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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."
This is a superb idea, the internet is so full of half-truths and outright lies it makes my head spin.
A prime example was the flood of pro-vaccine nonsense that was obviously spread by Big Pharma soon after Dr. Andrew Wakefield's brilliant research into vaccine-caused autism was all but shredded. Alternative medicine caregivers (homeopaths, chiropractors, naturopaths, accupuncurists, among others) have all been treating vaccine induced autism. WE'RE IN THE FRONT LINES! But some well placed lies soon spread as truth.
How about another? The LIES that Chiropractic neck manipulation can cause strokes. How do they know? They don't! This LIE was conceived by BIG PHARMA. They sell all the OtC pain remedies to unsuspecting sheep. Neck (Cervical) manipulation has cured MILLIONS of people of chronic headaches, migraine, sinus blockages and other maladies that BIG PHARMA sells you drugs for.
Sorry if this comes across as a rant, I'm only allowed to post two times a day. This is because of the BIG PHARMA drug pushers who constantly vote me down rather than have a proper, adult discussion with me.
The sooner they get someone in power who can regulate the internet, not some fancy 'scientist', but a true medial professional, the better.
Take care,
Bob
Chiropractic Saves Lives!
Inb4 right-wingers absorb this into their net neutrality mythology!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Bill Clinton didn't say this.
God is good all the time! -K
Science Rumors
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
Just think, if we had had one of those back when he was president we would have conclusively known once and for all whether he had, in fact, had sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky...
An Internet Fact Agency ALREADY exists.
It's called Wikipedia.
You need to inhale MORE.
Yours In Novosibirsk,
K. Trout
Instead of changing people's minds to think that the "fact" isn't true, It would be easier for the government agency to change the world so that the fact becomes true.
I'd imagine wikipedia will happily accept 200k usd from the U.S. and 200k eur from the E.U. just to keep doing exactly what they're doing.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Bill Clinton, the guy that can cause more trouble with a cigar than a nuke !!!
Ministry of Truth. That name cannot have any negative connotations.
... 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.
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.
With the Fairness Doctrine in place, the media present the people who hold the opposing viewpoint as being all nujobs because they select as spokespeople for the opposition the nuts rather than the reasonable people. When we had it politics was more civil and less responsive.
When the Fairness Doctrine was in place the media presented Lyndon LaRouche as the face of libertarians.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Yes, obviously, there's the Ministry of Truth aspect to it. However, when I want to find out what the real deal is about the latest flu pandemic, you know where I go? cdc.gov. If I want to find out what the story is around the latest federal budget numbers, I go to cbo.gov. If I want raw country data, I go to cia.gov.
There are already plenty of times where some numbers geeks are holed up in a government office, crunching numbers and nothing but numbers. Is there a risk of political influencing? Sure is. You just have to look at FEMA for one of the most egregious examples of political horse trading. But you can set up an organization in such a way as to minimize political influence.
There are really three areas where I would like to see an official government agency providing a central information clearinghouse: .gov style.
* a history of political events (who said what, where and when)
* a history of detailed public office budgets (down to who makes how much)
* a general list of current hoaxes and misinformation. Think of it as Snopes done
Yes, all of that would obviously be done from the perspective of the government, and with associated biases and perspectives. But it would provide an easy place to get that kind of information, rather than having to trawl through countless soundbites presented by various other organizations.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Seriously, all this would do is make an official version of something. The simple truth is, there are always multiple interpretation of things, all of which can be accurate. Take an historical example into consideration: the cause of the American Civil War. There are many different interpretations given for the start of the war, and all of them have numbers, figures, and documents to back up the theories. With complicated issues like that, how do you say which is more accurate? Different people can look at the same exact document and reach different conclusions based upon the same information. Yes, it is important for people to have access to accurate information, but if you institutionalize it like this, eventually it will get biased. Institutions always have a certain culture which will inevitably draw certain types of people/personalities/political beliefs to work there. If we are going to do anything, we need to teach people to decide for themselves what is accurate. Put emphasis on logical reasoning and deduction, and give them access to several different interpretations. Because, in all likelihood, you will only have an accurate picture of something if you can look at these different interpretations and aggregate them.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
There are some things government can do. This is not one of them.
The best thing the government can do to establish "facts" is to arbitrate disputes involving facts. We're already doing that. We have laws against libel and fraud. Enforce them. End of story.
While it may be a tragedy that some people believe the president was born at an alien base in the African jungle, this doesn't rise to the level of fraud or libel. At least, it hasn't been put to the test AFAIK. Any attempts to outlaw fantasy masquerading as truth would run afoul of free speech and religion.
