If Only They Had This During Watergate: WaPo Unveils Real-Time Fact-Checker

The Washington Post this morning unveiled a new app enabling readers to fact-check speeches in “near real-time.” The new app, dubbed “Truth Teller, was created by the Post with funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

The concept was the brainchild of the paper’s politics editor, Steven Ginsberg, who had a light bulb moment after listening to a politician give a stump speech “filled with inaccurate statements.

The Post described the initial version as a “prototype,” and said it was the first step toward creating a more robust truth-telling app that could be used during live speeches and discussions.

The initial version focuses on the looming debate over tax reform and users 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. Future iterations will incorporate a broader array of political news topics.

To create the prototype, the Post is utilizing several technologies combining video and audio extraction with a speech-to-text technology to search databases of facts and fact checks.

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