Truth-Teller App from Washington Post Could Alter Nature of Political Dialog

Several weeks ago, I posted a tongue-in-cheek wish list for Web 2.0 improvements that helped tell truth from lies.

It turns out the Washington Post had already been working on a Truth-Teller Application under a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The prototype of the app made its debut in late January.

According to the Washington Post, the goal of Truth Teller is to fact check speeches in as close to real time as possible. The inspiration for the idea came during the last Republican primary election. Steven Ginsberg, the Post’s national political editor, was attending a rally for Michelle Bachman in an Iowa parking lot. Claims Ginsberg:

”For about 45 minutes she said a lot of things that I knew to not be true, and nobody else there knew that.”

Ginsberg thought there must be a way to offer people in the crowd a real-time accounting of politicians’ misstatements. He consulted with Cory Haik and others [1] at the Post. The  Truth Teller App is their attempt to offer such a service.

They based the prototype on a combination of several technologies. It generates a transcript from video using speech-to-text technology, matches the text to a database, and then displays, in real time, what’s true and what’s false.

For the prototype, the Post focused on the looming debate over tax reform, but hopes to expand their database to incorporate more issues in the future.

“It’s a proof of concept, a prototype in the truest sense,” says Cory Haik, Executive Producer for Digital News at the Post.

To test Truth Teller from The Washington Post, visit truthteller.washingtonpost.com. You  can play videos from President Barack Obama, Speaker of the House John Boehner and other politicians and instantly see which statements are true, false or misleading.

Kaila Stein, writing in the American Journalism Review, “Haik realized that everyone at that rally probably had a phone in their hands, and that a program capable of detecting false claims on the spot could help people sort out fact from fiction. She envisioned a product like Shazam, a popular app that can recognize a song based on its sound; however, instead of identifying song and artist, Haik’s app would distinguish between political truth and lies.”

Fact checking is hardly a new concept for news organizations, but doing it in real time is new. It could fundamentally change the nature of political dialog. As I pointed out in another post on February 18, misinformation can be difficult to correct once the rumor mill of the Internet begins and search engines dutifully record millions of comments on it. Hearing or seeing something repeated so often and in such volume can make people think something is true when it, in fact, is not.

“Cognitively, it is much easier for people to accept a given piece of information than to evaluate its truthfulness. This stacks the deck in favor of accepting misinformation rather than properly rejecting it. … Researchers have found that misinformation is “sticky” and is often resistant to correction. Retractions are often ineffective and can sometimes backfire, strengthening incorrect beliefs.”

From Misinformation and Its Correction: Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing
By Stephan Lewandowsky, Ullrich K. H. Ecker, Colleen M. Seifert, Norbert Schwarz and John Cook

The Post hopes to release a functional version of the app by the end of this year and  continue refining it after that. According to Stein, Haik and Ginsberg see their innovation as a game-changer. “My hope,” Ginsberg says, “is that, in its realized form, it fundamentally alters the political discourse in America.”

______________________________

[1] The Washington Post Truth Teller team:
Cory Haik, Executive Producer for Digital News
Steven Ginsberg, National Political Editor
Joey Marburger, Mobile Design Director
Yuri Victor, UX Director
Siva Ghatti, Director, Application Development
Ravi Bhaskar, Principal Software Engineer
Gaurang Sathaye, Principal software engineer
Julia Beizer, Mobile Projects Editor
Sara Carothers, Producer

Ramifications of Decline of Trust in Media

SkepticJournalists have historically performed a watchdog function over the three main branches of government. The executive, judicial and legislative branches check the power of each other. Journalists watch over them all on behalf of the public and provide an additional check … or so the theory goes.

A 2012 poll by Gallup, Media Use and Evaluation, showed that trust and confidence in the mass media to report the news fully, fairly and accurately has reached an all time low. It peaked  in 1976, the year after Richard Nixon resigned the presidency following the Washington Post investigation into the Watergate Scandal, but as the Gallup chart below shows, trust has been declining since then.

Gallup concluded:

“This is particularly consequential at a time when Americans need to rely on the media to learn about the platforms and perspectives of the two candidates vying to lead the country for the next four years.”

“Americans’ high level of distrust in the media poses a challenge to democracy and to creating a fully engaged citizenry. Media sources must clearly do more to earn the trust of Americans, the majority of whom see the media as biased one way or the other.”

In this second, separate survey that you can see by following the link above, Gallup also  found that 60 percent of Americans see the media as biased, with 47% saying the media are too liberal and 13% saying they are too conservative. Republicans trust news media least, but curiously, Gallup found that they pay the most attention to national news.