Let's not go down that road. You're retired, Mr. Clinton. It sounds like you should stay that way.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
1. Known knowns
2. Known unknowns
3. Unknown knowns
4. Unknown unknowns
I think there will always be people who will believe anything they hear and never bother checking the facts even when it is available. These days it's a blog or a tweet; in times past it was over the fence or by telephone. I can't count how many tweets I've read recently about some celebrity's death only that it wasn't true. And these are people who don't believe in conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theory buffs never believe a government agency telling basic facts like water is wet.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
One person's fact is another person's fiction. Information can be used in many ways to come to various conclusions. The right and the left can often see something completely different, and yet they both had the same "facts".
What would the Fact Agency have concluded when Mr. Clinton stated that he did not have "sexual relations with that woman." Was he factually correct?
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.
What would that have to do with the internet? The fairness doctrine was about preventing monopoly broadcasters from controlling public discourse. Since there is no such thing as a monopoly on internet broadcasting (unless ISPs start blocking your forum posts based on content), how is it even relevant? There is no scarcity of broadcast time on the internet, so the fairness doctrine doesn't even make sense.
Ah yes, the good old days of debate - when people were civilized and settled disagreements with swords and pistols.
You must be a member of NEHBIWB (Nuthin Ever Happened Before I Was Born)!
It is for folks like you that I say "Those who didn't pay attention in history class are going to force the rest of us to repeat it"
Bill Clinton talking about what the truth is! I guess it depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is... http://www.slate.com/id/1000162/
they select as spokespeople for the opposition the nuts rather than the reasonable people.
Really, do you think that today's cable news feature reasonable people?
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
I stand against the Fairness Doctrine because I see it as an adjustment to free speech. I'm not claiming it blocks free speech but I see it as detrimental because it partially instructs broadcasters what to present. On top of that, I think it's a little shortsighted and subjective in how it aims to enforce each broadcaster to pose all sides of the issue.
... if this agency can establish a neutral reputation and if it's done correctly, it could be invaluable to the nations' citizens. I think the cost of such an operation would be quite trivial to the public good ... people like Glenn Beck have had a reign of stupidity for far too long in this country.
What I like about Clinton's suggestion (though flawed for many other reasons) is that it is a passive system. Anyone can say anything that they want or broadcast what they want but the next day they could be labeled a liar or at least someone who spouts half truths. The article lists many sites like factcheck.org that already do this so why not publicly fund an even bigger and more active site for the public good? It would cite its sources and it might even lead to better transparency in the government if it was also devoted to FOIAs in order to make statements about budgets and spending have real numbers instead of the bland "We spend too much on social programs!"
His suggestion is a little naive but at least it lets everyone say what they want to
I think the solution is the not the active regulation like the Fairness Doctrine but something more passive where the broadcasters go back to regulating themselves before they become the laughing stock of the press. The fact checkers would just sit back and watch and check and report. No need to fine the infractions or hand out warnings or demand so and so should get airtime.
My work here is dung.
The Fairness Doctrine has as much to do with fairness as the Patriot Act has to do with patriotism.
I truly love the idea - but that it would be funded AT ALL is worrysome, because whenever there is money, there is corruption and bias and a way to apply pressure.
I think the Wikipedia model would work well - allow collaborative editing - but with much stronger referencing rules than Wikipedia applies.
If it worked well, the actual creation of the site would be rapid, comprehensive, truly independent - and cheap enough that it could be funded by donations. It would be cool if it could also be distributed rather on a centralized server - to make it harder to suppress it. But having it be widely mirrored might achieve the same goals.
It's a great idea.
-- Steve
His VP invented it, Bill is just trying to fix it.
He holds up as examples the BBC and PBS - they just seem "fair and impartial" to him (and millions of other, left-leaning folks).
The CBO is biased to - but not by their own hands, they are limited to "cost" bills and make projections fed them by partisan hacks - they can't independently go out and gather their own data they have to base their projections on the mis-information they are fed by the politicians and their staff.
If President Clinton thinks the Government should play an active role in the truth, maybe it could start by adopting a rule to only tell the truth? That would be a much better start, IMHO.
Ken
The big problem is it isn't clear what information needs to be corrected or how effective the government will be at doing it vs. all of the other sources of information people have. If you have a brain in your head you know Wikipedia is more accurate than Conservepedia. But for those who choose the second, I don't think a Government web page explaining yet again how bad Conservepedia is will make any difference.
