Farewell from Kaizar

[Ed: NewsTrust's long-time associate editor, Kaizar Campwala, is leaving us this month to pursue graduate studies at UCLA's Anderson School of Management. We asked him to share his insights on his experience in this blog post.]

Nearly four years ago, I was sitting at NewsTrust founder Fabrice Florin's dining table in Marin, CA, discussing with him and David Fox what my responsibilities would be as the new associate editor at NewsTrust. The site was up and running in a prototype form, and we were preparing to launch it as a public beta a month later, in November of 2006.

Today, as I leave NewsTrust to start graduate school in a few weeks, I find that the mission that initially drew me to the project -- helping citizens take responsibility for the news and information they consume -- is still as salient and critical as ever. Information overload, political polarization, and widespread misinformation -- the problems that spurred the creation of NewsTrust -- persist despite major advances in technology and shifts in the American political landscape. Smartphones and social media have only increased the amount of information coming at us, and the vicious, ill-informed debate that's currently raging about the "Ground Zero Mosque" shows that the divisive "culture wars" are still very much alive.

In the face of these challenges, NewsTrust has done a remarkable job of staying responsive to changing patterns of news consumption and an ever-quickening news cycle, while remaining committed to the qualities of good journalism by emphasizing contextual, fact-based reporting, and ideological open-mindedness. Maintaining this balance has sometimes meant sacrificing temporary gains in traffic or promotion, but it's kept the site anchored in the otherwise quickly shifting new media world.

It's not easy to distill the experiences of four years of editorial partnerships, new product development, and community management into a single blog post. I've had the opportunity to collaborate with some brilliant journalists, educators and technologists, and work on addressing some of the thorniest questions facing journalism today. Here are some of the highlights:

News Hunts
Many of our partnerships were built around the News Hunt model, where we focused on a single issue in the news, and compared how different news sources were covering it. All the News Hunts I worked on were eye-opening, but a few in particular stood out:

• June 2008: John McCain with Huffington Post - NewsTrust reviewers joined Huffington Post's citizen journalism team to paint a portrait of Senator McCain by aggregating news coverage about him and his Presidential campaign. The NewsTrust team, along with Amanda Michel (now at ProPublica), applied crowd-sourcing techniques to corral hundreds of volunteers to take part in this project. Many of these volunteers have gone on to become trusted members of the NewsTrust community.

• January 2009: War in Gaza with LinkTV - In comparing American and international news coverage of the Israeli attacks in Gaza, the NewsTrust community not only revealed how international media frame the Mideast conflict differently than many American outlets, but also exposed the breadth of voices and perspectives offered in American online media.

• July 2010: Immigration with USA Today - This last partnership highlighted how far "legacy" news organizations have come in embracing the ethos of the Internet. The USA Today team we worked with were happy to highlight and link to a variety of news articles, including content from their competitors, to educate readers about Arizona's controversial illegal-immigration law.

News Literacy
NewsTrust is a non-partisan organization, but that doesn't mean it has no agenda. The team is very interested in increasing the level of news literacy of online news readers. It's no surprise, then, that we love collaborating with educators. I would like to thank two in particular, who have been pioneers in using NewsTrust in the classroom: Sally Lehrman at Santa Clara University, who began using NewsTrust in her journalism classes in early 2009, and Diana Laufenberg, who leveraged NewsTrust as a part of her high school globalization class. Over the course of their semesters, I saw students in both classes develop the kind of confidence and savvy as news readers that makes for engaged, responsible citizens. It's been incredibly rewarding to watch students take to the site, and I look forward to seeing NewsTrust continue to grow in this vital space.

Community
Over my time at NewsTrust, I've reviewed over 12,500 individual news stories. That's a lot of news, and I'm certainly more knowledgeable for having read them (even the bad ones). But in many ways, my worldview expanded more from my interactions with other NewsTrust reviewers than all the thousands of articles I've read and reviewed. In their offline lives, NewsTrust members are bankers and activists, engineers and artists, and everything in between. What they share on the site is sense of curiosity about the world, and the courage to not simply accept the news that is fed to them, but rather to engage with it in a critical way. I don't use the word 'courage' lightly. It's easy to spout off political opinions on the countless comment threads across the web. Much harder is what NewsTrust reviewers demand of each other -- to deconstruct the news, asking intellectually taxing questions about a reporter's intentions, methods, and skill in producing the story being reviewed. I cannot begin to list the individual members who have touched me with their thoughtfulness, challenged me with their intellectual rigor, or opened my mind with their wisdom and life experience.

Challenges and Opportunities
Moving forward, NewsTrust will need the steadfast support of its community as it engages new audiences and continues to innovate around its mission. The increased blurring of news and opinion, and a growing emphasis on transparency over objectivity, may challenge the current review process, and defy the news vs. opinion format our members appreciate. Micro-news formats, citizen journalism, and the growth of video news online also present some interesting questions and opportunities for the site. How, for example, does NewsTrust bring the values of accuracy and fairness to the two-way conversations on Twitter, Facebook, and blogs, where a lot of important information (and misinformation) is being communicated today?

The success of the recent Truthsquad initiative shows that NewsTrust is moving in the right direction in addressing these challenges. I think there are so many fascinating and important areas in which NewsTrust can apply itself. I can't wait to see where the project goes next.

Acknowledgments
A lot of work goes into a project like NewsTrust. From simply keeping the site running, to creating new applications and forging new partnerships, it takes the dedication and vision of a fantastic staff and management. I'd like to acknowledge my former editorial colleagues Rory O'Connor, David Cohn, Beth Wellington, Joey Baker, Kristin Gorski, Jon Mitchell and Derek Hawkins for making me a more thoughtful media critic, and sharing some of their social media savvy with me.

I've also had the pleasure of working with Caleb Waldorf, Adam Florin, Subbu Sastry, and David Fox, the guys who built and maintain the sophisticated software that makes NewsTrust run. They somehow found the patience to deal with this non-engineer and his incessant questions.

Finally, a huge thank you to Fabrice. There are a lot of people with good ideas, but Fabrice is the rare person who can actually execute and make his good ideas a reality. He's been a generous mentor and fearless leader. I feel truly honored to have been part of his exceptional project.

See you online!

