Monday, November 15, 2004
Weighing a Lie
For those of us who subscribe to the Factcheck.org newsletters, the 2004 campaign ending signaled a retreat not only of political rhetoric in our everyday lives, but a retreat of its nearest cure - the factcheck.org reports. Today subscribers were asked to fill out a survey answering questions like "Were the newsletters helpful?" and "Did you forward them?" Normally, I wouldn't take the time to fill out a survey. Normally I wouldn't take the time to blog the fact that I took a survey. Normally, when given the chance to write-in my thoughts on what can be improved in an already invaluable service, I wouldn't be capable of the task. However today, I did. All of the above. It ended with the following:"It would be good to have a kind of rating scale for the degree and types of inaccuracies on which you're reporting. Then perhaps an ongoing tally of of these ratings. Quantifying qualitative matters can be difficult -- and a lie is a lie -- but as long as you're in the business of parsing the truth, you may as well set it on a scale, no?"
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