A better idea would be for the Government focusing on providing accurate information in the first place rather than "fixing" other sources inaccuracies. What if each government agencies communications department was giving a similar mandate and protection from political interference! Now that would be something I could really get behind. I do believe the government CAN give good, accurate and relevant information. It just needs to be given that mandate and isolation from political interference.
The nice thing about the Internet is, while there is plenty of wrong information out there, you can find accurate information more often than not if you try
In Clintons defense however, he is focusing more on how to do it than that it should be done.
...and in an appropriate way. Say some BS internet rumor gets started. An affected agency will often have a debunking website dedicated to the topic that browsers can easily access. Remember Compean and Ramos, the two border agents the anti-immigration crowd turned into heroes? The DoJ did a great point-by-point debunking of the interwebz myths about their case. Didn't stop a Bush pardon, unfortunately.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I don't know what we could do if we could not call the president a monkey without the opposing view that he is not in fact a simian. I do like the fact that liberal radio can call the current speak Boner without allowing corrections to his name, and talk about how Bonercare will solve everything. Fact based reporting is for the bygone era, and the fairness doctrine is not going to bring it back.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
And now Ron Paul is presented as the face of all libertarians, although he is not. So that is a poorly chosen argument
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Clinton says the plan would not work in his last statement. The posted edits that out. This is a smear job.
I've been thinking about that lately. I'm sick of hearing things like conservative radio talk shows (but they aren't the only ones) make up their own 'facts' on the spot: "72% of americans think that [...]". Let's call a lie a lie and if free speech is all fine and dandy, why should outright lies aimed at manipulating people be tolerated at all ?
If you pretend to be a journalist and claim some statistics and it's not out of a peer-reviewed _published_ paper, you get an automatic fine. Why not ? No, I don't equate that to blanket censorship.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
If implemented properly, with actual citations, I think it may be a neat idea. It'd be nice to see relevent facts displayed in context.
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.
Such an agency would be inherently biased, because as Stephen Colbert has taught us, the facts and reality have a liberal bias!
Reality has a liberal bias
What is truly frightening is how many people (see comments above) are so willing to jump on this bandwagon. I'm sure some of it is people grasping at straws in hopes that "truthiness" will win but c'mon - this is politics and we ALL lose.
Maybe Mr. Thompson can force Mr. Galt to "fix" that which is broken but I doubt it - not aas long as that force, no matter how benign, comes from "above"..
If you pretend to be a journalist and claim some statistics and it's not out of a peer-reviewed _published_ paper, you get an automatic fine. Why not ?
It would depend on the "peers" that do the reviewing, methinks.
Meanwhile, why not just ridicule and ignore the liars (of any stripe) outright? Seems to be a lot more reasonable, plus those of us who aren't ideological jack-heads get some humor out of it.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
You are correct. Ron Paul is not representative of most libertarians. Most self-identified libertarians are much wackier than Ron Paul.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Take what's said by the government, invert it and you probably get something that's rather close to the truth.
I thought we already had an institution in place for giving people the skills necessary to determine if the information they encounter is factual and reliable. (Although I admit I am biased in this regard since I do teach at one of them.)
You've just cited a blog dedicated to criticising the BBC in order to make the point that the BBC is biased. Irony, much?
The BBC is respected and regarded as fair and impartial by tens of millions of people around the world who consume its television, radio and online journalism. People on the left and right in Britain and across the world like it, and criticise it - but the vast majority of us in Britain still wouldn't change it for the catastrofuck that is news in the United States.
Where's Admiral Ackbar when President Clinton really needs him. As the old saying goes, Fool me once...
Monica: "So, Mr. President, what if I crawled under you desk and..." ...shame on Monica. Fool me twice...
Bill: "Sure, I think that would be okay."
Reporter: "So, Mr. Clinton, hypothetically speaking, is there a role for government in terms of ensuring that the information out there is accurate?" ...shame on Bill! I thought this guy was a Rhodes Scholar or something. Maybe all that pot and all those Big Macs are finally getting to his brain. Or maybe Hillary still holds a grudge against Mr. Obama about the whole primary thing and Bill's just trying to get back into Hilliary's pants by losing Obama the election.
Bill: "Well, I think it would be a legitimate thing to do..."
I don't want to think at all. Thank you, Bill Clinton! Finally, A politician that understands my deepest desires.
This is literally a Ministry of Truth.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
We already have Web organizations that do a pretty good job of cutting through BS -- Snopes.com and Factchecker.org to name two. The problem is not that we don't have objective arbiters of the truth, but that many people don't want anything other than confirmation of their existing biases and will label any group that doesn't do that as "biased" against their "truth."