- By Kaizar Campwala

[Ed: We're deeply grateful for all that Kaizar has done for NewsTrust over the years, and will miss him as a colleague and a friend. Besides leading our editorial team, managing our community and partner relations, he has made some invaluable contributions to our strategy and overall direction. Kaizar is a great team player and thoughtful strategist, and we have all enjoyed his insights and creativity over the years. We wish him well in his new studies, and hope to work with him again soon as a freelance contributing editor.

We're also pleased to welcome Jon Mitchell as our new managing editor. Jon will assume all of Kaizar's responsibilities and expand many of the initiatives he started, such as our growing educational services. Many of you know Jon already, as he has taken on a leading role in recent months, culminating with his great management of our last Truthsquad pilot. Prior to joining NewsTrust, Jon was Civic Engagement Coordinator for the Public School District of Providence, RI. He graduated from Brown University in 2009, completing an independent concentration in Music & Mind. You'll be hearing more from him in coming weeks. Welcome aboard, Jon!]

Truthsquad Results: How to Fact-Check the News

How can citizens learn to fact-check the news online? To find out, NewsTrust created a new service called Truthsquad and invited our community to fact-check controversial quotes from politicians and pundits, with professional guidance. (see earlier blog post)

Our first pilot ran for a week, from August 2nd to 8th, 2010, with the help of our partners at the Poynter Institute and our advisors at FactCheck.org -- and with the generous support of Omidyar Network and the MacArthur Foundation.

Our Truthsquad editors included: Kelly McBride, director of Poynter's Sense-Making Project; Steve Myers, managing editor for Poynter Online; Fabrice Florin, NewsTrust's executive director; and Jon Mitchell, our new managing editor. Throughout the pilot, Brooks Jackson, director of FactCheck.org provided helpful tips and advice.

Here are our findings from this experiment in community fact-checking.

Overview
We created Truthsquad to help expose misinformation on the Internet -- and to give people new tools to fact-check the news, with professional oversight. Our hybrid 'pro-am' approach leverages the expertise of a few experienced journalists to show citizens how to tell fact from fiction in the news.

Each day during our pilot, our editors featured new quotes to research, and asked our community whether they were true or false. These short quotes were excerpted from recent news reports, opinions or political ads suggested by our editors and advisors.

Each quote page included links to factual evidence supporting or opposing that quote. We invited our community to review these links before giving a final answer. Editors actively searched for (and linked to) new evidence for their assigned quotes, monitored the community's answers and wrote a verdict based on the factual evidence we dug up together. We also held lively discussions of the quotes in our comments sections.

In all, we fact-checked twelve quotes as a community, with 528 answers from 307 participants. Each participant gave answers of "True," "False," or "Not Sure," with an average of 44 total answers per quote. Together, we posted 132 links to related evidence, which received 241 NewsTrust reviews. Participants were welcome to change their answers at any time, if they came across new factual evidence. As a result, participants changed their answers 57 times (which we view as a positive sign).

Truthsquad has generated more interest than any of the other pilots we hosted in 2010, and web traffic was also higher than usual. Over the week, we logged 12,801 pageviews for Truthsquad, and we estimate that at least 3,723 unique visitors checked it out, whether they participated or not.

In general, our community's responses were consistent with verdicts from our four Truthsquad editors. We were also pleased that comments from participants were civil, and that they seemed genuinely engaged in this communal quest for credible information.

Check it out for yourself. If you haven't already, try to fact-check some of the quotes on the Truthsquad overview page. Our final verdicts are posted on our earlier blog post (as well as on each quote page).

Based on this favorable response, we would like to offer Truthsquad on an ongoing basis, and we are now seeking donations and foundation support to provide it as a regular feature of our news curation service.

Report Contents:
• Quotes
• Featured Quotes
• Stats
• Survey Responses
• Thanks
• Next Steps


Related Stories about Truthsquad:
• GigaOm's Article on NYTimes.com
• Kelly McBride's Report on Poynter

Quotes
Here are the twelve quotes we fact-checked for this Truthsquad:

• "87 million Americans will be forced out of their coverage" by Obama's health care plan
  By Orrin Hatch, U.S. Senator - 119 answers (featured below)
• Decline in illegal immigration to U.S. "due to the recession," not enforcement
  By Dick Morris, Fox News consultant - 105 answers (featured below)
• "Crime is totally out of control" in Phoenix
  By Bill O'Reilly, Fox News - 86 answers (featured below)
• "Seniors guaranteed Medicare benefits will remain the same" under the Affordable Care Act
  By Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services - 67 answers (featured below)
• "The 'Bush tax cuts' ... remain the single largest cause of America's structural deficit."
  By Fareed Zakaria, Washington Post - 65 answers (featured below)
• Environmental impact of the oil spill "much less than everyone feared."
  By Jacqueline Michel, Geochemist - 33 answers (featured below)
• "CIA and Google investing in "a company that monitors the web... to predict the future."
  By Noah Shachtman, Wired - 19 answers
• "Warren Buffett called Greene's scheme 'financial weapons of mass destruction.'"
  By Kendrick Meek (D-FL), U.S. Senate candidate - 17 answers
• "There's no evidence of any significant concentration of oil that we haven't accounted for."
  By Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - 15 answers
• "Meek lobbied for big tobacco against children's healthcare."
  By Jeff Greene (D-FL), U.S. Senate candidate - 14 answers
• "Norton pushed the largest tax hike in Colorado history."
  By Americans For Job Security - 12 answers
• Obama's choice for budget chief "received more than $900,000 from Citigroup"
  By Jim McElhatton, The Washington Times - 9 answers

The first six quotes above are featured below, with more findings. To see our verdicts for all twelve quotes, check our earlier blog post.

Featured Quotes
Here are more detailed findings on the six quotes which we featured during this pilot.

"87 million Americans will be forced out of their coverage"
by Obama's health care plan
By Orrin Hatch, U.S. Senator
Our verdict: FALSE
119 answers

Our investigation of this quote from Sen. Orrin Hatch led to some of the best collaborative fact-checking in this pilot. With 123 answers, this quote was the most active of the week, and 105 of these answers agreed with our verdict that Senator Hatch's statement was "False" (eight said "True," and ten were "Not Sure"). This strong consensus may be due to the great teamwork of Truthsquad editor Steve Myers and NewsTrust member Gerald Zuckier, who jointly dug up the actual text of the health care regulations and helped produce an impressive verdict.

