Bill Clinton Suggests Internet Fact Agency 336
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:Bring Back The Fairness Doctorine (Score:5, Insightful)
... to do so in a manner that was, in the Commission's view, honest, equitable and balanced.
Translation: the federal government/current administration has to approve of the way you handle controversial views. What could possibly go wrong?
I would have thought that radio broadcasting would have somewhat similar rights to the freedom of the press. The "Fairness Doctrine" seems to challenge that idea.
Waste, Again (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:FANTASTIC idea! (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if one politician with a hard on for tyranny justifies his excesses because of your
paranoid parent withholds vaccine from his child because of your crap
crap, wouldn't it outweigh the shits and giggles we got from it?
Or, more legibly, the 'even if it only saves one life it's worth it' argument is the biggest crock of shit in modern rhetoric.
Re:Bring Back The Fairness Doctorine (Score:4, Insightful)
most issues are more complex than 'for and against.' thus, the 'fairness doctrine' wasn't really fair at all.. all it did was provide a 'sensibility' sandbox that was defined by popularity, not truth. step outside the box, and you were censored anyway.
Re:Inb4.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Inaft3r left-wingers project their half-truths and willful ignorance of past transgressions caused by government regulation. No, I'm not a right winger.
left and right wingers are stupid. please understand that for them the ideology comes first and they will defend it no matter how much it comes up short in a given situation.. it's nothing more than an emotionally driven religious fervor. it's also why people defend specific politicians no matter how stupid their actions.
Depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia? Seriously?
Given that much of Wikipedia is dominated by cliques of editors whose main preoccupation is to keep out competing edits (no matter how sensible those edits may be), and given there's a big difference between neutrality and objectivity, I hardly think Wikipedia is a good example of what Clinton is talking about.
Facts and References and Facts (Score:2, Insightful)
In order for this to work. We will need all the facts who said what and when. Every data point of some statistics, what questions were asked and where. There are a lot of truths out there you can come up with many of them with some correct questions as many people are actually complex individuals you can bring up a lot of truths out there that arn't necessary true.
Lets use Abortion as an example I hear from both sides and they say they are in the majority.
Now the Anti-Abortion people will direct questions that will focus more on Late-Term abortions, and giving stereotypes of undesirable people getting them.
Now the Pro-Abortion people will direct questions that will focus more on Birth Control and giving stereotypes of the poor woman who lost everything and wasn't her fault.
Now most people are rather complex on the topic, A lot of them are against abortions with exceptions or For Abortions with exceptions. Most people agree when it is a medical necessity (The actual reason for the Row vs. Way) that abortion are necessary. As well most people agree that abortion as a form of birth control is a wasteful and unethical (although on different levels)
This Fact Agency would be powerless to prevent this type of stuff from going on. As each side is reporting on factual results, however the nature of the facts gather are one sided.
just to reiterate what has already been said (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:FANTASTIC idea! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:FANTASTIC idea! (Score:4, Insightful)
I was going to mod this up as a masterful hilarious post but then I looked back at your post history and reaslised you may be serious.
Are we takling about .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Waste, Again (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite apart from all the other good reasons why this is a BAD idea, it is another way to wase money a broke country dosn't have.
First, the US is very far from broke. We have a huge national income [wikipedia.org], and (relative to our peers) choose to spend relatively little of it on taxes [wikipedia.org]. We could in theory go "broke" if we fail to raise revenues to cover growing health care costs and/or cut benefits to our aging population. Nobody (least of all the people putting their money where there mouths are and buying US debt) seems to think it's likely that we'll do neither, and thus default.
Second, the proposal in question would require a trivial amount of money; factcheck.org [factcheck.org] and polifact.com [polifact.com], for example, already do this kind of work. I wonder what their budgets are--probably 6 or 7 figures? A government with a 13-figure budget could do contribute significantly to that kind of work with money that would amount to a rounding error. BBC news appears to be around 8 figures [bbc.co.uk], for a complete news organization with international coverage.
Third, this hardly strikes me as a "waste". If we could better educate our voters with such a tiny fraction of our budget, that sounds like spending that could pay for itself.
Re:wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
I have yet to see that Wikipedia. I go to the one with people collaborating on making articles better. Yes, occasionally a jerk comes along and tries to push a particular point of view, but they generally come to their senses quickly or just go away, often after being blocked from editing.
Purely in the name of sober second thought, you might want to consider - just for a moment - that you're already on the clique side looking out. I'm certainly not saying you are, but I think it is valid advice to anyone that says they don't see a particular societal problem, to also look in the mirror.
Re:FANTASTIC idea! (Score:4, Insightful)
Or like many great satirists he has an act which extends beyond one post.