Showing posts with label check. Show all posts
Showing posts with label check. Show all posts
Wednesday, 17 April 2024
Saturday, 5 February 2022
Fighting fake news with fact check has not been a successful project
Fighting fake news with fact check has not been a successful project and emotions can any day overwhelm the domain of truth writes DILIP MANDAL in The Print
During the debate over the motion of thanks to the President’s address in Parliament, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi made several good points in his speech. He raised critical issues like the importance of federalism, widespread joblessness, inequality, crony capitalism in India, and unfulfilled development promises. He also talked about the sacrifices made by his family and ancestors. Congress supporters as well as Left and liberal secularists are going gaga over Gandhi’s speech and talking in superlatives. This is fine.
Gandhi’s extempore speech, without the use of a teleprompter, was laced with conviction and courage.
But politics, unlike debating society, is not only about oratory and being convincing and logical or even about telling the truth. More so in India of today, where in Narendra Modi, Gandhi has an opponent whose claim to fame is his glorified ability to strike an emotional chord with the people.
Prime Minister Modi has made and is still making two sets of promises. One set of promises are for the larger audiences, those who are not in the BJP fold. The second set of Modi’s promises are for the BJP’s core voters, the insiders.
The written manifesto BJP’s isn’t bothered about
Let’s look at first set of promises as per the BJP’s 2014 Lok Sabha election manifesto.
1. Price Rise: Will stop hoarding and black marketing. Special courts to stop hoarding. Price stabilisation fund.
2. Employment: Jobs to 2 crore youth every year.
3. Health: Drinking water for all. AIIMS-like institutions in all states
4. Smart Cities: Will create 100 new smart cities with free wi-fi and world-class facilities
5. Housing: Pucca house for everyone by 2022
6. Infrastructure: Bullet train, freight corridors, Sagar Mala project, upgraded connectivity of Northeast and J&K with the rest of India.
7. Education: Raising public spending on education to 6 per cent of GDP. Establishing national e-library
8. Rural Development: Identifying 100 of the most backward districts and bringing them at par with developed districts
9. E-governance: Broadband connectivity in all villages. Digitalising all government records.
10. Women: 33 per cent reservation for women through constitutional amendment
11. Electoral reform: Electoral reforms to eliminate criminals. Evolve a method of holding Assembly and Lok Sabha elections simultaneously.
The BJP government started work on some of these promises and can also claim deliveries. But even the BJP does not make them poll issues anymore. It is hard to recall the last time any senior BJP leader even talked about these promises in political rallies.
My argument is that the BJP does not identify itself with these issues anymore. They are simply packaging material used for impression management.
So, when Rahul Gandhi talks about BJP’s failures in health, Make in India, education, employment, manufacturing sector or on mitigating inequality, he is hitting the BJP where it doesn’t hurt the party. The BJP is not even claiming to have performed in these fields. Whatever it has done are side shows that even the BJP does not believe in promoting.
So, what are the BJP’s main offerings? It is this question that brings us to the second set of BJP’s promises.
Unwritten promises the BJP is fulfilling
These are the promises that the party makes to its core constituencies, its faithful voters. These promises often don’t end up in the BJP’s election manifesto. The party goes into an unwritten agreement with its core voters, promising that these will be delivered, come what may. These promises are like construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura, Uniform Civil Code, abrogation of Article 370, cow protection, ‘saving’ Hindu girls from the so-called “love jihad”, keeping Muslim ‘refugees’ in check, promoting Sanskrit, Yoga and Ayurveda, and so on and so forth.
The BJP has delivered on each of these promises. With the Triple Talaq law, it has delivered half of Uniform Civil Code, which is work in progress for the BJP. Kashi Corridor’s development has made Gyanvapi mosque almost invisible. The BJP has assuaged the sentiments of the Kashmiri Pandits and the Brahmins by dismantling the statehood and assembly of J&K. One can easily argue that these are not the real issues as they have nothing to do with people’s welfare, health, education, job or infrastructure.
But to say so will be an underestimation of India’s political reality. Consider this: there is almost zero possibility of someone in mainland India dying in a terror attack, and yet, the BJP can make fighting terrorism a big issue as we saw in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, when Modi-led BJP campaign played the Pulwama attack to the hilt. Any such attack is by and large a case of intelligence failure, but that argument was lost in the cacophony of counter attack and macho nationalism that Modi, BJP leaders and the media drove incessantly until the end of the election. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the biggest casualty was the BJP’s 2014 election manifesto. Nobody was interested in putting out a report card, assessing the government’s delivery on the promises it had made to register an unprecedented victory five years before.