From Steve Myers' verdict: (on behalf of Truthsquad editors)
"This quote wasn't easy to fact-check, for several reasons: Hatch doesn't provide a source for his figures or much of a clue as to what he's talking about. A Republican member of Congress issued similar talking points that provided an incorrect link to the federal regulations he's referring to. And while Hatch says this with certainty, the regulations only predict what could happen in the future. (...)

Score one for crowdsourcing, though: NewsTrust contributor Gerald Zuckier found the right set of regulations, read them and concluded that Hatch misstates what the regulations say. After reading the regulations, we agree."
See full verdict »

Decline in illegal immigration to U.S. "due to the recession,"
not enforcement
By Dick Morris, Fox News consultant
Our verdict: MOSTLY FALSE
105 answers

For the two weeks before this pilot, we hosted an Immigration News Hunt with USA Today, so we were well prepared to research this quote about illegal immigrants. Morris' statement proved controversial; out of the 107 respondents, 54 found it false, while 36 answered true.

Contributing edior Derek Hawkins, after consulting the linked sources, concluded that "enforcement appears to have played at least as great a role" as economics, answering "False." Randolph Selig found the statement "True," contending that "the big draw is jobs." Still others, such as TC Reg, were "Not Sure." Reg thought that "it's impossible to say for sure as no scientifically valid studies have been conducted on the subject."

Eventually, the Truthsquad editors ruled that the statement was "Mostly False." The verdict was based on two major studies of immigration patterns on the U.S./Mexico border from credible sources. The linked sources that opposed the quote received an average NewsTrust rating of 3.4, slightly higher than the 3.1 average for sources that supported Morris.

From Jon Mitchell's verdict: (on behalf of Truthsquad editors)
"Downward economic trends... must have had an effect, but both studies point out that rates of legal immigration remained constant as illegal immigration dropped. Though illegal immigration comprises most of the traffic, and economics are clearly a factor, the constant rate of legal immigration suggests that some other factor makes it harder for people to enter the country illegally."
See full verdict »

"In the capital city Phoenix, crime is totally out of control."
By Bill O'Reilly, Fox News
Our verdict: FALSE
86 answers

Our members posted evidence from a wide range of sources that disproved this quote. While some other participants posted links to support O'Reilly's assertion, the group found those far less trustworthy. The sources that opposed O'Reilly's statement received an average NewsTrust rating of 3.7, a strong indication of credibility, whereas the sources that supported O'Reilly only merited a 2.6 rating.

At first, it seemed that this statement might be too subjective to fact-check. "Out of control" is not an easily measurable quality. However, the data showed that crime in Phoenix has been dropping for several years, a trend which the editors felt was sufficient to debunk O'Reilly's claim.

From Jon Mitchell's verdict: (on behalf of Truthsquad editors)
This statement would have been difficult to fact-check, if the data had been more ambiguous. O'Reilly's statement that crime is "out of control" would ordinarily be open to subjective interpretation. However, the only sources that corroborated O'Reilly's statement seemed clearly biased, and trustworthy sources, including the Phoenix Police Department and the FBI, indicated that crime in Phoenix has been dropping steadily for years. ... Bill O'Reilly's assertion that crime in Phoenix is "out of control" would require at least a measurable increase in crime to be considered factual."
See full verdict »

"Seniors guaranteed Medicare benefits will remain the same"
under the Affordable Care Act.
By Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services
Our verdict: HALF TRUE
67 answers

Links to some related articles suggested that Sebelius' statement was technically true, and many of our participants agreed. Jim Lang wrote that "the term 'guaranteed Medicare benefits' allows it to be true." Indeed, no Obama administration spokesperson we came across discussed this point without appending the word "guaranteed," which editor Kelly McBride considered "slippery." Lynn Caporale clarified the meaning of this buzzword, pointing out that only "the extra subsidies to the Medicare Advantage plans" will be cut, which Barry Parr contends "are clearly not 'Medicare' under any reasonable definition." Thanks to the word "guaranteed," many people felt Sebelius was in fair territory. But other members rejected the administration's claims entirely. Morriss Moore wrote that "the health plan will limit health care, second opinions, and will have 'panels' to determine the amount of care one receives."

Due to the lack of clarity in Sebelius' wording, Truthsquad editors could not consider the statement to be true. Fabrice Florin wrote in his verdict on behalf of editors that "because this quote is partly misleading, we give it a rating of 'Half True'. We think the Obama administration could have been clearer and more forthcoming on this point."
See full verdict »

"The 'Bush tax cuts' ... remain the single largest cause
of America's structural deficit."
By Fareed Zakaria, Washington Post
Our verdict: TRUE
65 answers

This quote proved contentious, and some members vehemently disagreed with 48 who voted "True." Zakaria's claim is not a neat statement of fact. The tax cuts may be the largest component of the deficit, but that does not necessarily make them the cause.

As a result, answers to this Truthsquad seemed to be partly influenced by the political views of some participants. For Tyson Emmett, the operative word in Zakaria's statement was "cause." He argued, "Spending causes deficits. The underlining cause of every deficit is needing more than you have." On the other hand, Chris Strosser asked, "How can Republicans complain about deficit when the Bush tax cuts are the largest chunk?"

Rather than inflame a political debate, the editors focused on the data. A report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showed that, if the loss in revenue due to the tax cuts is measured as a cost, it dwarfs all other structural programs in the budget, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the tax cuts are an elective part of the budget, the judges concluded that Zakaria's statement is "True."
See full verdict »

The environmental impacts of the BP oil spill "have been
much less than everyone feared."
By Jacqueline Michel, Geochemist
Our verdict: MOSTLY TRUE
33 answers

This was one of the hardest quotes to fact-check, because it is not a statement of fact, but "an opinion about an opinion." Many participants pointed out the ambiguity of this quote, and over a third of the 33 respondents selected "Not Sure." In their answers, people highlighted three major reasons for withholding a verdict. Eric Yendall succinctly summarized one with a question: "Who exactly is 'everyone?'" Another problem with the statement is that, as Steve Myers pointed out, "it's too early to tell." Finally, in Joey Baker's words, "we have no idea what impacts everyone feared."

