Liars beware: Intel is developing an application that can detect lies on the internet. Install Dispute Finder into a Firefox web browser and the application will scan web pages to ferret out inaccuracies, crackpot theories, and suspicious content. The application highlights the disputed claims and suggests alternative news sources that might help set the record straight. The current version of Dispute Finder relies on people tagging disputed claims, but soon, according to Intel researcher Rob Ennals interviewed on NPR’s On the Media, an algorithm will be used to scan the entire web for any inaccuracies. (Wait, there are inaccuracies on the internet?)

Researchers also hope to launch a real-time “Bullshit Detector” that will scan statements made in real life. Ennals explained:

So let's say you’re in a conversation with somebody and they tell you something which is disputed. The device is going to buzz in your pocket and let you know that you just heard something disputed and perhaps you should question it.

You can watch a demonstration of the Dispute Finder below:

Source: On the Media 

Opponents of health care reform say that the Democrats are trying to impose “Canadian-style health care” on the United States. They warn of long lines, delayed or denied care, and restrictive bureaucracy. A recent attack ad features a Canadian woman claiming, “If I had relied on my government for health care, I’d be dead.” 

The hyperbolic ad is proving effective at eroding support for health care reform among people of all parties, according to Media Curves. The research firm showed pro- and anti- reform ads to 611 people and found that the attack ad was far more convincing.

The anti-reform message is compelling—and entirely misleading. Maureen Taylor reported to On the Media that the star of the attack ad did not, in fact, have brain cancer. And the woman’s life was not threatened by her condition.  Taylor, a health care reporter for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, questions why the idea of Canada is so threatening. She pleads, “People, I'm not walking over a lot of dead bodies here on my way into the studio.”

Source: Media Curves, On the Media 

Craigslist recently announced that it was getting rid of its “erotic” services section. Instead, the website will have an “adult” services section with more stringent screening and a $10 fee. Speaking with On the Media, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said to Craigslist, “you've got to recognize that your site has become the number one Internet brothel, and you have to take some responsibility for this.” The CEO of Craigslist countered, accusing politicians of “a bit of a witch hunt or a use of Craigslist as a political piñata.”

Largely absent from this conversation are the sex workers who have come to rely on Criagslist for their livelihoods. The latest issue of $pread, a magazine about “illuminating the sex industry,” has a point-counterpoint with two sex workers on the effect of the new Craigslist rules.

It’s understandable that Craigslist would bow to pressure from politicians and special interest groups, according to a writer known as Starchild, but that doesn’t make it fair. “Their new policy singles out folks who seek and provide erotic services from all other Craigslist users and subjects them to special discrimination, not to mention a greater risk of arrest, fine, and jail,” because of the ability to trace the fees. She does not, however, blame Craigslist. And she doesn’t advocate that people leave the site. Having the “erotic” services listed along side job and apartment listings on Craigslist, she writes, “can do nothing but help sex work be seen as normal and acceptable.”

The new rules aren’t unfair to sex workers, according to Mistress Matisse, but they are unfortunate. If sex workers don’t want to put down a credit card for the Craigslist ads, they can always go other places. And people who can’t afford the fee have bigger problems than Craigslist.

“Don’t blame Craigslist,” Starchild writes. “At least, not too much. Instead, let’s lobby them to send those $10 payments, which Craigslist says will go to charity, to groups like the Desiree Alliance, Sex Workers Outreach Project, and Erotic Service Providers Union, which are working to decriminalize prostitution.”

Sources: On the Media, $pread (article not available online)

When Netflix offered $1 million to anyone who could help them suggest movies better, thousands of teams from hundreds of countries signed up for the challenge. Netflix uses a program called Cinematch that recommends movies to its customers, designed to keep the customers renting movies and paying money. If people could create a program that would suggest movies 10 percent better than Cinematch, that team would win $1 million from Netflix.

One team at AT&T Labs came particularly close to that goal and wrote about the competition for the latest issue of IEEE Spectrum. The team members combined a number of different search methods to create a program that was 8.43 percent better than Netflix’s. That’s wasn’t enough to win the $1 million dollar prize, but Netflix was also offering a $50,000 prize to the team that came the closest.