My Take

For the moment, the lack of trust in news media seems to have caused people to become more vigilant rather than less engaged. However, one wonders when the switch will flip.

When people start to tune out, we are on the most slippery of slopes. We will lose the ultimate check-and-balance in society – an informed electorate.

Erosion of Trust in Information Fosters Polarization in Politics

A familiar thread running through many of these posts is trust. A good friend who is a very successful businessman once told me that “If you don’t have trust, you don’t have a business.” I have come to believe that saying with all my heart and soul. I think every copywriter, reporter and CEO should have it tattooed on his or her navel.

Trust is the currency of communication.

TrustWhen we don’t trust the information someone is sending us, we don’t trust him, her or them. This merely seeks to divide us. We may win elections or business deals with bad information, but we lose something larger – the relationships upon which long-term success is built.

Recent surveys indicate that the credibility of advertising and media (Pew, Gallup, Neiesen, Lab42 studies) is severely eroding. Both have fallen to about 25 percent. Said another way, three in four people automatically discount what they read, see or hear through the media, whether it’s programming, news, or advertising. By the way, that also is roughly the same percentage of people who falsify information on social media profiles.

How can we restore trust?

A good place to start is over in that far corner of the ring called truth and fairness. If you don’t believe “truth” is obtainable because it is too subjective, then let’s strive for fairness and balance.

I asked several friends, “what would you do to restore trust in the sources of information?” Here are some of the suggestions:

  1. Stop exaggerating to make your point. Yes, exaggeration sometimes gets attention. But it undermines acceptance.
  2. Acknowledge limitations of your information or knowledge.
  3. Be honest, open and fair. Don’t try to twist the facts to make a point. Selective regurgitation is not the way to get the gist of something right.
  4. Don’t withhold information that materially changes the meaning of something.
  5. Support your case with specifics. But don’t misrepresent their meaning to suit your ends. We’ve all seen too many election ads that take quotes out of context to twist the true meaning of what someone said. We’ve all seen too many people waving documents that purport to prove something is true when it is false.
  6. Cite original sources. Do your research. Don’t repeat rumors. And don’t just trust what a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend said. By the time something is filtered through a newspaper reporter who is quoted in a blog which is reposted in a tweet and then distributed in an email rant, the original meaning may have been lost. I had a conversation with my barber before the last election in which he claimed “Obama is a known communist.” Hmmmm. I thought he was a Democrat. So I asked the barber what made him think that. “Somebody wrote a book about it. Everyone knows it.” “What’s the name of the book?”  “I can’t remember.” “Well, can you tell me one thing he’s done that is communistic?” No response.
  7. Make it clear what is fact and what is your opinion of the facts.
  8. Acknowledge different sides of an argument and hold all sides to the same standard of truthfulness. Try to illuminate, not obfuscate. Nothing is more frustrating than when someone doesn’t acknowledge your point of view, but keeps spouting sound bites to make his or her point of view. This does nothing to advance the discussion, but leads to isolationism and gridlock.
  9. Don’t repeat falsehoods, even in jest. A surprising number of people get their news these days from “comedy news shows” that blur the distinction between fact and fantasy.
  10. Be suspicious of ad hominem attacks and avoid generalizations. Treat the other side with respect.

Counterfeiting the Currency of Communication

The partisan pursuit of self-interest often gets in the way of these principles. Unfortunately, when people cross these ethical lines, they undermine the trust that binds people together. People begin to trust only those that share their world view. Compromise is victimized. Politics become polarized. Winning arguments by counterfeiting the currency of communication is a prescription for disaster. The government won’t let people counterfeit its currency. Why do so many human beings willingly counterfeit their own?

How Search Engines Can Help Perpetuate Misinformation

Before we get into this, I want acknowledge that search engines put a world of relevant information at our fingertips and that they help people find answers faster than ever before. They’re great. I love ’em. I use ’em. But I also see a dark side to them.

Ask anyone a question. If they don’t know the answer, in all likelihood, they will Google for it from a smartphone. Voila! answers! Are they accurate? Are they true? These are much bigger questions.

searchforanswersA frequently quoted book, Prioritizing Web Usability (2006) by Jakob Nielsen, claims 93 percent of Web searchers never go past the first page of results. Yet Google and other search engines often return millions of pages.

At one time, an army of professional authors, editors, reviewers, librarians and fact checkers helped verify and screen information before dishing it up to readers. Today, that verification process applies to only a tiny fraction of all the information put online. Anyone can self-publish anything. “No experience necessary” often equates to “no truth or accuracy required.”