However, after reviewing the evidence, the editors declared a verdict of "Mostly True," accounting for the ambiguity of the statement, acknowleging that the outcome is not yet certain, but pointing to a range of scientific opinions that damage from the spill has been less than expected, compared to previous undersea oil disasters.

From Kelly McBride's verdict: (on behalf of Truthsquad editors)
"It appears true that many scientists and other experts say out loud that they are pleasantly surprised by the resiliency of the gulf, the beaches and the wetlands. There have been hundreds of oil-soaked birds, not thousands. Oil on the beaches has washed up in much smaller amounts than predicted. Very few injured or dead mammals have been recovered. The oil appears to be breaking down and evaporating more quickly that was thought possible. ... So the environmental impact of the spill is in fact not as bad - at this point in time - as experts thought it would be. However, almost every respectable expert qualifies that statement by cautioning a wait-and-see attitude."
See full verdict »

Stats
Here are some of the quantitative results of the weeklong Truthsquad pilot, from Aug. 2 to Aug. 8th, 2010.

Traffic:

• Pageviews for Truthsquad: 12,801
• Unique visitors: 3,723 (est.)
• Most viewed quote: Dick Morris on Immigration (960 pageviews)
• Most answered quote: Orrin Hatch on Health Care (119 answers)
• Most active day: Monday, 8/2 (197 answers)

Participation totals:

• Total participants: 307
• Total answers: 528
• Total links posted: 132
• Total links viewed: 572
• Total links reviewed: 241
• Total changed answers: 57
  (people who changed their minds based on new factual evidence)

Participation averages:

• Average answers/quote: 44
• Average answers/person: 1.81
• Average views of links/person: 1.76
• Average reviews/person: 0.79

Survey Responses
On Tuesday, Aug. 10th, we sent out a survey to all Truthsquad participants to seek their feedback. Early survey responses were generally favorable. In the first day after our survey went out, most survey respondents found the service useful or very useful -- and nearly half picked Truthsquad as their favorite service from NewsTrust this year.

Here are some sample quotes from these early responses:

• "Good oversight, with backup info on both sides. Liked the mix of liberal and conservative statements."


• "It gave a sense of mission - perhaps more so than regular NewsTrust reviewing."


• "I like that we - the people - are reviewing the statements versus 'journalists'."
  
  
• "Enjoyed having my cognitions tested. Checking stories takes a lot of time."
  
  
• "As far as politics go, I don't see how anyone can get at the truth other than to do their own factual research."
  
  
• "I was hoping that people would contribute and comment on matters they are either experts in or have direct knowledge of."


• "Not interested in being a journalist, editor, or fact checker. I just want a service that helps me find good journalism. Rating an article after I've read it is quick and low-cost to me. But fact checking is too much like real work."


• "The editors' section was quick, well-written and to the point. I also liked that participants were also checking ... the editors."


• "There are some people with the time and enthusiasm to undertake the work, and they should be compensated for that effort. I am not one of them, and have no problem contributing a few $$/month to fund that activity."
  
  
• "I'm totally won over by TruthSquad - I think it has a LOT of potential."

Thanks to our partners and advisors
We're deeply grateful to our amazing partners at the Poynter Institute and advisor at FactCheck.org for their invaluable contributions to this project. 

In particular, we would like to thank Kelly McBride, Steve Myers and Julie Moos at Poynter Institute -- as well as Brooks Jackson at FactCheck.org. Heartfelt thanks to you all for making this project possible!

We asked our partners and advisors to share their general observations on why they participated in this pilot, what they learned from this experiment, what they found most and least useful about this approach -- and any other insights about this project.

Here are FactCheck.org director Brooks Jackson's personal comments about Truthsquad:

"FactCheck.org participated in this project because ordinary citizens need more help than they're getting from traditional news media to sort through the vast amount of disinformation to which they are exposed via the Internet and 24-hour cable talk networks. So far I would say the experiment is off to a solid start. The "verdicts" of the Truthsquad editors seem to me to be reasonable and based on good research. I'll be interested to learn how much of the research is the work of the "crowd" and how much comes from Truthsquad's paid staff.

One important observation. Even this brief initial experience has produced some pretty dramatic evidence of the limitations of crowd sourcing. The experience checking the Washington Times statement regarding a CitiGroup bonus shows that amateurs searching the Internet sometimes can't match the results obtained by an experienced staff reporter using old-fashioned shoe leather. In that case, one call to the reporter (or to Lew) might have produced the documentation needed to prove the accuracy of the claim."

Kelly McBride offered these thoughts as one of our editors on Truthsquad:

"It seems based on this pilot that citizens can learn fact-checking skills quite easily. The challenge is to motivate them to do this occasionally.

Some people love to do this stuff, but most are simply too busy. Adding more social gaming elements so folks accumulate points and prizes and compete against their friends - that might inspire some people."

Read Kelly's own report on Poynter: Truthsquad Shows We Can 'Crowdfight' Culture of Misinformation

Steve Myers also shared his reflections on being a Truthsquad editor:

"The Truthsquad showed the opportunities and challenges of crowdsourcing. It's possible to fact-check many of the statements that are made every day in the media. But will people go to the effort to dig it up? Some will; some won't.

Many of the users seemed to respond based on their preconceptions -- who said it, how the statement aligned with their political views and what news outlet published it. Some people were upfront about this; they said because Bill O'Reilly said this or the Washington Times reported that, that is why they ruled the way they did.

And yet some people did take an interest and dug in to find the material online. When I ran into a roadblock in researching something, someone else picked up where I left off and found the correct document, read it, and drew a conclusion that I ended up agreeing with.

In writing a couple of verdicts, I was acutely aware of the judgment calls I was making -- what was the underlying fact that had to be proven or disproven, for instance. The most important judgment call: how much weight should I assign to something that was perhaps grammatically or technically correct but misleading? These quotes proved the cliche that there's a grain of truth in every untruth."

Thanks to our funders
This project was made possible in part by a generous grant from Omidyar Network, which funded a six-month investigation of new ways to help people separate fact from fiction online. We're very grateful for their support, as well as to the MacArthur Foundation and our other funding partners at Ashoka and the Ayrshire Foundation.

