Reporters’ Lab launches campaign ad project for fact-checkers
We're using the new Political TV Ad Archive to analyze campaign commercials for fact-checkers
By stepht@duke.edu - January 25, 2016
To help fact-checkers in the United States sift through the avalanche of campaign ads, the Reporters’ Lab will be compiling factual claims from the Political TV Ad Archive, a new database created by the Internet Archive.
Reporters’ Lab student researchers will watch the political commercials, transcribe them, and distill them into factual claims. The students will then put them in a database that can be accessed by fact-checkers from around the U.S.
The Ad Archive is compiling thousands of political ads that are airing around the country. The database includes ads from candidates, super PACs and other political groups.
The archive includes metadata on the target of the ad and the location and dates the ad aired. The ads are being collected from 20 key markets in eight early primary states.
The Reporters’ Lab database is intended to help U.S. fact-checkers, said Lab director Bill Adair.
“Our goal is to use Duke students to do the time-consuming work of watching ads and identifying the claims,” Adair said. “That should free the fact-checkers to spend more time doing research and writing their articles.”