You can’t fact-check emotions
In his book Nervous States, British political scientist William Davies argues, “Experts and facts no longer seem capable of settling arguments to the extent that they once did. Objective claims about the economy, society, the human body and nature can no longer be successfully insulated from emotions.” He cites various events in recent history to argue that the 17th century enlightenment ideas of experts and facts are now losing steam, and the institutions that should be beyond the fray of politics of sentiments and emotions are withering away.
In such a scenario, when emotions and feelings have become more overpowering, Rahul Gandhi is trying to become a fact-checker and a hermit who talks about GDP, growth and human development. He might be telling the truth, but will that sufficiently counter the emotional pitching of the BJP? We don’t have any template to answer this question, but fighting fake news with fact check has not been a successful project. If fake news confirms the ideas and emotions of an individual or a group, then it travels far and wide. Fact check, on the other hand, reaches a limited audience as it targets the thinking faculties and misses the feelings and emotions. And emotions will, and do, overwhelm the domain of truth on any given day.
Despite all the praises and claps Rahul Gandhi got for his fiery speech, his task remains quite difficult.
Journalist and editor William Davis has an advice, which can be useful for Rahul Gandhi and for all the rationalists and liberals — “Rather than denigrate the influence of feelings in society today, we need to get better at listening to them and learning from them. Instead of bemoaning the influx of emotions into politics, we should value democracy’s capacity to give voice to fear, pain and anxiety that might otherwise be diverted in far more destructive directions. If we’re to steer through the new epoch, and rediscover something more stable beyond it, we need, above all, to understand it.”
During the debate over the motion of thanks to the President’s address in Parliament, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi made several good points in his speech. He raised critical issues like the importance of federalism, widespread joblessness, inequality, crony capitalism in India, and unfulfilled development promises. He also talked about the sacrifices made by his family and ancestors. Congress supporters as well as Left and liberal secularists are going gaga over Gandhi’s speech and talking in superlatives. This is fine.
Gandhi’s extempore speech, without the use of a teleprompter, was laced with conviction and courage.
But politics, unlike debating society, is not only about oratory and being convincing and logical or even about telling the truth. More so in India of today, where in Narendra Modi, Gandhi has an opponent whose claim to fame is his glorified ability to strike an emotional chord with the people.
Prime Minister Modi has made and is still making two sets of promises. One set of promises are for the larger audiences, those who are not in the BJP fold. The second set of Modi’s promises are for the BJP’s core voters, the insiders.
The written manifesto BJP’s isn’t bothered about
Let’s look at first set of promises as per the BJP’s 2014 Lok Sabha election manifesto.
1. Price Rise: Will stop hoarding and black marketing. Special courts to stop hoarding. Price stabilisation fund.
2. Employment: Jobs to 2 crore youth every year.
3. Health: Drinking water for all. AIIMS-like institutions in all states
4. Smart Cities: Will create 100 new smart cities with free wi-fi and world-class facilities
5. Housing: Pucca house for everyone by 2022
6. Infrastructure: Bullet train, freight corridors, Sagar Mala project, upgraded connectivity of Northeast and J&K with the rest of India.
7. Education: Raising public spending on education to 6 per cent of GDP. Establishing national e-library
8. Rural Development: Identifying 100 of the most backward districts and bringing them at par with developed districts
9. E-governance: Broadband connectivity in all villages. Digitalising all government records.
10. Women: 33 per cent reservation for women through constitutional amendment
11. Electoral reform: Electoral reforms to eliminate criminals. Evolve a method of holding Assembly and Lok Sabha elections simultaneously.
The BJP government started work on some of these promises and can also claim deliveries. But even the BJP does not make them poll issues anymore. It is hard to recall the last time any senior BJP leader even talked about these promises in political rallies.
My argument is that the BJP does not identify itself with these issues anymore. They are simply packaging material used for impression management.
So, when Rahul Gandhi talks about BJP’s failures in health, Make in India, education, employment, manufacturing sector or on mitigating inequality, he is hitting the BJP where it doesn’t hurt the party. The BJP is not even claiming to have performed in these fields. Whatever it has done are side shows that even the BJP does not believe in promoting.
So, what are the BJP’s main offerings? It is this question that brings us to the second set of BJP’s promises.