The Ford Foundation also contributed indirectly to this project, through its support of Poynter's Sense-Making Project, which led to the participation of Kelly McBride and Steve Meyers.

Thanks to our participants and team
Our deepest thanks go to all our participants in this Truthsquad, as well as thousands of new visitors -- and hundreds of new members who signed up during our pilot. These new participants came from across party lines and seemed to integrate well with the NewsTrust community. Many thanks as well to our contributing editors Joey Baker, Kaizar Campwala, Kristin Gorski and Derek Hawkins, Jim Lang and many more for their inspiring participation in this project.

Last but not least, we are very grateful to our worldclass web development team, for their wonderful work in building Truthsquad: Subramanya Sastry, Caleb Waldorf, David Fox, created another great application of the NewsTrust platform in just a month, with the support of our staff editors Jon Mitchell and Kaizar Campwala. We're very lucky to have such a great team!

Next steps
This first pilot has given us a sense of what's possible -- and introduced our community to the discipline of factual verification, under the guidance of professionals from Poynter and Factcheck. Going forward, we will be posting new quotes to fact-check every Wednesday for the next few months (suggestions welcome: email us at truthsquad-at-newstrust-dot-net). But we can do better. Based on the positive response to this pilot, we would like to offer the Truthsquad service on an ongoing basis (we own the truthsquad.com domain).

To that end, we are looking for additional funds to provide Truthsquad on a daily basis this fall, through the mid-term elections. If you would like to support this project, please consider a donation to NewsTrust. Your contribution will help fight the rising tide of spin and misinformation on the Internet, as well as train citizens to evaluate the credibility of the news and information they find online.

We hope that Truthsquad can provide a useful fact-checking solution to the public, as well as help us all become more discerning about the news we consume.

Thanks for checking out Truthsquad!

-- by Fabrice Florin and Jon Mitchell, for the NewsTrust Team

 

Photo Credits: Fox News, News One, Associated Press, Good and Getty Images

Immigration News Hunt Results

Here are the results of our Immigration News Hunt, which NewsTrust hosted with our partners USA Today and their On Deadline blog, from July 19 to August 1, 2010. (see earlier blog post)

During the past two weeks, our community looked for good journalism on Arizona's controversial immigration law and its impact on local and national politics. NewsTrust hosts for this immigration topic were Kaizar Campwala, Kristin Gorski, and Jon Mitchell. Kaizar Campwala was managing editor and Fabrice Florin was executive editor.

Overview
Immigration has long been a heated political issue in America. It's tied to issues of security and economic prosperity, and raises many questions about national identity and citizenship.

Most recently, the immigration debate was rekindled with the passing of Arizona's new immigration bill, SB 1070, in April 2010. Among its provisions, the act "makes it a state misdemeanor crime for an alien to be in Arizona without carrying the required documents, bars state or local officials or agencies from restricting enforcement of federal immigration laws, and cracks down on those sheltering, hiring and transporting illegal aliens." (Wikipedia)

To sort through the political spin and develop a fact-based understanding of the Arizona bill and immigration issues, NewsTrust members teamed up with USA Today readers for two weeks. Together, we reviewed over 162 stories on immigration, posted 684 reviews, and fully rated 105 stories. We've highlighted some of the best of these stories below, with our take on how they inform and clarify the immigration debate.

Recommended Stories
Here are some of our top rated stories for this News Hunt:

NEWS

• The All-American Canal - 60 Minutes
• Immigration re-enters national debate - USA Today
• Immigration law author claims 60 percent of Arizona Hispanics support the measure - PolitiFact
• The 'Dangerous' Border: Actually One of America's Safest Places - Time
• Obama Gains Evangelical Allies on Immigration - New York Times
• Illegal immigrant profiles hard to discern from legal residents - Arizona Republic
• GOP Faces Internal Divide On Changes To Immigration - NPR
• What's a Little Marriage Fraud Between Amigos? - Village Voice
• Arizona's immigration law isn't the only one - Los Angeles Times
• Obama Administration Considers Bypassing Congress on Immigration Reform - ProPublica

OPINION

• In the fight over Arizona's immigration law, everybody loses - Washington Post
• Arizona, rogue state - Economist
• Borderlines - New Yorker
• Adios, Democrats - Slate
• Time for Obama to Put Up or Shut Up on Immigration - Pajamas Media
• No Win in Arizona - American Prospect
• Humane tweak to immigration enforcement - Dallas Morning News

For more recommended stories, check our full listing for this News Hunt.

News Comparisons
To highlight some of the important themes that emerged during the News Hunt, we compared stories on four different aspects of immigration: the legal and political debate surrounding Arizona's controversial new law, the economics of immigration, law enforcement and policy proposals for immigration reform.

Arizona Immigration Law: Legal and Political Debate
 On July 28th, a day before Arizona's controversial immigration law was due to go into effect, a federal judge issued an injunction that blocked key provisions of SB 1070. In a lawsuit between the U.S. Justice Department and the State of Arizona, Judge Susan Bolton ruled that the law would risk putting “a distinct, unusual and extraordinary” burden on legal resident aliens in Arizona. This decision provoked a frenzy of opinions about the role of the federal government in controlling illegal immigration.

Supporting the judge's ruling, the reliably left-of-center Nation gave readers their analysis of Arizona's SB 1070 law, arguing that all "[Judge] Bolton really did was to assert one of the most basic principles of Constitutional law: that the federal government gets to set immigration policy." Reviewer Thomas Rees gave the story a low rating, finding "its lack of real data negates its ability to inform the undecided or contrary thinker. It exists solely to stoke the fires of those who already believe in this particular point of view. Mr. Hearst would be proud."

Heather MacDonald writing in the National Review offered a dissenting perspective on what she deemed a fictitious ruling. "The real threat posed by S.B. 1070," MacDonald asserted, "was that it would disrupt the de facto amnesty that the executive branch has accorded to the vast majority of illegal aliens. It would start to implement congressional mandates and the public will that the immigration laws be enforced. For that reason, it had to be stopped." Not all NewsTrust reviewers were convinced by her arguments, as exemplified by William Gordon, who wrote "like many pundits she focused on the details of the law, if it were legal and misses the reason why it is not legal. She wholly misses the point of preemption in our federalist society in order to find demons in the Obama Administration."

