It does look interesting, but I think the real power of the net would come (wait for it, it will come...) when rather than have one person attempt to do the "fact checking", the ads/claims are packaged in such a way that they are thrown open to the whole world for fact checking (somebody more adept at working with RSS feeds than myself could probably devise the input on this in a few hours). Then one would have 24/7, thousands of eyeballs from every walk and every corner checking the statements/mis-statements as they roll out... A Slashdot for the world! MG -----Original Message----- From: air-l-admin@aoir.org [mailto:air-l-admin@aoir.org] On Behalf Of Christian Nelson Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 9:04 AM To: air-l list Subject: [Air-l] factcheck.org I just recently became aware of factcheck.org (at www.factcheck.org)--a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, which is housed at the Univ. of Pennsylvania and funded by the Annenberg Foundation. It's headed by Brooks Jackson, who created the "adwatch" and "fact check" series for CNN. Like Jackson's CNN projects, factcheck.org is devoted to publishing research about the accuracy of political claims on their web site. (They also have an email service that sends their reports out when completed.) As far as I can tell, this is something new on the Internet, that could really only happen with the Internet. Clearly, this project couldn't get off the ground if it had go to teh expense of distributing its product like a newspaper. And it seems differenet than other Internet political sites, in that it strives to be independent and is independently funded. Am I right about its uniqueness? --Christian Nelson _______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l@aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l