The Fact-Check Fifty | Presidential Debate

10/13/2008
Ameritocracy.com
For Immediate Release:

“THE FACT-CHECKING FIFTY” TO MONITOR DEBATE IN REAL TIME ON AMERITOCRACY.COM

Ameritocracy, a user-powered site built to find out how accurate and how relevant quotes and other sound bites are in political news and other information, will have a group of fifty independent and non-partisan fact-checkers verifying and debunking claims as they are made during presidential debate on Wednesday

Ameritocracy has recruited the more than fifty of its users who have volunteered to fact-check the debate as it happens. Each volunteer will be assigned a specific statement made by either Senator McCain or Senator Obama. Any visitor to the site can then see for her or himself how honest or dishonest a candidate’s statement really is.

Here’s how it works: Members of Ameritocracy’s team upload questions from the debate moderator and extract responses given by the candidates. These are posted to the site seconds after they occur. Our team of volunteer fact-checkers is thus able to view these statements in isolation and check them for accuracy. Any visitor or Ameritocracy user will have immediate access to the fact-checked questions, responses, and cited sources, in addition to an open invitation to add their own. Is an overhead projector really the same thing as a planetarium projector? Now anybody can see the facts and decide for themselves in real time.

“We are excited to have so many people on board for this last debate. This is a crucial opportunity to engage citizens who want the facts that often get lost, overlooked, or distorted in debates,” says Ameritocracy founder Porter Bayne. “Ameritocracy allows any visitor to the site a uniquely concise, engaging, and immediate way of scrutinizing that information.”

Ameritocracy is a non-partisan fact-checking site that puts the user first. Combining innovations put forth by websites as diverse as FactCheck.org and eBay.com, Ameritocracy allows users to collaborate in calling into question the accuracy of statements made by politicians, the media, and other public figures.

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For further information, contact community director John Brooks at john.brooks@ameritocracy.com