Having the government sponsor the Truth Police will not give it any more credibility and may just make it less credible depending on who does the appointing.
Best example: the Supreme Court, which is supposedly the ultimate arbiter of justice. Justices used to get confirmed by huge bipartisan majorities until someone decided that controlling a majority of the Supremes was a way to achieve political control. The Web Truth Board would likely suffer a similar fate, only much faster..
TLR
A man no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company
This is one of those things the free market already provides, with the help of numerous news organizations. One of the more useful is Politifact, but there are plenty of others.
Those who don't trust government sources of information won't trust this government agency any more than they trust the various government reports. And they shouldn't: The government source matters, but it should be corroborated by other sources.
I am officially gone from
> Most self-identified libertarians are much
> wackier than Ron Paul.
And most self-identified democrats are much wackier than Howard Dean, and most self-identified republicans are much wackier than Newt Gingrich.. What's your point?
would he include claiming to invent the internet as a false internet claim? haha
Surely I can't be the only one laughing at the idea of the US government having anything to do with truth? Truth and politics are practically synonymous after all.
We just need some real Journalists.
Have gnu, will travel.
The global tendency appears to be an universal decentralization. Therefore taking in account the rhythm of growth of information nowadays it seems very unlikely to become something feasible. Another reason for Mr.Clinton's words could be some kind of survey about a new mode of censorship within the US.
Our legislative, and executive bodies have no right to fact check anyones speech! Its a clear violation of the first and tenth amendments, and possibly the fourth depending on what happens as a result of being cited.
There is already a process for fact checking the Internet. Which ever person or organization the facts are relevant to can respond with their own information. If the information is wrong and damages their reputation in some way they can sue for libel. That is why we have courts people!
If an agency gets hold of these powers it will be exactly like the FCC it will get packed with corporate lobbyists who spend most of the their time making arbitrary and capricious decisions about things they clearly don't understand and the rest of their time engineering give aways to the corporations they plan to work at as soon as their term is up.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I already think this guy is the smartest (or maybe just coolest) person in politics next to Putin (after all, he knows Judo), and as an if statement, his response only encourages the sentiment for me. If anything, he's acknowledging the difficulties involved.
Do you see what I did there?
The government is the worst when it comes to fact finding, checking and reporting. The government claims (in various AdCouncil ads) that cigarettes kill more people than AIDS, car wrecks, heart disease, and cancer combined. Their reasoning is that if you die of heart disease or cancer you may have died from cigarettes ergo you did die from cigarettes even if you had never even seen or smelt a cigarette in your life. And if cigarettes are so god damn deadly why don't they make them illegal? Oh that's right, the government makes more than %50 a pack in taxes. So cigarettes are only evil to the extent that they need to be taxed heavily. It's that sort of evil.
And how many times have you heard the government repeat the lie that smoking marijuana is worse for you than cigarettes or alcohol. I don't want to go into how all of this is pseudo-science and they don't have a single (real) study to stand on. Let me just take it from the common since point of view. Nobody has ever died from smoking too much marijuana. People die every day from alcohol related illnesses, violence, car wrecks and more, and we already know about the evils of cigarettes from the AdCouncil.
But the government made marijuana illegal. Even though Thomas Jefferson smoke and grew it, even though George Washington smoked and grew it. Even though Thomas Paine said of the U.S.: "[our] Hemp flourishes even to rankness..." in Common Sense. Was it evil then, but people just didn't know it? Funny that, now that I thinking about it. The intellectual giants on who's shoulders we stand on smoked Marijuana. Shit, Carl Sagan smoked marijuana and had the wit to invent the geosynchronous satellite! Killer weed indeed!
But all of that was apparently a sham. Marijuana is so insidious and evil, according to our government, that we need to sacrifice the lives of literally hundreds of cops each year, and thousands of civilians both here in the U.S. and in other countries that export illicit drugs to the U.S.. Undermining trust in law enforcement, through corruption and creating an adversarial role between the citizen (suspected drug user) and the cops (more suspected drug users). All in the name of "We don't want Johnny to get stoned." or "We don't want Timmy to shoot up". All the while hundreds of people are dying from the 'safe, legal' drug alcohol.
Here's a wild idea. Freedom. Freedom to engage in whatever vice we feel like so long as it doesn't harm anyone else. The Declaration of Independence talks about "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." I don't know if the founding fathers were stoned when they wrote that but I think they mean the most important thing is not whatever the government wants to do to make you happy, but what you the individual wants to be happy.
