jcstearns:

Join the Money, Media and Elections National “Data Happy Hour”

What are you up to on Thursday night from 5-8 pm? 

On Thursday we are working with our friends at the Sunlight Foundation to host a national Money, Media and Elections “Data Happy Hour”. Sunlight is opening their offices in Boston and DC and we are inviting people into the Free Press offices in Western Massachusetts. (You can also join in live anywhere via a video chat!) More info is available here: http://www.freepress.net/blog/2012/10/19/join-money-media-and-elections-national-data-happy-hour

We’ll be using the new interactive PoliticalAdSleuth.com database to input data from the political files and make it searchable, sortable and more useful for journalists, advocates and citizens. No tech skills needed.  

RSVP on Facebook here or drop me a line at jstearns@freepress.net. 

Boston, Mass. - http://www.meetup.com/SunlightFoundation/Boston-MA/817782/

Washington, D.C. - https://www.facebook.com/events/327298567367711/

Western Massachusetts - https://www.facebook.com/events/372986749447927

nyt-agenda:

See all of the fact-checks from NYT reporters.

In addition to these fact-checks from NYT reporters, you can also check out fact-checks from Politfact, who used a handy Truth-o-Meter to rank how true the candidates statements were during the first Presidential debate Wednesday night.

Looking for tips on doing your own fact-checking?  Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler have pulled together a toolkit for journalists to counter misinformation  for CJR’s Swing State Project. You can also check out a video on C-SPAN of Nyhan discussing how journalists can increase the likelihood that facts will win out.

(Source: nyt-agenda-blog)

pewinternet:

Obama Outpaces Romney in Direct Voter Communications on Web, Social Media

At the time of analysis (June 4-17, 2012), the Obama campaign had public accounts on nine separate platforms: Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram, Spotify and two accounts on Twitter (@BarackObama and @Obama2012).

That is twice that of the Romney campaign, which had public accounts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Google+. Romney has since expanded his presence, adding accounts on Tumblr and Spotify.

 The Obama campaign is also substantially more active in these domains. Across all the platforms studied, the Obama campaign posted nearly four times as much content as the Romney campaign-614 Obama posts compared with 168 posts for Romney.

The gap in activity was greatest on Twitter. Romney averaged one tweet a day. Obama averaged 29 tweets a day, (17 per day on @BarackObama, the Twitter Account associated with his presidency, and 12 on @Obama2012).

New analysis from the Project for Excellence in Journalism: Read more

futurejournalismproject:

Committing Acts of Journalism

Via the Huffington Post:

CNN’s Soledad O’Brien did something which is extremely rare in television news these days: she actually did her job…

…The action took place Tuesday afternoon, as O’Brien was interviewing former New Hampshire governor and George W. Bush Chief of Staff John Sununu. With the actual documents in hand, O’Brien pointed out the striking similarities between the Medicare plans of Mitt Romney and his controversial vice presidential running mate Paul Ryan, who seeks to change the government guaranteed health care program into a voucher system.

“But it’s very different,” Sununu insisted. “For example, when Obama gutted Medicare by taking $717 billion out of it, the Romney plan does not do that. The Ryan plan mimicked part of the Obama package there, the Romney plan does not. That’s a big difference.”

O’Brien essentially accused him of lying:

“I understand that this is a Republican talking point because I’ve heard it repeated over and over again. These numbers have been debunked, as you know, by the Congressional Budget Office. … I can tell you what it says. It (Obama’s Medicare plan) cuts a reduction in the expected rate of growth, which you know, not cutting budgets to the elderly. Benefits will be improved.”

At this point Sununu, clearly agitated, became nasty and indignant, angered by O’Brien’s insistence on fact over fiction:

“Soledad, stop this!” Sununu replied, raising his voice. “All you’re doing is mimicking the stuff that comes out of the White House and gets repeated on the Democratic blog boards out there.”

O’Brien continued reading from the Romney and Obama plans verbatim, and cited Factcheck.org, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and CNN’s own independent analysis in refuting Sununu’s deceptive rhetoric.

Read through for the rest of the exchange. The video’s available as well.

jcstearns:

“A gold mine of data will soon be available to help make our political system more transparent, thanks to the Federal Communication Commission. But this gold will be useless unless it’s extracted, shaped, and polished.”

Great How-to for mining political data out of the FCC’s new database and some ideas for what else needs to be done.

(via New rules on political ads: how to mine them : CJR)

After months of discussion, the FCC has made the political files available online. The political files include information about ad buys that political campaigns have made at local TV stations. For more background on the political files, check out our previous ONA Issues posts, here, here and here. 

iWatch News and OpenSecrets.org have just launched Source 2012, a new Tumblr that is following the money behind the 2012 elections.  They’re posting interesting infographics and charts that look at who’s donating to the campaigns.

source2012:

Meet the bundlers … where you can

A new infographic by the Center for Responsive Politics reflects the latest information about the elite fundraisers collecting millions of dollars for presidential candidates.

On the Democratic side, we know that 444 bundlers have collected at least $72.4 million for President Barack Obama. On the GOP end, we don’t know much. That’s because no Republican candidates have volunteered any information about their bundlers beyond what they have to.

Fore more information on presidential bundlers, visit the OpenSecrets Blog.