To help Americans separate fact from fiction in the media they consume, a new web site has launched, Ameritocracy, which describes itself as

a user-contributed and user-generated content site that allows people to judge the accuracy, credibility and relevancy of claims made by society’s leaders and information gatekeepers such as media and business.

The Ameritocracy community, made up of anyone who signs up for an account, submits and then rates quotes based on several scales, including accuracy, credibility, and relevance.

I’m personally not about to put my trust in the wisdom of crowds to help me assess the accuracy of the news stories or political claims presidential candidates make — not when at one time 70% of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was linked to the attacks of 9/11 — and a disturbingly significant number continue to. I’ll trust to other sources for fact-checking, thank you very much.

Thanks to the always insightful Sanjana Hattotuwa at ICT for Peacebuilding for the link.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 6:11 pm and is filed under Popular Culture, Politics, Society, Strength in Numbers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.