If it makes me happy to smoke a joint what on earth gives anyone power over me to tell me I can't? I'm not harming anyone (but myself arguably), and if you start making laws that say "you can't harm yourself" that's a slippery slope we are already sliding down. Anyone here think that fatty or sugary foods and drinks won't be illegal in 10 more years at the rate we're going? "But you're going to kill yourself with that soft drink!, it has sugar! And we all know now Sugar is Toxic!.
For anyone who says "If we make it legal more people will use it.". Well I can only prey that this is true. The more people that choose to smoke a joint instead of drink a beer, the more lives will be saved! And by simply preventing the government from tampering in our personal lives! We get more freedom, the government doesn't have to hire people to "inspect" us, or prisons to incarcerate us, and would therefore not need to tax us so damn much. Win win! And I'm sure the net sum of lives saved would outweigh any moral concerns anyone would have.
Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. False in one thing, false in everything. Beca
They are Wikipedia and National Statistics centers.
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
If people think faith is a legitimate alternative to empirical observation, you're never going to have consensus. We still have millions of people who deny the fact of evolution. It's disgraceful. --and people like that are part of the reason any effort like this is doomed to failure.
Yes, bigger government.. that is the answer... FOOLS. Next you'll hear about kids getting suspended from school because they farted in class.. Oh, that already happened.
hahahaha I agree!
CItations don't make facts. They only lead the reader to where the "facts" came from. Politicians cite sources all the time for their "facts," but they leave out other sources with other "facts." Who will be in charge of the editing? Censorship and editing free speech is ALWAYS a terrible idea.
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Jane, you ignorant slut....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
snopes?
Who better to do than the government, we can trust them, right?
not to speak of reality
Can you point out some specific articles?
I've been pretty happy with wikipedias decisions on contentious issues, although I don't spend any time editing there. For example, they still show the cartoons here :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy
As an outsider, my principle objections have always been when some really awesome & informative article gets scrubbed useless by astroturffers, BLP fags, deletionists, agenda pushing asshats, or simply idiots that don't understand the subject matter. I've usually seen this on more fringe articles however.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Are we supposed to overlook that the Clinton administration was one of the most dishonest administrations in the history of the U.S.? The man would lie even when the truth would do, and his dishonesty was exceeded only by his wife.
I think there should be a notice in some small corner of the TV screen/paper/other media with a label that says "NEWS" or "OPINION." (God knows they have plenty of room for those obnoxious animated network ads.) Any programming claiming to be news would show that label in the corner and be held accountable by some sort of auditing. After some set number of incidents that are judged to be avoidable misstatements or outright lies, an agency or individual would lose the privilege of the "NEWS" label for the next 12 months. Yeah... I know, trying to enforce this is unrealistic, but maybe if news agencies at least thought that someone might be checking, maybe they'd start acting more responsibly.
Ask me about my sig!
I know many of us can't help ourselves but to try and come up with some sort of solution to every perceived injustice or error, but I can think of few things more dangerous to the exchange of ideas than some blessed organization being given the perceived coronation as keepers of the truth.
Truth will always be fact, not opinion. As scientific as we try to be, we still cannot separate our opinions from the truth we see. The sad state of journalism from Fox News to the New York Times shows that both sides of the political spectrum taint their reporting of "facts" with their own story-telling skills.
If you want a single source of truth, look into your own mind. It is your right and responsibility as an individual to figure it out for yourself. While the creation of some "ministry of truth" would probably pass by the SCOTUS, the founding fathers would spin in their graves as this does fly in the face of the meaning of the right for people to have their own opinions and speak them out - because it means they think for themselves.
It is foolish that we would even consider going back to a stage where we give our ruling class that kind of credibility.
If you pretend to be a journalist and claim some statistics and it's not out of a peer-reviewed _published_ paper, you get an automatic fine.
I think the problem is the "non journalists" covering the news. Didn't you hear? Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are comedians. Bill O'Reilly is a commentator and Sean Hannity is an analyst. The bimbo who reads that 60 second news cast at the beginning of every hour? She's the reporter, and the biggest lie there is the lie of omission. Nobody on FoxNews says "Obama wasn't born in America". They don't report rumors. They report on the existence of rumors and then rhetorically ask "why would that rumor exist if it weren't true?"
That's my problem with the fairness doctrine. There is no metric that cannot be gamed, and there is no shortage of "half-truths" that are misleading, but not exactly lies.
Ah yes, the good old days of debate - when people were civilized and settled disagreements with swords and pistols.
