Palin is a big, fat liar? Is it liberal bias? Or is it because the AP has nothing better to do?

The answer is probably somewhere in the middle. But this is an unprecedented fact check for a woman who, well, has never held national office and most Americans couldn't name 2 years ago. (Then again, the same exact thing could have been said about this guy, seen at the Democratic National Convention in 2004.)

Here's what Palin had to say on her Facebook page:

Imagine that – 11 AP reporters dedicating time and resources to tearing up the book, instead of using the time and resources to "fact check" what's going on with Sheik Mohammed's trial, Pelosi's health care takeover costs, Hasan's associations, etc. Amazing.

So when the AP uses so many resources to fact check Palin's book, it's only fair that the AP's fact check is fact checked.

Enter the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR).

Not normally known to be friendly to Republicans and conservatives, the CJR has put together a great fact check of the AP's fact check. It's available here.

Among the worst offenders?

PALIN: “Was it ambition? I didn’t think so. Ambition drives; purpose beckons.” Throughout the book, Palin cites altruistic reasons for running for office, and for leaving early as Alaska governor.

THE FACTS: Few politicians own up to wanting high office for the power and prestige of it, and in this respect, Palin fits the conventional mold. But “Going Rogue” has all the characteristics of a pre-campaign manifesto, the requisite autobiography of the future candidate.

Why is this here, other than to sneak in a line about how the memoir is really a campaign autobiography, and a dig at Palin for being motivated by the same things almost all politicians are motivated by? The quote above is self-serving boilerplate, just what you’d expect from a politician’s book. It makes no factual claims, and there’s nothing there that warrants checking.

Major props to the CJR for calling out an unfair article, especially when there has been so much conflicting and misinformation about Palin (some hers, some others). Facts deal in the truth, not opinion. The AP's fact check obviously included the latter.

Unfortunately, in a society with access to unlimited information, the truth is often the first thing to go.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Old Media Still Doesn't Get New Media

Posted by junger - 11/30/07 at 02:11:44 pm

Old media news publishers are trying to lock their information away from search engines and, in the process, shooting themselves in the foot.

Long story short, a bunch of newspaper and magazine types want to have more control over how search engines index their content. Basically, they want Google to stop promoting and linking to their content.

Why wouldn't the AP want Google News to display their headlines and summaries with a link to the article?

It's free traffic! These news sites are getting users pointed to them that they may have never seen before.

What are they expecting when they post a news story: that no one will see it? That only people who go to their homepage will be able to click to it?

These people are just like the kids who post pictures of themselves on MySpace and facebook and think that no one will see them.

Wake up: when you put something on the Internet, you can't stop people from seeing it and using it.

Why would you even want to stop people from seeing your content? Unless you're targeting a specific, qualified audience (which the AP isn't), there's no reason to block your content from the masses.

Tom Curley, the AP's chief executive, said the news cooperative spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually covering the world, and that its employees risk often their lives doing so. Technologies such as ACAP, he said, are important to protect AP's original news reports from sites that distribute them without permission.

If you don't want your content freely available, then don't make it freely available. Create a TimesSelect to limit distribution (and then watch your numbers soar when you get rid of it).

Maybe these old media folks are upset because their content can't compete. Have you tried writing better Web headlines?

(As always, Techdirt breaks it down into nice, simple terms.)