Unwritten promises the BJP is fulfilling
These are the promises that the party makes to its core constituencies, its faithful voters. These promises often don’t end up in the BJP’s election manifesto. The party goes into an unwritten agreement with its core voters, promising that these will be delivered, come what may. These promises are like construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura, Uniform Civil Code, abrogation of Article 370, cow protection, ‘saving’ Hindu girls from the so-called “love jihad”, keeping Muslim ‘refugees’ in check, promoting Sanskrit, Yoga and Ayurveda, and so on and so forth.
The BJP has delivered on each of these promises. With the Triple Talaq law, it has delivered half of Uniform Civil Code, which is work in progress for the BJP. Kashi Corridor’s development has made Gyanvapi mosque almost invisible. The BJP has assuaged the sentiments of the Kashmiri Pandits and the Brahmins by dismantling the statehood and assembly of J&K. One can easily argue that these are not the real issues as they have nothing to do with people’s welfare, health, education, job or infrastructure.
But to say so will be an underestimation of India’s political reality. Consider this: there is almost zero possibility of someone in mainland India dying in a terror attack, and yet, the BJP can make fighting terrorism a big issue as we saw in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, when Modi-led BJP campaign played the Pulwama attack to the hilt. Any such attack is by and large a case of intelligence failure, but that argument was lost in the cacophony of counter attack and macho nationalism that Modi, BJP leaders and the media drove incessantly until the end of the election. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the biggest casualty was the BJP’s 2014 election manifesto. Nobody was interested in putting out a report card, assessing the government’s delivery on the promises it had made to register an unprecedented victory five years before.
You can’t fact-check emotions
In his book Nervous States, British political scientist William Davies argues, “Experts and facts no longer seem capable of settling arguments to the extent that they once did. Objective claims about the economy, society, the human body and nature can no longer be successfully insulated from emotions.” He cites various events in recent history to argue that the 17th century enlightenment ideas of experts and facts are now losing steam, and the institutions that should be beyond the fray of politics of sentiments and emotions are withering away.
In such a scenario, when emotions and feelings have become more overpowering, Rahul Gandhi is trying to become a fact-checker and a hermit who talks about GDP, growth and human development. He might be telling the truth, but will that sufficiently counter the emotional pitching of the BJP? We don’t have any template to answer this question, but fighting fake news with fact check has not been a successful project. If fake news confirms the ideas and emotions of an individual or a group, then it travels far and wide. Fact check, on the other hand, reaches a limited audience as it targets the thinking faculties and misses the feelings and emotions. And emotions will, and do, overwhelm the domain of truth on any given day.
Despite all the praises and claps Rahul Gandhi got for his fiery speech, his task remains quite difficult.
Journalist and editor William Davis has an advice, which can be useful for Rahul Gandhi and for all the rationalists and liberals — “Rather than denigrate the influence of feelings in society today, we need to get better at listening to them and learning from them. Instead of bemoaning the influx of emotions into politics, we should value democracy’s capacity to give voice to fear, pain and anxiety that might otherwise be diverted in far more destructive directions. If we’re to steer through the new epoch, and rediscover something more stable beyond it, we need, above all, to understand it.”
Thursday, 7 June 2018
The Brexit myth of no-strings frictionless trade
Chris Giles in The Financial Times
Take a wooden pallet and stick two sets of mundane goods on to it — Chinese plastic cutlery and British cuddly toys. As it trucks towards Dover, ask yourself the following question: how will this consignment enter the EU after Brexit?
Take a wooden pallet and stick two sets of mundane goods on to it — Chinese plastic cutlery and British cuddly toys. As it trucks towards Dover, ask yourself the following question: how will this consignment enter the EU after Brexit?
The answer is more complicated than you think, but serves as a simplified guide to the costs and benefits of different future trading models. British MPs, preparing to debate these matters next week, might want to take note.
Today, there are no checks. When a good is in free circulation for sale in the UK, that also applies in every other EU country. Under an antagonistic “no deal” Brexit, the consignment probably would not make it to France, such would be the chaos at ports. The question is what deals can be struck, between these two extremes, to ease the flow.
Both the EU and UK want to strike a free-trade agreement. This would eliminate the 4.7 per cent tariff on stuffed toys, but there would still be customs declarations to fill in and many other checks in addition to a 6.5 per cent tariff on the Chinese kitchenware. A free-trade agreement is far from friction free. And for Britain to secure this deal, the EU has insisted it must accept “level playing field” conditions, preventing the UK from undercutting EU standards in competition, state aid and many other regulatory areas.