I think that predates the fairness doctrine by about a century. You'd might as well have said:
Ah yes, the good old days of debate - when people were civilized and settled disagreements by calling the other a witch and setting him on fire.
...The Net of a Million Lies for nothing.
I'll give Boner (Boehner) the respect of pronouncing his name the way he prefers it once he learns the proper name of the opposing (Democratic) party.
...even when by chance it tells the utter truth; so what would such an agency change?
* The Congressional Budget Office is independent and has a decent record, but even Congress-critters don't listen to it if it doesn't agree with their preconceived notions.
* The National Science Foundation, which should be a rationalist's closest hope to truth in government, gets decried all the time over even the most obvious things, especially if they don't match peoples' preconceived notions.
Don't get me started. It's depressing. The problem is not getting people to tell the truth - that can be done. The problem is that even when people the truth, it doesn't matter. Even when it's backed by facts, hard data and mountains of evidence, it still doesn't matter. If it doesn't agree with my preconceived notions... it must be false. It must be deception. It must be a massive conspiracy. How could my hastily formed and completely unfounded assumptions not be true? Even this very thread is filled with it.
We already have plenty of independent sources of information telling the truth today. One more voice in that cacophony won't matter. So many discount anything that they disagree with anyway that what's the point?
As soon as the government lets me know who shot JFK, then I'll start believing them on other topics.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
A few years back a Slashdot reader could anonymously read all, some or none of the comments without a single click except to open the related 'article'/topic and comments. Google (Google-analytics.com) and others decided that they wanted to know about what you think, so they offered money, which amounts to next to nothing, for Slashdot to give them access to this information. Now fsdn.com (the owner of this fine site) offers the reader has new options.
I used to enjoy reading perhaps 50% to 80% of the comments, enjoying having my thinking stretched, laughing at the absurd and pondering the alternate perspectives, and original and credible reasoning from so many comments. Now to do the same I am presented with undesirable options:
1. Click every link and drill down to get to the all the comments and not be tracked except as an added counter tick.
2. Allow my/our interests to be tracked by allowing Slashdot to set permanent cookies which so you can set "my" 'personal preferences' to define and track your personal specific reading to be documented, and there after analyzed. the good analysts at (whom ever is willing to pay for this kind of data) can now calculate with high probability what your personal voting 'preferences'. This makes the "secret ballot" a myth, in practice though not in fact.
3. Login and have much the same information tracked and identified explicitly to you. (but it's easier to use/read).
4. Be satisfied with the dozen or so comments which moderation system determined to have sufficient originality to put at the top level.
There is a value to the secret ballot, just ask those that had to vote in the deep south for desegregation.
You gave up a significant amount of that freedom this way. "equal protection under the law, regardless of race, creed" (belief system)", or religion".
If I might make a suggestion? Don't dumb down Slashdot as much. Try putting 2 lines from each comment. This will give twice the basis to choose if we want to read the rest of that fine commentor's thoughts. Most of the fine readers will remain capable of determining for themselves after reading the first few words if the post is worth the time of a click to drill down and read more. Of course it could effect revenue stream, less clicks, less revenue. Shrug.... better informed readers verse's better revenue. Human history/sociology predicts money.
I predict this will be moderated down because it's not 'on topic'
They will likely be ordered first to launch into a massive investigation of the Clinton-Lewinski affair. Then when they fail to find anything that warrants his immediate execution and striking from all future printing of US history books, congress will order the agency shut down immediately.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
It's called MythBusters?
"an independent federal agency that no president could countermand or anything else "
That's funny until you realize he might just believe it, and then it's sad.
And then you realize he really DOESN"T believe it, and it's sadder still.
From Andrew Sullivan at theatlantic.com
"I covered the Clintons for eight years. The one thing I learned about them is that they lie. It's reflexive to them; after decades of the lying that tends to infect the households of addicts, they don't have a normal person's understanding of truth and falsehood."
Well, he's either naive, or lying, when he claims there could even be something like 'an independent federal agency'. For that reason alone this is a dumb, bad, dangerous idea.
Then there's the First Amendment.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Government certainly can and does do things like this. The GAO does a pretty good job when it comes to financial matters. And then there is the National Academy of Science, established by Abraham Lincoln to advise the government on scientific matters. They have remained independent and one of the most respected sources of scientific information in the world.
But no agency, no matter how authoritative or independent, will convince the cranks. Think of how much "global warming is a conspiracy" nonsense one sees in the media and hears from politicians, even though the National Academies have reviewed the science and concluded that the threat is real and that action is needed. The cranks just assume that anybody who disagrees with them is part of the conspiracy.
This is wonderful.