While The Nation and National Review garnered mixed reactions, The Economist's Lexington column offered an opinion that was appreciated by most reviewers. The column cut through the rhetoric, writing that "at bottom the argument between Arizona and its critics is political. The stated aim of 1070 is to reduce the number of illegal immigrants, mainly by enforcing federal laws which local politicians accuse the federal government of neglecting. Although Mr Obama is in fact deporting more illegals (a total of about 400,000 a year) than George Bush did, that cuts little ice in Arizona because people know his eventual hope (or at least the one he dangles in front of Hispanic voters) is to give illegals a pathway to citizenship, not kick out as many as possible. Mr Obama’s policy was also Mr Bush’s, and is probably the only humane way forward. But in Arizona “amnesty” has been turned into a dirty word."

Economics of Immigration
 The immigration debate is inextricably tied to economic issues. High unemployment and strained government budgets have inflamed the conversation, with many Americans questioning the role illegal immigrants play in the U.S. economy. News media coverage of this issue varied greatly: some news outlets stoked the public's fears, while others worked to help citizens better understand the economics of immigration.

In a report that received mixed reviews on NewsTrust, The Arizona Republic, the state's largest newspaper, explores how illegal immigrants are often forced to operate in a 'shadow' economy. Though reviewer Gordon Oliver found the story "scattered" and "imprecise," other reviewers found the report commendable because it investigates a question that repeatedly surfaced during the News Hunt: "... whether illegal workers are a net boon to the economy because of the labor they contribute, or a drag because of the medical, education and other services they require?"

A number of news outlets focused on the role played by U.S. employers in providing jobs to illegal immigrants. The Wall Street Journal argued that employers are to some degree the victims, on one hand getting sanctioned for hiring illegals, and on the other facing Justice Department probes "for allegedly violating anti-discrimination laws by demanding too many identity documents from applicants who aren't U.S. citizens."

To address these competing pressures, two different sources, Truthdig and The Week, published opinion stories advocating for the expansion of guest worker programs in the U.S. As explained by Will Wilkinson in The Week, "By establishing a common labor market in which Americans and Mexicans (Canadians too!) may range freely, living and working where they please, we can channel the commercial energy of integration while maintaining distinctly separate citizenship." Longtime reviewer Patricia L'Herrou found the piece "thoughtfully based on reason, and a viable model in the EU."

History has shown that people will migrate to find better economic opportunity. In a story that reviewer Alice Lake felt gave "a glimpse of both sides of migrant worker reality," the New York Times took a step back to explore the phenomenon of migration from a global perspective. The piece highlighted the difficulty in trying to stem the tide of migration, explaining that "from the Arizona Statehouse to Calabria, critics warn that porous borders hurt native workers, threaten local cultures and increase crime. But even a downturn of rare magnitude did less than expected to slow the flows, revealing instead the persistent forces that keep migrants venturing abroad."

Law Enforcement
 Much of the news coverage we reviewed examined the real challenges of enforcing immigration laws. The Village Voice featured an intimate look at how “some young, assimilated illegal immigrants” married U.S. citizens, also Hispanic and often friends, in an attempt to become legal.

To gain perspective by looking at the past, an Arizona Republic article on the state's recent history with racial profiling warned that, in implementing SB 1070, police departments had to be careful to “never violate the public trust again.”

Looking at what could be a massive influx of newly arrested illegal immigrants, reporters at the Arizona Capitol Times constructed an insightful multimedia piece on how sheriffs and local government predicted how they would shoulder its cost; this piece showcased many different viewpoints in an unbiased way, and this successfully illustrated how complex the law's enforcement could be.

Not all articles were clarifying, however. An editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle about sanctuary cities didn't explain what they were and didn't clearly show how SB 1070 would affect them. And an interview on Fox News veered from a more factual, reasoned conservative source to focus on right-leaning political commentary, thereby losing points on credibility, balance and information quality.

Another law enforcement issue which surfaced during our search is the federal “Secure Communities” program, a national fingerprint-database program that's already in effect. The Associated Press wrote a well-sourced, factual and informative piece on this program, pointing out that it doesn't rely on racial profiling and results in used effectively to arrest and deport illegal immigrants with criminal records.

Immigration Reform
Most of the stories we reviewed on this theme observed that SB 1070 has provided lawmakers with a strong impetus for passing national legislation to fix the country's broken immigration system. But when it came to discussion of the means and rationale for enacting sweeping immigration reform, agreement was far thinner.

The Texas Observer, an independent bi-weekly from Austin, argued that Texas, which has the longest international border of any U.S. state, should take a leadership role in reshaping the country’s immigration policies. It took a three-pronged approach: build a stronger social and economic relationship with Mexico; acknowledge that the U.S.-Mexico border can’t be “secured” and stop spending money to seal it; and redefine what makes an immigrant legal or illegal.

The Miami Herald, meanwhile, contended in an editorial that the case for immigration reform is as strong as it has ever been and that good ideas already exist -- what’s missing is leadership. The paper compared President Barack Obama’s calls for reform to those of his predecessor, saying the country has only grown more impatient since former President George W. Bush made the drive for immigration overhaul and failed. “In short,” the Herald said, “the delay has cost us money, created ill-will with our neighbors and produced bad laws -- without fixing the problem.” The problem, it concluded, is that lawmakers are too afraid of political backlash if they try to tackle the issue.

The Economist picked up on the same theme, but painted a somewhat bleaker picture. "President Obama and Democratic leaders are killing any chance of Congress approving an immigration reform bill by alienating Republican legislators whose support is crucial," The Economist said. "And the Justice Department’s lawsuit over SB 1070 only made matters worse," it added, confusing the roughly 60 percent of the country that approves of the new law. Obama’s plan -- which contains calls for a pathway to legal status for unauthorized immigrants -- risks failure if Democrats continue to make it an issue for the midterm elections.

Other stories departed from the politics behind reform and offered different perspectives on what measures would be most beneficial to the United States and immigrants alike.

The Sun Sentinel said a guest worker program should be an essential aspect of reform, and attempted to dismiss claims that such a program would take jobs away from American citizens.