Limitations of Search Engines and Human Brains

Search engines simply report all references to a phrase on the Internet; they make no attempt to determine the truth or accuracy of claims. Yet most people assume the truth of something published. Why?

A 2012 report called Misinformation and Its Correction: Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing published in the journal of the Association for Psychological Science by Stephan Lewandowsky, Ullrich Ecker, Colleen Seifert, Norbert Schwarz and John Cook of the Universities of Western Australia, Michigan and Queensland[1] concludes that, “Cognitively, it is much easier for people to accept a given piece of information than to evaluate its truthfulness.” (Comment: this is especially true when search engine results stretch to thousands or millions of pages.)

The Stickiness of Misinformation

This fascinating report surveys academic literature relating to why we believe certain things we read or hear – even though they may be false. It begins with a discussion of several public policy issues, such as health care reform, vaccinations, and justifications for wars. It also discusses why misinformation is “sticky,” i.e., how hard it is to correct misinformation once it becomes rooted.

According to the report, disinformation in the U.S. healthcare debate peaked in 2009 when Sarah Palin used the phrase “death panels” on her Facebook page. “Within five weeks,” the report continues, “86% of Americans had heard the claim and half either believed it or were unsure about its veracity.”

Mainstream news media and fact-checkers reported that Palin’s characterization of provisions in the proposed law was false. But even today, four years later, a Google search for the term yields 35,800,000 results (in 0.16 seconds)! A scan of the first 20 pages of posts in the Google search revealed:

  • A few were dedicated to exposing “the myth” of death panels, including (to be fair), the very first post in Wikipedia.
  • Most posts conflicted with each other, i.e., a large number claimed the law would create “death panels” and a large number claimed it would not.
  • A large percentage was posted within the last few months, indicating that many people are trying to resurrect the term or keep the debate going, and that the authors of the paper are correct – misinformation is sticky.

Existing Beliefs Influence Belief in New Information

Determining the validity of information requires hard work and an open mind. The problem, say the authors of the Misinformation report, is that most people don’t seek information that contradicts their view of the world. Said another way, they tend to like information that supports their view.

Even when directly confronted with retractions and conflicting facts, many people cling to their original beliefs by saying something like, “Well, we’re all entitled to our opinions.” In fact, say the authors, conflicting information often serves to strengthen belief in  erroneous information.

How The Search for Truth is Getting More Difficult

Think of the Internet as a giant information archive. When topics such as healthcare become politicized, social networks, blogs and circular references turn the Internet into an echo chamber. Millions of references can accumulate in days as people report on reports of other reports, filtering information and putting their own spin on things along the way.

While search engines dutifully record the location of information, they can’t help us determine the truth of it. The sheer volume of conflicting information that they present makes the search for truth like looking for diamonds in a garbage dump.


[1] Click here to learn more about the Authors of Misinformation Report.

Ramifications of Internet Anonymity

One of the signature characteristics of the Internet is anonymity. The widespread use of screen names and the difficulty of verifying the identities behind them makes the Internet a playground for frauds, cheats, and predators.

Of course, there are plenty of honest people on the Internet, too. The Internet has opened up new markets, created global awareness on a scale never seen in history, and boosted the productivity of businesses worldwide.

My point is that anonymous communications from the dark side of humanity taint the credibility of the medium and poison the waters for the rest of us. They undermine people who use the Internet for good and legitimate purposes. There don’t seem to be many ways to stop the hoaxsters.

In 2006, a 13-year-old girl named Megan Meier committed suicide after a case of cyber-bullying on a popular social networking site. Allegedly, the mother of a rival girl at Megan’s school created an account on the site for a fictitious boy named Josh. Her intent allegedly was to get Megan to reveal details about herself that could later be used to humiliate Megan. The ensuing cyber-bullying had tragic consequences. Megan hung herself. Numerous suicides related to cyber-bulling have been reported since.

Internet anonymity does not always contribute to such tragic consequences. Some cases are simply highly embarrassing.

This month, Notre Dame football player Manti Te’o, who led the Fighting Irish to the BCS championship game this year and finished second for the Heisman Trophy, said in a statement that he fell in love with a girl online last year who turned out not to be real. Te’o said during the season that his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, died of leukemia in September on the same day Te’o’s grandmother died, triggering an outpouring of support for Te’o at Notre Dame and in the media. All the details are still not clear, but the story is making national headlines.

Elaborate and highly publicized hoaxes such as these undermine the credibility of the medium. I’ve often likened the Internet of today to the Wild West. Pretty much anything goes.