It will revolutionize history research. We all know that data is moving more and more to the net. This will centralize it and provide quality control.
You'll just have to consult the official site to determine what truly happened. No mucking about having to weigh the validity of original sources that might have been mistranslated, be biased, or were authored disengenuously to slander someone. No dealing with the vagaries, subjectivity and bother of gathering statements from witnesses to events before they pass away. The savings in travel and time for history, archeology, anthropology and related departments will be most welcome as they tend to be underfunded anyway. They won't have to waste so much time in futile debate over what really happened.
One source and one truth to be written and taught in classrooms.
What a remarkable idea.
Think how easy it makes journalism as well. Why, they'll be able to cut even more of those expensive foreign correspondents that sit around waiting for news to happen.
It certainly will help end the terrible partisanship we have in this country. People will all start from the same set of facts. Why, if we unify the deductive methods applied to them, we can avoid this terrible inefficiency of having people look at the same circumstances and come to different conclusions about it.
Finally, the nation will have clarity rather than this messy confusion.
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.
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.
Are you sure about that? I'm going to go check Snopes.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
"...except it would have to be really independent and they would not express opinions..."
Hmm, that definitely rules out NPR and the BBC, LOL. NPR is a biased and censored news source.
Does anyone remember what PRAVDA means?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
More exactly, it rules out anything where humans are involved.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Good luck with that.
Perhaps he should visit the library or, if he wants to stay online, he could visit our web site.
Think about all the mis-information kids have to deal with today. No web filter and just wide open Internet to get information that is not alway factual! Go Bill!!
But I am capable of figuring out truth from falsehood on my own thanks. I don't need a "Ministry of Disinformation" to help
No offense to the spirit of the idea, but it begs the question "who watches the fact-checkers?"
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Bill Clinton's pgm. would be gvt. censorship, whether anybody thinks so or not, no matter how "independent" his agency would be. It would have the force of law, wouldn"t it? That's gvt. It would be gvt. censorship. Truly private, freely established entities can check on accuracy of information.
Translation: the federal government/current administration has to approve of the way you handle controversial views. What could possibly go wrong?
Translation: (noun) What was heard, not what was said.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Ah yes, the good old 1800's when a young boy called Thomas Edison was dragged to the town square and publicly beaten by his father, and all the good town folk nodded in approval.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
These are the only six words that he really wants removed from the Internet. The rest is just bluster.
Government truthiness!
+++OK ATH
I just find it absolutely delicious that the one person that lied straight to the TV's of millions of viewers time and time again wants to be founder of this agency.
I mean seriously, anything coming out of that agency will be nothing but disinformation and lies. I guess in a way it may work, anything coming out is a lie therefore the opposing point = truth. But really, are not journalists and courts of law supposed to be getting to the bottom of the truth?
Will this be another gestapo agency in which anything can be scrutinized and if found untrue you go to jail and not pass GO?
I see this agency as something much sinister, a way to begin scrutinizing everything on the net to the point that the 1st Amendment will come into attack by "the truth".
I think this idea is well thought out in a way that the normal Joe has not thought of it...
i've seen history books change since i left school , does this mean someone has a time machine and is altering reality or does this mean truth is written by the victor ? doubleplusgood !
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
That's quite ironic, given that Clinton is a pathelogical liar.
-UBI
I see it now, Bill has been home too long watching Myth Busters, now he wants a Federal Version of it. I bet he daydreams of hiring the Myth Busters guys to head the department. Are you inhaling now Bill?
On a serious note he does have something of a point. But I don't think he's going in the right direction. We need draconian measures, but we aren't going to get them for a while. It's going to take something really crazy to scare the government into putting the serious clamps down on the wild west version of the Internet we currently have. I can see it all coming at the same time, World ID cards, forget national, why piddle with that?
On a serious note, you can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't claim to be a "free country", yet do something draconian to the Internet. Not without enough cognitive dissidence to cause some people to utterly snap. Me being one of them. I will probably flip out and think I am in a PVP Minecraft server and start digging straight down.
They could pass some gamers' rights laws and I would be extremely happy. Laws for dealing with companies who twist the rules around, nerf things, making them worthless, and for people who hack games and cheat, not to mention people who write viruses and people who spam. Personally, if they get rid of the cheaters in my games, I don't care what they do. I have paid for so many games only to have them cracked and full of cheaters, there should be a law! lol Oh I really love their reasoning for cheating, "I am smart because I cheat, I get away with it, so I do it." To me that cries out for their parents to be lined up against the wall and shot.