A Wall Street Journal op-ed took a more focused view, saying the United States should prioritize talent and special skills in the individuals it allows into the country. “The point is to attract more individuals with the potential to enhance American innovation and competitiveness, increasing the odds for economic prosperity and rising living standards for all down the road,” author Darrell West wrote. Immigration reform has failed so far because reform’s advocates have not convinced a skeptical public that newcomers contribute to the country’s prosperity, he said. “Instead of viewing immigration as a brain gain,” West said, “ordinary folks see the economic and social costs as broad, and the benefits as narrow.”

In a major departure from other sources, Newsweek said immigration could very well fade as a hot-button issue in the next decade, making reform unnecessary except for the short term. Declining fertility rates in Mexico could dramatically decrease the need for Mexicans to come to the United States to seek work because they can’t find it in their own country. “All this angst may be an overreaction,” it said.

Findings by Medium
Each day during the first week of this Immigration News Hunt, we compared stories from different media: news reports from major print publications and wire services on Monday, national broadcast media on Tuesday, online and blogs on Wednesday and local Arizona media on Thursday. Here are examples of noteworthy stories from each group: (see more in our earlier blog post)

National Print Media (Newspapers, Wires, Mags.)

• Immigration re-enters national debate - USA Today
• Farmers Tackle Immigration Issues - Wall Street Journal

National Broadcast Media (TV and Radio)

• GOP Faces Internal Divide On Changes To Immigration - NPR
• Ariz. Immigration Law Roundtable - CBS News

Online and Blogs

• Is Arizona's New Immigration Law Preempted? - Balkinization
• Should the U.S. Restrict Immigration? - Cato Institute

Local Arizona Media

• Open season: Arpaio plans massive sweep, tent city expansion - Arizona Capital Times
• SB 1070 Lawsuit Preview - KJZZ

For more stories by medium, check out our previous blog post on Immigration, or filter our full story listing on Immigration.

Bad Journalism
As part of our educational mission, we try to highlight examples of bad journalism in News Hunts like these. As we searched for great journalism on immigration, we also looked for news and opinions that seemed particularly superficial, biased or irresponsible on this topic.

On the top of our list was an opinion news clip of MSNBC host Ed Schultz's commentary against Fox News: as USA Today reviewer George Horen points out, Schultz "says nothing about the subject but is critical of other news reporting. He is just like a lot of the news people that sit in a chair and read some one else's writings." We also found plenty of bad journalism from the other side of the political spectrum, such as this Fox News clip using immigration to score political points in their case against the Obama Administration.

Here's a sampling of some of the worst offenders:

• Malkin defends immigration law - MSNBC
• Arizona law was already working - Glenn Beck
• What Arizona Ruling Means for Obama - Fox News
• Illegal Aliens Getting Away With Mayhem and Murder - Right Side News

For more questionable stories on immigration, check our least trusted stories for this News Hunt.

Thanks to our partners
We'd like to thank the wonderful team at USA Today for partnering with us for this News Hunt. In particular, we're very grateful to these individuals for their special contributions to this project: Doug Stanglin, editor of the On Deadline blog, as well as Anne Willette, Desair Brown and Chet Czarniak, to name but a few. Together, they went beyond the call of duty to promote this experiment widely on USAToday.com, from home page badges to special blog posts, emails and widgets. We really appreciate their great advice, initiative and inspiring commitment to this cause.

This project was made possible in part by a generous grant from Omidyar Network, which funded a six-month investigation of new ways to help people separate fact from fiction online. We're very grateful for their support, as well as to our other backers at the MacArthur Foundation, Ashoka and the Ayrshire Foundation.

Thanks to our reviewers
We're also deeply grateful to all our reviewers for participating in this Immigration News Hunt. We welcomed hundreds of USA Today readers who signed up for this investigation. These new members added valuable new perspectives to the NewsTrust community, and seemed to share our belief that good journalism is critical to maintaining a vibrant democracy. Our deepest appreciation goes to our great community hosts Kristin Gorski and Derek Hawkins, and staff host Jon Mitchell for their thoughtful posts and reviews about immigration. We would also like to credit them here for their individual contributions to this report: Kristin wrote about Law Enforcement, Derek wrote about Immigration Reform. Managing editor Kaizar Campwala wrote about Law and Politics, and the Economics of Immigration -- and also wrote and edited this blog post, along with Fabrice Florin. Thank you all for your great insights!

This News Hunt and partnership with USA Today was a great opportunity to test our evolving "trust network" platform, which enables citizens and journalists to collaboratively curate the news. This project demonstrated the effectiveness of this 'pro-am' approach, as we all worked closely with each other to learn more about immigration. In the process, we became more informed and engaged citizens, and can now make better decisions about this important and complex issue. We look forward to expanding our news curation platform in coming months, and hope to work with you all again very soon!

-- by Kaizar Campwala, with Fabrice Florin, Kristin Gorski and Derek Hawkins

Join the Truthsquad!
How can you tell fact from fiction on the Internet? Join the Truthsquad, a community fact-checking experiment led by NewsTrust, with the help of our partners at the Poynter Institute and our advisors at FactCheck.org.

The week of August 2nd, our community is fact-checking controversial quotes from politicians and pundits, and we hope you participate as well. Each day this week, our editors are posting daily quotes to research, and asking our members whether they think they are true or false. These short quotes are excerpted from recent news reports, opinions or political ads suggested by our advisors and partners.

Give Truthsquad a try. Here's one particular quote we fact-checked earlier this week, which will let you practice what you learned from our Immigration News Hunt:

• Decline in illegal immigration to U.S. "due to the recession," not enforcement
  By Dick Morris, Fox News consultant
  True or False?

Read more about Truthsquad on the NewsTrust blog. Enjoy!

Introducing Truthsquad

How can you tell fact from fiction on the Internet? Join the Truthsquad, a community fact-checking experiment led by NewsTrust, with the help of our partners at the Poynter Institute, our advisors at FactCheck.org -- and the generous support of Omidyar Network and MacArthur Foundation.

UPDATE: Check our full report about Truthsquad on the NewsTrust blog.

For our first pilot the week of August 2nd, 2010, we invited our members to help fact-check controversial quotes from politicians and pundits. Each day of that week, our editors featured daily quotes to research, and asked the community whether they were true or false. These short quotes were excerpted from recent news reports, opinions or political ads suggested by our community and partners.

