Fact Checker

My story on Thursday took me to a meeting for the Institute for Retired Professionals, which meant I was the only one in the room under 60. It was great, they were all really informed and really knew what was important to them, they asked the speaker some great questions about the issues in the area and I even got an idea for another story. Not to mention they were all really nice and came over to chat with me about school and how I like Syracuse and what I was doing there.
There was a couple of different things that I wanted to fit into the wrap about the Syracuse League of Women Voter's Citizen Fact Checker Project but didn't have time to. The first was that they had a program like this one in the 80s and 90s called the fair campaign practices committee, but instead of people reporting campaign facts other candidates reported them. After a while the candidates didn't bother to go to the committees but went straight to the media and the program ended. After a couple of nasty campaigns they decided to start back up again with the people reporting what they felt were misleading or false facts, now there is a couple of Maxwell professors involved. Another thing was that this "dull" campaign, as Janet Mallen called it, could hurt the projects ability to go state wide. Its a pilot program so it's really a test run and if it is successful they want to look into getting it used all over the state . The lack of use could hurt the chances of this happening and Mallen says she doesn't know how long the pilot will last. The last thing is that the members of the IRP are pretty disappointed with the campaign for County Executive, they feel like they don't know anything about the two candidates or how they are going to actually do all the things they talk about.