Hey, everyone, I jut ran across this item from the indispensable iWantMedia daily e-mail update (full post here):
National Public Radio (NPR) is doing something interesting for tonight’s vice presidential debate: It’scrowdsourcing fact-checking through micro-messaging service Twitter.
It’ll work like this: While you’re watching the debate, if you hear anything by either Democrat Joe Biden or Republican Sarah Palin that you think is not true, NPR is encouraging you to look for a source to prove it. If you can track one down, they’d like you to post it to Twitter and include the tag #factcheck, so they can find it.
NPR will then take these questionable claims, investigate further, and post anything that is in fact a questionable statement made by one of the candidates to its blog. If you’re not a member of Twitter, you can also leave your fact-checking results in the comments of their post. (Or you can sign up for an account, like a lot of other people interested in politics are apparently doing.)
So, this comes a day late if you wanted to contribute, but you can follow the debate reactions via this Twitter search and follow NPR politics’ tweets here. Do you think this worked?
I think this is a BRILLIANT idea; I was even talking to my friends during the debate, lamenting the fact that someone ought to look into some of the claims of both parties. However, after scrolling through a few pages, I think definitely what one fact-checker said was really smart: they need to be posting a live transcript to make it easier for people to catch things. Other than that, kudos to NPR. This is a really fantastic idea.
This is such an awesome idea! During the debate, i was thinking, “dang, why isnt there a way to find out who is lying and who isn’t?!” They had a lot of times when it was obvious that both of them couldn’t be right on the topic. Awesome idea, and i hope they do it for McCain and Obama’s next debate!
I also think this is an excellent idea! I love the transparency in this election. I also can’t believe how many false truth’s are being believed by the uninformed public. I think this is great and that lies will be determined much earlier– but I wish there was a way to present this information as quickly to the individuals who aren’t as connected as we are.