Bill Clinton Suggests Internet Fact Agency

eldavojohn writes "Friday on CNBC, Bill Clinton gave an interview that is causing some unrest on popular news sites today. When asked if there is a role for government in terms of ensuring that the information out there is accurate, he replied, 'Well, I think it would be a legitimate thing to do. ... If the government were involved, I think you'd have to do two things ... I think number one, you'd have to be totally transparent about where the money came from. And number two, you would have to make it independent. ... let's say the US did it; it would have to be an independent federal agency that no president could countermand or anything else because people wouldn't think you were just censoring the news and giving a different falsehood out. That is, it would be like, I don't know, National Public Radio or BBC or something like that, except it would have to be really independent and they would not express opinions, and their mandate would be narrowly confined to identifying relevant factual errors. And also, they would also have to have citations so that they could be checked in case they made a mistake.' His statements have elicited responses ranging from a Ministry of Truth a la 1984 to discussion of genuine concern about internet rumors and falsehoods."

Re:my attempt at this

[SilasMortimer]

I've yet to check out your site, but will. As I've yet to judge how successful you are at your mission, I can only say I appreciate that you're trying.

For politics, there's also FactCheck.org [factcheck.org].

The trouble is that you have to approach these grains-of-salt sites and the like with a grain of salt. The idea of a "fact agency" sounds very tempting as a quick fix, and I'm certain that if such a thing were created, it would do wonders at the beginning. But once there's a fair amount of public trust in it, that's when the potential for abuse becomes great.

Nothing will ever eclipse thorough research and hard questioning.

Re:Just a rumor

[jrj102]

Bill Clinton didn't say this.

Actually, I heard a brief clip of the interview on the radio this morning-- it was his voice. He did say this.

That being said, he didn't suggest it-- he was asked if there was a role, and he went off on a hypothetical about IF you were to do it, you'd have to have these safeguards in place. He was not saying that it was something that we should do.

Flamebait all around

[guspasho]

This whole story is flamebait. Clinton didn't make the suggestion, the interviewer did, and asked him to speculate on it. He isn't actually advocating for a ministry of truth, nor is he even in government anymore.

Re:Flamebait all around

[guspasho]

Same poster as above. As a for example, why is no one complaining that the CEO of AGT is railing against anonymity? He is blatantly, but that's also taking his words out of context, and you know, he isn't Bill Clinton.

The summary also conveniently left this out, "But if it's a government agency in a traditional sense, it would have no credibility whatever"

I'm a left winger

[rsilvergun]

and it's got nothing to do with ideology. It's all about practicality. Corporations have massive economic power. So much so that nothing else can stand against that power except the government. Nothing. This is not a false dichotomy, at least as far as I know. I don't know any other way to keep something as massive as a modern global corporation in check.

You can't just say the free market will sort it out, because the same people running one corporation are on the board of directors of the others. You can't stop buying from them and hope that'll keep them in check, because you'll have to buy from a "competitor" and that competitor is owned, through the stock market, by the same people. They're completely pervasive in our economy. In short, they're our ruling class, and we need government to replacement.

Re:FANTASTIC idea!

[RapmasterT]

*golf clap*

Brilliant first post, Utterly brilliant.

Uh...I think you missed the point of that post. He's not engaging in brilliant and cutting satire...he's nutjob, tinfoil hat serious. Check out his post history, it's all the same paranoid conspiracy, anti-big pharma, anti vax nonsense.

The fact that it's indistinguishable from hilarious satire tells us something about the value of context...yikes.

Dr Bob is not serious

[Snarky McButtface]

He is a really good troll. Here are some quotes from previous posts:

"...the more syllables in a chemical name, the more dangerous they are"

"Earth used to be a nice, hospitable place until the invention of radioactivity."

"I'm not sure how Chiropractors could detect subluxations in a robot..."

"Chiropractic maintenance alignments and adjustments scored better on IQ tests."

Chiropractors are quacks but they are educated.