Programs like these are capable of “finding something out about us that we ourselves can't even figure out,” writer Clive Thomas told the WNYC show On the Media. They also run the chance of perpetuating narrow-mindedness by suggesting only media that people are sure to like, without any of the mind-expanding media that people might aren’t sure to enjoy. People’s friends, rather than computers, are still better able to suggest media that might not be as enjoyable, but is still important.

Computers may be able to explore the “impenetrable mystery at the heart of our predilections,” according to On the Media’s Brooke Gladstone, but they aren’t able to change those predilections without the help of a few friends.

You can listen to that interview below:

Image by Urthstripe, licensed under Creative Commons.

Sources: IEEE Spectrum, On the Media

Some of Quividi’s marketing technologies carry a distinctly Big Brother vibe. Lately, the French company's gotten attention for developing billboard software that uses cameras to gather demographic information about passersby. On the Media recently sat down with Quividi’s chief scientific officer, Paolo Prandoni, to learn how the signs work and gauge how creeped out we ought to be.

In the interview, Prandoni works hard to make the technology sound harmless. He assures listeners that the cameras never record images of people. He also observes that the software isn’t sophisticated enough to reveal much about a person—apparently, it can guess at gender and age based on an analysis of basic bodily features, but not much else.

Prandoni's pretty sure that the static billboard will become obsolete. He thinks tools like Quividi's will eventually allow marketers to tailor their content in reaction to the people moving through a space. Whether or not you buy his argument that Quividi technology is more or less benign, the technology is probably here to stay, and no doubt will continue to evolve. 

Image courtesy of cangaroojack, licensed under Creative Commons.

Sources: On the Media 

Last week, the New York Times announced that it would begin running ads on the front page in response to lagging revenues. A1 purists emitted a chorus of gasps, but pragmatic observers weren't as horrified. After all, plenty of newspapers around the country already print front-page ads; it’s a move that helps them stay afloat in an economy that’s been unkind to print media. James Barron, a contributor to The New York Times: The Complete Front Pages, thinks that changes to a paper's front page offer telling glimpses into larger journalistic trends. He recently talked with On the Media about shifting journalistic practices and 150 years of changes to A1.

Barron has a stockpile of interesting examples. He points to a headline from the assassination attempt on Teddy Roosevelt:

Maniac in Milwaukee Shoots Colonel Roosevelt. He Ignores Wound, Speaks an Hour, Goes to Hospital.

Besides being incredibly long, it wears its opinions on its sleeve in a way that papers now avoid. It’s difficult to imagine a reporter calling anyone a ‘maniac’ anymore.

Barron also sees the move away from obvious editorializing in the difference between reports of the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations. Lincoln’s death was described as ‘awful news,’ while Kennedy’s was related in more clinical terms.

Check out the interview to hear Barron’s take on other notable changes to the Times’ A1. In particular, there’s an interesting discussion about what an increasing focus on online journalism means for the future of the front page. 

Image courtesy of harshilshah100, licensed under Creative Commons.

Numerous journalists are joining the ranks of the unemployed. Can the federal government help put them back to work?

In an essay for the New Republic and an interview with On the Media, Mark Pinsky suggests that it can—by reviving the Federal Writers' Project, an initiative established in 1935 under the Works Progress Administration.

Jerrold Hirsch, who wrote a book about the Depression-era project, told On the Media that it enlisted out-of-work writers, journalists, librarians, and others “[t]o rediscover America, to give us a new and broader knowledge of the very country we lived in and not to see it in narrow, exclusive terms of just the dominant culture.” They recorded music, conducted oral histories, collected slave narratives, and worked on creating thorough guides to each state.

Pinsky’s vision for the project's 21st-century sibling isn’t quite as extensive—he described it to OTM’s Brooke Gladstone as the “Federal Writers’ Project Light.” He told her the program would give small grants for “research projects, mostly interviews, that would be approved and put out by community colleges and universities,” and would document important aspects of American life like “the modern immigrant experience” and “the transition to a green economy.” The public benefit, he writes in TNR, would be documentation for the ages of “those segments of society largely ignored by commercial and even public media.”

