Open Source advocate Eric Raymond once famously wrote, “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” After the whole Dan Rather distributed debunking episode, I’m wondering if the same could be true of all (or, at least, many) problems with fact-checking public statements. This would include articles in the mainstream press, of course, but it could also apply to political campaign statements and consumer product claims, among others.
It seems to me that it would be relatively easy to formalize a structure that would be well-suited to this task. What I have in mind is something that is like FactCheck.org in its goals but like Wikipedia in its social organization. Basically, somebody would submit a factual claim to the community for substantiation. Using some social interface, whether it’s a discussion board with collaborative filtering, a wiki, or something else, the community members would submit data and analysis and collectively negotiate the filtering of that data and analysis to get the best quality possible. You could either leave the system as a pure social negotation or make it a hybrid by adding an editorial staff (of veteran journalists, maybe?) to help with the vetting of community input.
If I were the owner of a major media outlet like CNN or The New York Times, I would create a home for a community like this so that (a) it could improve the quality of the journalism my company produces and (b) it builds a strong, loyal, quality-focused, and non-partisan (or, really, multi-partisan) community around my brand.
But that’s just me.