Each quote page displayed links to factual evidence that supported or opposed the statement. We invited our community to review these links before giving an answer. We encouraged participants to change their answers at any time, as we all found more facts and posted new links. We also held lively discussions of the quotes in the comment sections.

Throughout this pilot, we updated this blog post to add more stories to fact-check and share our verdict. Our Truthsquad overview page now lists twelve controversial quotes for review. If you haven't already, you are welcome to fact-check them as well. Before you do, be sure to read our FAQ and the 'Learn More' section below (and try not to read the verdicts on this page).

We will post the overall pilot results and our findings on our blog on Wed. August 11th.

Each Wednesday this month, we will also post a new quote to fact-check. What should we research next? Suggest a quote for next week’s Truthsquad to "editors-at-newstrust-dot-net."

If you would like to support this project, please make a donation, so we can can continue to provide this service through the end of the year.

Learn More
For more detailed instructions on how to participate in Truthsquad, read our FAQ. To learn more about fact-checking and finding good journalism online, we invite you to read our guides, especially these:

• Tools of the Trade from FactCheckEd.org (video)
• PolitiFact's Guide to Fact-checking from PolitiFact (video)
• Crap Detection 101 from Howard Rheingold (NewsTrust board member)
• Think Like A Journalist from Michael Bugeja (NewsTrust advisor)

SPOILER ALERT: Be sure to answer the quotes listed on our Truthsquad overview page before you read the verdicts below.

Truthsquad Verdicts
Each day during our pilot, the Truthsquad editors (Fabrice Florin, Kelly McBride, Jon Mitchell and Steve Myers) evaluated our collective answers. We gave our verdict when we had enough factual evidence to pronounce a quote true or false.

Here are our verdicts for the twelve quotes we fact-checked during this pilot.

• "Seniors guaranteed Medicare benefits will remain the same" under the Affordable Care Act
  By Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services
  Our verdict: HALF TRUE


• Decline in illegal immigration to U.S. "due to the recession," not enforcement
  By Dick Morris, Fox News consultant
  Our verdict: MOSTLY FALSE


• Environmental impact of the oil spill "much less than everyone feared."
  By Jacqueline Michel, Geochemist
  Our verdict: MOSTLY TRUE


• "87 million Americans will be forced out of their coverage" by Obama's health care plan
  By Orrin Hatch, U.S. Senator
  Our verdict: FALSE


• "Meek lobbied for big tobacco against children's healthcare."
  By Jeff Greene (D-FL), U.S. Senate candidate
  Our verdict: MOSTLY FALSE


• "Warren Buffett called Greene's scheme 'financial weapons of mass destruction.'"
  By Kendrick Meek (D-FL), U.S. Senate candidate
  Our verdict: FALSE


• "The 'Bush tax cuts' ... remain the single largest cause of America's structural deficit."
  By Fareed Zakaria, Washington Post
  Our verdict: TRUE


• "Norton pushed the largest tax hike in Colorado history."
  By Americans For Job Security
  Our verdict: MOSTLY FALSE


• Obama's choice for budget chief "received more than $900,000 from Citigroup"
  By Jim McElhatton, The Washington Times
  Our verdict: TRUE


• "CIA and Google investing in "a company that monitors the web... to predict the future."
  By Noah Shachtman, Wired
  Our verdict: TRUE


• "Crime is totally out of control" in Phoenix
  By Bill O'Reilly, Fox News
  Our verdict: FALSE


• "There's no evidence of any significant concentration of oil that we haven't accounted for."
  By Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
  Our verdict: FALSE

Correction: We have amended our verdict for the Washington Times story stating that Jacob Lew, Obama's choice for budget chief, received a $900,000 bonus from Citigroup. We now conclude that this statement is TRUE, after verifying factual evidence from the State Department, which supports that claim. Our original verdict for this claim was "Half True." We regret any inconvenience which our preliminary verdict may have caused.

What do you think?
How do you like Truthsquad? Add your comments below, or email your comments and suggestions to "feedback-at-newstrust.net," after you've tried fact-checking some of the quotes from our first pilot. What were your first impressions? What do you like most? least? what could be improved? which of these quotes do you find most interesting? were they easy or hard to answer?

Next steps
Now that this pilot is over, we will analyze the results and raise funds for more Truthsquads in the fall. During that time, we will continue to post a new quote every Wednesday, on the Truthsquad overview page.

What should we fact-check next? If you come across a good quote to research on Truthsquad, please email it to our editors at "editors-at-newstrust.net." We're looking for short, recent quotes from politicians or pundits, on public interest topics in the news. These should be 'statements of fact' (not opinions). Our members should be able to verify it on their own, by checking links to factual evidence supporting or opposing each statement. Quotes should be no longer than thirty-five words, and the full text of the quote should available online, from a trusted source.

Thanks to our Team, Partners and Community
Many thanks to our worldclass team, for their wonderful work in building Truthsquad: Subramanya Sastry, Caleb Waldorf, David Fox, Jon Mitchell and Kaizar Campwala created another great application of the NewsTrust platform in just a month.

Many thanks as well to our whole community, who helped us design this service through surveys, emails and phone conferences over the past two years. We're very grateful to all our members, advisors, partners and friends who took the time to propose new ideas, check our early designs, test our site and share their invaluable feedback.

Thanks to our Partners and Funders
We also really appreciate the great support of our partners at the Poynter Institute (Kelly McBride, Steve Myers and Julie Moos) and our advisors at FactCheck.org (Brooks Jackson), for collaborating with us on this experiment.

Last but not least, we're deeply grateful to our backers at Omidyar Network and the MacArthur Foundation for their wonderful support of this project. Thanks to them, Truthsquad offers a whole new way for citizens to inform and engage each other on public issues, and tell apart fact from fiction on the web.

Make a donation

Donate today so we can host more programs like Truthsquad in the fall.

We hope that Truthsquad can provide a useful fact-checking solution to the public, as well as help participants like us become more discerning about what the news they get on the web. This first pilot should give us all an introduction to the discipline of factual verification, under the guidance of professionals from Poynter and Factcheck. If this pilot is successful, we are prepared to offer the Truthsquad service on an ongoing basis in the fall (we own the truthsquad.com domain).

Thanks for your interest in Truthsquad!

-- by Fabrice Florin, Jon Mitchell and the NewsTrust Team