This is a shame. At a time when people trust advertising less and the credibility of traditional news sources has trended down for more than a decade, who can you trust?

Marketers have begun to rely on online reviews as references, but many of those can’t be trusted either. My company has been approached by others to get us to create fictitious product reviews favoring one company and slamming its competitors. Even though the business would have been lucrative and easy, we turned it down.

How many times have those online reviews sucked me in? Last week, I upgraded the security system at my office to one that supposedly allowed me to monitor my cameras over the Internet. The system had glowing 5-star reviews online, yet when I loaded the app on my iPhone and iPad, it was very buggy. It works only about half the time for reasons I cannot understand.

Kinda makes one wonder about the integrity of that online review process!

 

Counterfeiting the Currency of Advertising

This is a corollary to yesterday’s post about research which found that three out of four people believe claims found in advertising are exaggerated.

Words and images are the currency of advertising. The U.S. Government won’t let people counterfeit its currency. But advertising industry professionals seem to have no problem counterfeiting theirs.

When industry professionals exaggerate, make false claims, or misrepresent the capabilities of a product or service, they don’t serve their clients’ best interests or their own.

False advertising may get people to purchase a product or service once. But the inevitable disappointment they feel can ruin the client’s reputation. The purchasers not only feel disappointed in the performance of the product or service, they feel they have been lied to. Trust is lost with the relationship.

False claims and impressions also counterfeit the currency of the industry. They undermine the industry’s credibility and the return that honest advertisers hope to gain from their investment in advertising.

Governments won’t let people counterfeit their currencies. Why do ad industry trade groups not raise a bigger stink about people who devalue their currency?

Credibility of Advertising

More than three in four consumers say most of the claims that brands make in advertisements are exaggerated, according to a study by Lab42.

Specifically, among surveyed consumers, 57.4% say advertising claims are “somewhat exaggerated,” and 19.0% say they are “very exaggerated,” Lab42 reported.

Only 2.8% of consumers surveyed say the claims in various ads are very accurate. For the full report, click here.

How did we come to this sad, sorry state of affairs? How did a whole industry undermine its own credibility without raising alarms? Here’s my personal take. The advertising industry I joined as a young man (at Leo Burnett in Chicago in 1972) was much different than the industry today. It seemed every commercial I wrote was scrupulously reviewed by agency lawyers, industry associations, and government regulators. Likewise, research ruled.

Commercials were tested, refined and retested in animatic form before production. Then commercials were tested again in finished form after production. Commercials were more trusted then and felt more compelling. They worked. Even clients believed … in the process.

Then during the Eighties, creatives revolted. They felt straight-jacketed.  They argued that:

  • Research forced everything into the same expected mold.
  • Lawyers sapped the fun out of commercials.
  • Advertising was failing to differentiate brands and make them stand out.
  • People didn’t watch TV to look at the ads; they watched it to be entertained.
  • Advertising needed to be more entertaining to succeed.

At that point, the race for eyeballs had begun. The creative development process was more about eye-candy. Writers and art directors argued that if people weren’t watching, there was no way the commercial could succeed. Of course, they were right.

But that logic contained several fatal flaws:

  • It assumed that people weren’t attending to commercials.
  • Gaining attention is only the first battle for customers’ hearts.
  • Unless advertising also manages to convert that awareness into interest and preference, it has failed.

While the Nineties were certainly a fun period to be in advertising, the industry was sowing the seeds of its own destruction. The eye-candy theorists failed to realize the devastation that unregulated, unpersuasive advertising would wreak on the industry.

Today, that eye-candy leaves many with a bad aftertaste. Perhaps it’s time for the pendulum to begin switching back. Better yet, perhaps it’s time for agencies to evolve to a higher level and to understand some basic truths.

In many cases, advertising makes people aware, but fails to gain interest. Therefore, prospects don’t seriously consider the client’s product or service. Said another way,  prospects don’t put the client on their shopping lists.

The process looks like this. Information needs increase at every level.

  1. Before people will purchase a brand, they must prefer it.
  2. Before people will prefer a brand, they must be interested enough in it to put it on their shopping lists and explore it further.
  3. Before people will be interested in a brand, they must be aware of it.

The battle for dollars takes place on four levels, not just one. Awareness, interest and preference come before purchase. Overlooking any of those steps is fatal to a sale.

And trust is essential to every single one of them. If people don’t trust you, they won’t do business with you. People don’t buy from advertising they don’t trust, and they certainly won’t buy from companies they don’t trust. Exaggeration for the sake of eyeballs does not serve clients well.