Re: “Can you handle the truth?,” May 31 Perspective article.
Google recently announced a new program – which isn’t currently in use – that would list search results based on accuracy, rather than popularity. (Thinkstock by Getty Images)
How sad to see that Google has no plans to launch this search engine. This is a subscription service for which I would gladly pay.
I am one of the 65 percent who believes that adding the word “News” to the Fox name does not make it news. If you think that we are picking on Fox News, ask yourself why the network is so opposed to sorting that is based on facts without a particular story ever being mentioned.
Read the book “Nudge: Improving Decision Making About Health, Wealth, and Happiness” by Richard Thaler. Deep pockets have a vested interest in promotion of misinformation.
I would value a service that makes it easier to check facts to support my decision-making. Go, Google!
Bobbi Weber, Westminster
This letter was published in the June 7 edition.To Deborah Frazier, I can handle the truth; I just wish I could get it.
Walter Cronkite is dead and we don’t get the news anymore; we are spoon-fed an organization’s opinion about the news. I tune in to a little of everything trying to find the truth that hides somewhere in the middle of all the blarney from left and right. I also use factcheck.org to sort out the bad e-mails I get from various people.
Politifact.org, which Frazier mentioned, was new to me, so I checked them out and found that Fox News is mostly untrue 58 percent of the time. Also, I discovered that NBC has an abysmal rating of 44 percent, and that the website chooses not to even rank MSNBC though one of its stars, Rachel Maddow, gets a failing grade of 50 percent mostly untrue. How about the rest of that staff?
No wonder our 24/7, dialed-in society has such a deficit of real knowledge.
Mark Sandstedt, Grand Junction
Clearly, Mark Twain’s adage needs to be updated.
In addition to “lies, damned lies, and statistics,” we need to postulate that there are used-car salesmen, siding salesmen, and politicians; and, in a much lower circle of hell, “independent fact-checkers,” Bill O’Reilly, and George Stephanopoulos.
Steve Baur, Westminster
This letter was published in the June 7 edition.
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