So, I am sorry to tell the Tory Brexiters: the promised bonfire of regulations will not ignite under a “free trade” deal. (And sorry, too, Labour Brexiters, but your nirvana of state-subsidised industries will also not fly.)
How about getting rid of more friction by joining a customs union with the EU? This would avoid the complicated burden for business of proving the cuddly toy was indeed of British origin and the tariffs on the cutlery. But it would not do much to lower other frictions at the border. For the lower business burden, Britain would give up its right to an independent trade policy in goods with countries outside the EU.
A greater border simplification would come from a legal commitment to align UK regulations with the EU for all industrial goods. It would eliminate the risk that goods would be stopped at the border with demands to see whether the requisite approvals conform with EU regulations. The downside is Britain would become a rule-taker.
Our consignment is more tricky than simple industrial goods, however. Because people lick plastic cutlery and there is a history of contaminants in Chinese imports, special rules apply to the vast majority which come into the EU via the UK. To be allowed to enter Calais, we would have to pre-notify the French authorities at least two days in advance, declare that our cutlery met EU standards and at least one in 10 consignments would have to wait days for a lab test to verify its safety.
That is not the end of the new border checks. If the goods had been loaded on any old pallet, we would also face the likelihood they could not enter the EU because wood packaging was not compliant with ISPM15 international standards which ensure it is pest free.
The only way to avoid such onerous checks on plant, food and animal hygiene would be to become a rule-taker in these special regulations — as Switzerland and Norway have done.
But our pallet would still not be allowed to cross before value added tax was paid on the consignment. Officials would do a paper or physical check that the contents in the truck matched the customs declaration. To avoid this burden, Britain would have to join the EU VAT area and follow the relevant European tax law with EU judicial oversight.
Of course, our truck and driver still would be stuck at the port unless Britain also signed a transport services agreement, allowing lorries and drivers to operate on the continent. Brussels has already said such an agreement would require “a strong level playing field” on regulatory harmonisation, with effective enforcement mechanisms.
This is the choice. Technology can help lower border barriers, but even for a relatively simple consignment, frictionless trade is available only with the full list of agreements alongside the lost sovereignty outlined above. Even then, the combination would almost certainly fall foul of the European Commission’s “no cherry picking” clause, requiring Britain also to concede to freedom of movement and payments to the EU budget.
Once politicians accept these trade-offs we can start a serious discussion of what Brexit means and whether we still want it. Rather than prevaricate, it is time to admit to the public that there is no magic solution which maintains frictionless trade with the EU and allows the freedom to be “Global Britain”.
Sunday, 16 October 2016
One way to check if your news headline is factually correct?
Dan Swing in The Independent
Internet search giant Google has introduced a new fact-checking feature in its new section to allow readers to determine whether or not a story is true.
“In the seven years since we started labeling types of articles in Google News (e.g., In-Depth, Opinion, Wikipedia), we’ve heard that many readers enjoy having easy access to a diverse range of content types,” the company said in an announcement.
“Today, we’re adding another new tag, “Fact check,” to help readers find fact checking in large news stories.”
Through an algorithmic process from schema.org known asClaimReview, live stories will be linked to fact checking articles and websites. This will allow readers to quickly validate or debunk stories they read online.
Related fact-checking stories will appear onscreen underneath the main headline. The example Google uses shows a headline over passport checks for pregnant women, with a link to Full Fact’s analysis of the issue.
Readers will be able to see if stories are fake or if claims in the headline are false or being exaggerated.
Fact check will initially be available in the UK and US through the Google News site as well as the News & Weather apps for both Android and iOS. Publishers who wish to become part of the new service can apply to have their sites included.
“We’re excited to see the growth of the Fact Check community and to shine a light on its efforts to divine fact from fiction, wisdom from spin,” the company said.
Fact checking has become increasingly common for online publishers. Organizations such as the International Fact-Checking Network, PolitFact and FullFact analyse claims by politicians and other public speakers to determine if they are true or not.
Facebook has struggled to prevent fake headlines appearing in its own trending news feature. After the company swapped human curators for an algorithm, a fake story about Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly being fired over allegiances to Hilary Clinton caused controversy.
While Google doesn’t name Donald Trump or Brexit explicitly, authors such as Ralph Keyes claim we now live in a “post-truth” era, where debates rarely focus on facts or policy but instead on emotion and wild claims.
Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump has often been found to make false or misleading statements. Politifact has rated 71% of his statements as false. This week he wrongly advised his supports to go out and vote on 28 November, 20 days after the US elections actually being held on 8 November.
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