Make your own news

Transcript

Rethink your priors.

Before the Illinois election I didn't watch a single news segment, and I still think I'm better informed than I've ever been going into a ballot.

I had my agents use my same creative studio to make me a series of videos to inform myself as a voter, one chapter per race, about four minutes each.

I built into the process that it researches where public facts exist: campaign spending, who's providing that funding, and what incentives those funders have now or have had in the past.

It also looks at track record on past promises, and at what broader political narratives a race ties into beyond what's printed on the ballot.

My agents start from my address, pull my districts from the Census geocoder, and check them against the county's official sample ballot before writing a word.

For each race they write down what the office controls, ask every candidate the same three or four questions, and quote each one's own words from questionnaires and League of Women Voters forums.

Every fact on screen carries a link. Anything the model pulled from memory gets verified or stamped unverified, and anything it couldn't find says not found.

On my run, the check pulled one claim the model wrote from memory, and two sources disagreed on a count, which the certified results settled.

The jokes are about the process, like the county website, and never about a candidate, a party, or a voter.

You could also build it to be biased, or you could build it to stick to the facts, and either way it's verifiable and traceable for you, in whatever format you want.

I tend to lean libertarian, which doesn't mean Republican and doesn't mean Democratic. For me it means power to the individual.

People argue we need more money in public media or less money in the private companies. I'd ask, how about no money for any of them, and you make the news what it should be for yourself?

This won't end misinformation by itself, and it depends on your agents reaching the data. But campaign money, donors and votes are public records any intelligence can reason about without an article in the middle.

I'm generalizing it and I'll open-source the kit, so before any election you can generate your own coverage for your own ballot.