What kind of heathen rat bastards are these little monsters growing up to be? Just think, these twisted kids will be in charge some day. If you can't trust their basic character in something like a game, you sure as shit can't trust their behavior else where. We give all sorts of positive reinforcement to this completely warped behavior and thinking. Establishing poor behavior habits and pattern in our kids is some serious parental neglect. When I see most of the criminals today, I see shipwrecked jobs at parenting overall.
I would imagine most parents who set down with their children for a board game would be horrified to see their child cheat at the game, and then remark how dumb you are for not cheating. Then start smack talking you for even bringing it up. If I did that, my Dad would have punched me right off the planet, I would still be sailing through outer space somewhere. Yet, this is the behavior our kids and sadly teens, young adults and creepy guys who live in their mother's basement, engage in on a regular basis.
This is what happens in our society of greed now. Two income families for lifestyles they feel they are entitled too, but the children are not parented, this will come to bite us hard on the ass. Latchkey kids, or raised by other family members, or some daycare center. Then the Internet raises them once they can be entrusted not to burn the neighborhood down if left alone. This is why we have lazy assed parents whining "for the children" when the fuckers should be tending to this themselves. It doesn't take village to raise a child, it takes PARENTS. If you think that "the village" can be intrusted to raising your kids, you shouldn't have kids period. Ever.
Besides, the old axiom is "don't believe anything you read and only half of what you see." Any information read has to be taken with a grain of salt that it might not be true. Even hard facts are often proven wrong, so a person should have an open mind. Also, sometimes when you see something, you don't see the "whole picture" and can still not have all the facts of the matter. Applying some healthy skeptical caution about one's information across the board in life is a good thing. Why should the Internet be any different? Most of us already know a large percentage of what we encounter on the Internet is pure bullshit.
It would be a wonderful thing what he proposed, but human history has a bad track record of "well intended" policies turning into monsters given time.
Take the Red Pill.
I thought I'd made this blatant enough that people would understand it as irony and satire.
Apparently not everyone.
The old usenet axiom that there is no irony so blatant that someone won't take it seriously still applies.
This is why I go to the BBC for news, rather than any US news organizations.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
As someone else mentioned, who reviews? If I do my own research and it just so happens that nobody wants to touch it because it is too politically charged (but could be correct), why should I get fined?
I'll call a lie a lie... but if free speech IS fine and dandy, then why AREN'T lies aimed at manipulating people tolerated? Now, if it's a question of ethics or morality, of course I'll agree that lies shouldn't be stated and people shouldn't be manipulated.
But politics and governance are NOT sciences. Socialism vs. Capitalism is not a scientific debate where there IS one clear answer. It depends on the people being governed, depends on the land, various decisions depend on the locality and geography and politics of other nations, etc. It's not something that there is a clear yes or no answer. And when it comes to statistics, statistics can be proven wrong (is that the fault of the statistic taker? should he be fined? what if he was in the right and he just got a bad sample?), they can be misleading (accidentally or purposefully), they can be interpreted wrongly, they can be outdated, they can be misused, they can be used to manipulate...
I am pretty firmly on the "right" side of center and pretty conservative; yet I find Limbaugh, O'Reilly, etc., to be annoying, frustrating, maddening, and generally don't like listening to them. I probably agree with them "politically," but I disagree with their methods of "discussion," I disagree with their attitudes, with how they treat other people (including the President), etc. But I support their right to say what they want to say... and yes, make money off of it.
I also find many Senators (www.politifact.com) stating similar half truths, misleading statements, lies, etc., all to try to "prove" their point or get people to agree with them. Some of them are even true but simply used logically wrong. Should that be fined? Logical fallacies are now illegal? ;) Slightly exaggerated there but you get the point: free speech necessarily has to include speech that one does not agree with or simply "wrong" speech (logical fallacy, lie, whatever). If it didn't, there would be someone, some committee, some party, etc., that basically controls free speech... which means it's not really that free. I would rather tolerate lies than get into the position where a ruling party or prevailing view has the power to censor speech that they simply disagree with by claiming that it is untrue (and, perhaps, making up their own "facts" to "disprove" the "bad" facts...)
The reason he said he wanted to do this is because of websites like this.
bfanwo.blogspot.com
I offer to your attention a film about six priorities of the generalized instruments of management by countries and people of Earth.
Six Principles of Global Manipulation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fF3TQ0lJnU
Anti-Qur'an Strategy of the Bible Project Wheeler-Dealers
http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1wXgXwj3MI
Nibiru and Annunakis on the Swiss francs
http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDoU3tLwc3o