College kids don’t like writing papers; no newsflash there. But the behavior that accompanies this assignment anxiety can look very different depending on the student. Some plan ahead, crafting outlines and slogging through multiple drafts. Some procrastinate, pulling all-nighters and drinking boatloads of coffee. Some, according to Nick Mamatas for The Smart Set, whip out their credit cards, forgoing the work and buying an essay from a term paper mill.

“The Term Paper Artist” details Mamatas' stint as the writer on the other side of this transaction. For several years, he wrote term papers for students willing and able to dole out the money for one. A broker connected him with the students, who he identifies in three camps: “DUMB CLIENTS,” one-timers, and non-native English speakers. Mamatas bluffed his way through their requests—be it theological reflections, literature critiques, or historical investigations—and earned the funds that helped him buy his first house.

The essay reads salaciously, kind of like a bad Dateline exposé. It’s full of cheap thrills, particularly those that come at the expense of his former clients, like the one who needed a paper on “Plah-toe” or the one who couldn’t identify the body of the paper without help from Mamatas. For his part, Mamatas spins himself into the kind of character who ought to occupy such a narrative, presenting the term paper artist as a largely unrepentant bad boy. He hints at a vague guiltiness, but any such feeling seems to get drowned out by his obvious scorn for the students he sold papers to.

That is to say, there’s little big-picture reflection about term paper mills or post-secondary education. This seems to be mirrored in the thin response to the essay. Even On the Media treats the story as a sleazy curiosity. It’s a shame, because Mamatas’ story highlights a string of breakdowns in post-secondary writing education that might merit deeper exploration: admissions policies that accept students unprepared for college coursework, overcrowded classrooms that allow struggling students to slip under the radar, and lack of access to auxiliary writing help, to name a few.

Image by Yuval Haimovits, licensed under Creative Commons.

When photographer Jill Greenberg’s editors at the Atlantic asked her to photograph John McCain for the magazine's October issue, she swallowed her distaste and delivered the benevolent-looking images they sought. But she couldn’t cast her disgust aside, so she snapped a second set of photos that better captured her own feelings for McCain. Compared to the warm, well-lit portraits that ended up in the magazine, her alternative shots make McCain look...well...kind of evil. Greenberg posted the photos to her website, and remained unapologetic when her editors freaked out.

Were her actions ethical? A recent episode of On the Media chats with Greenberg and other photographers about the often murky question of integrity in photojournalism. Greenberg suggests that in some situations, the most ethical way to portray her subjects may not always be the most flattering. Photographer Platon, who captured Ann Coulter on the cover of Time looking, in interviewer Bob Garfield’s estimation, "like a blond praying mantis," agrees. For him, a photographer’s duty isn’t to represent subjects as they’d prefer, but to interpret them, to “pull people out of their reality and into our reality.” Greenberg further justifies unflattering photos (perhaps less convincingly) with the contention that editors sometimes demand them, even asking photographers to deliberately mislead their subjects.

You can take a look at the photos in question, along with some other great (and potentially questionable) shots in a slideshow accompanying the episode transcript.

The new website Spot.us is experimenting with an innovative business model for freelance journalists. The idea is simple: Journalists pitch stories to the site’s community, and if people like an idea they can contribute money to make the reporting possible. Users are also able to submit news tips that freelancers can pick up on and craft into pitches that they will seek funding for through the site.

Tips submitted so far include queries like “Why are San Francisco city streets in such poor condition?” and “What's the future of Bay Area newspapers given the changing economy?” Stories soliciting funding include a three-part series on cities working to become more accommodating to the elderly, and a report on how the financial crisis is impacting small businesses in San Francisco. One writer's pitch—"How safe are San Francisco bay beaches and water a year after the Cosco Busan oil spill?"—has raised $360 from 16 donors (if he raises $440 more, he'll write a 1,000-word story on the subject).

Blogger Ana Marie Cox tested a similar business model when the magazine paying her travel expenses to cover John McCain’s campaign went under before the end of election season. She asked her readers to pony up to keep her on the trail, offering various thank-you gifts in return (and ongoing coverage, of course). When she appeared on WNYC’s On the Media on October 31, she had raised over $8,000.

(Thanks, Columbia Journalism Review.)