Santiago Bilinkis l Risk and Reward - Trying to live a life out of the comfort zone

Yesterday, in a way too brief pass by Miami, I met Andy Freire. And while we talked, two interesting topics arised, so I will publish one today and another one next Saturday.

In our conversation, Andy mentioned an American organization called Factcheck. Factcheck is a project of the University of Pennsylvania that “aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics.

What they do is great.

A few years back there was a movie in Argentina called: “Las patas de la mentira” (”The legs of lying”). That movie was a compilation of speeches by politicians where they said aberrant lies or had ridiculous “lapses”. In fact in the U.S. George W. had so many of them they even needed to create a word to name them: they are called bushisms (you can see lots of them on Youtube). Ex-post compilations are funny and help to make evident how many politicians deceit and manipulate.

But what Factcheck does is much better! They check real-time what the candidates are saying during the Presidential Campaign and pass their words through the filter of the best practices in journalism and scholarship: They check the facts and unmask the lies.

They are so influential, McCain recently devoted a TV ad to talk specifically about something published by them.

I feel a little bit of healthy envy to see how they manage to fundraise to have the amount and seniority of people they have doing it.

How nice it would be to have something like that in our countries, don’t you think?

Image: mparker21311