Imagine the possibilities, not just for news consumers but producers. Enhanced spell check for journalists! A suspicious sentence is underlined, offering more factual alternatives. Or maybe Clippy chimes in: “It looks like you’re lying to your readers!” The software could even be extended to email clients to debunk those chain letters from your crazy uncle in Florida.
via Bull beware: Truth goggles sniff out suspicious sentences in news » Nieman Journalism Lab.
I don’t want to rain on this guy’s parade or anything, but the issue here isn’t that politicians lie and journalists often get their facts wrong. It’s that most readers don’t WANT the truth.
These aren’t mistakes that need to be corrected, in other words. The product contains these lies by design.
People who support Michele Bachmann don’t care that every other sentence coming out of her mouth is a complete fabrication, or at the very least, a strong exaggeration of the truth. They want validation for their mistaken beliefs at all costs. Truth is irrelevant. She’s handing them what they want to hear, and that’s far more powerful than the truth.
We’re not educating people here. We’re indoctrinating them.
The only people who want to know about her lies are the people on the Left, who aren’t interested in the truth either, really. They simply want validation for THEIR side of the story.
We all fall victim to this, though some to a larger degree than others.
The time when journalism’s job was to dispossess us of our mistaken beliefs is long gone. Journalism is big business. They’re selling a product, and ultimately people buy bullshit more than the truth. That’s how it goes.
Politicians know this, which is why they keep spewing out the nonsense, even though they KNOW we have the resources at our fingertips to disprove every word they say. They’re completely comfortable lying about something they said yesterday, even after someone shows them the video of them saying it. Because while there’s always someone on the other side to call them on their lies, the people on their side will never see that. Rachael Maddow could scream her head off all day about Michele Bachmann, but not a single Fox News viewer will ever know. Rush Limbaugh can spend an entire day on a single incorrect statement from President Obama, and no one reading the Nation is going to know.
So while I respect what this guy is doing technologically, thinking it’s going to change anything is sort of silly.
