Don't take the politician's word for it...

Whether you are liberal or conservative or somewhere in between, there comes a point in time when you just want the truth. Well, we may never get the complete truth, but there are some places we can go to get closer to the facts.

Peggy Garvin recently wrote an article called "The Government Domain: Political Fact-checking websites". It details several sites we can go to for fact-based answers to our questions about politics. While no one can be completely unbiased, these resources actually document their claims. Garvin goes into some detail about the sites and lists some of my personal favorites, such as:

The Fact-Checker - this blog is written by Michael Dobbs of the Washington Post. He takes statements made by or about politicians and points out the facts of the matter. While I don't always agree with his interpretation of the facts, he does a good job of revealing interesting points.

FactCheck.org - this site is run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. Again, they specialize in verifying statements made by politicians and political groups. They seem to address political advertisements more than the other sites, also.

For a more complete list and discussion of fact-checking sites, see Peggy Garvin's article here.

Google brings you the news....

After a brief hiatus, I am back with much to blog about. The first item on the agenda is the fact that Google has begun digitizing newspapers. Google is working with several of the oldest (and largest) newspaper publishers in the country to make newspaper archives searchable and accessible online.

How is this different than what Lexis and Factiva have? How is this different than searching a newspaper's archives on their website? Well, there are a few handy things to point out. Google is digitizing the ENTIRE paper....not just the text. So, you can view the photos, graphs, and even the advertisements. The text will be searchable, but you can also page through the newspaper as it was originally assembled. So, when you search for a story - you won't get JUST the story. You will get that entire page of the paper.

In fact, take a look at this actual page. If you "pull" the pages with your mouse, it feels a lot like using microfiche, doesn't it? However, if you are like me and get seasick from pages flying by on the microfiche machines (am I the only one??), you may want to use the "page by page" button in the upper, right hand corner!

At any rate, Google seems to be concentrating on "old newspapers" right now. I am sure "newer" news is on the agenda for the future. Read the official Google blog post on this topic here.