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“The Washington Post is renowned for its political expertise. We used Microsoft Azure Media Services Indexer to help build a revolutionary way to share that expertise on the web.“
Siva Ghatti, Director of Application Development, The Washington Post
One way that The Washington Post is driving innovation on the Internet is through Truth Teller, a software-based, political fact-checker that uses Microsoft Azure Media Services Indexer speech-to-text service. With Indexer, The Post can more easily share its political expertise with site visitors, with whom it has also made search results more useful.
Business NeedsSteven Ginsberg listened to the political candidate go on and on, speaking to a group of supporters—and making what he regarded as one misleading claim after another. He wondered if there could ever be a way to instantly verify what a politician says.1
For most people in Ginsberg’s situation, that bit of wishful thinking would have quickly floated away. But Ginsberg, national politics editor at The Washington Post, was in a position to do something about it. He talked up the idea to a team at The Post, who then proposed it to the Knight Foundation, the leading funder of journalism and media innovation in the U.S. Knight agreed to fund a prototype.
That left The Post with a big question: How to build such a thing?
The challenges were considerable. Converting speech to text was one issue. Videos of political speeches, debates, and other forums would have to be transcribed. Doing it manually would take countless hours for each hour of video. That would add up as The Post scaled out the project to include more and more video.
The Post considered an open source speech-to-text solution but “it required too much configuration and development,” says Siva Ghatti, Director of Application Development at The Washington Post.
Was there a better way?
Customer: The Washington PostWebsite: www.washingtonpost.comCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Media and entertainment—Publishing
Customer ProfileThe Washington Post, one of America’s leading daily newspapers, is renowned for its coverage of national politics. Published in Washington, D.C., the paper has won 60 Pulitzer Prizes.
Software and Services Microsoft Azure platform− Microsoft Azure− Microsoft Azure Media Services
Indexer
For more information about other Microsoft customer successes, please visit:www.microsoft.com/casestudies
The Washington Post Builds “Truth Teller” Appwith Cloud-Based Speech-to-Text Service
SolutionWhile Ghatti was overseeing the company’s implementation of Microsoft Office 365, he happened to mention the truth-verification project to his Microsoft rep. The reply: “I’ve got just the thing you need.”
Indeed he did.
That “thing” is Microsoft Azure Media Services Indexer, which uses state-of-the-art speech-recognition technology developed at Microsoft Research to create transcripts, captions, and keywords extracted from the automatically generated captions. The keywords, as well as other transcribed text, can be searched, making audio and video files more accessible than before. Indexer runs as a cloud-service offering on Microsoft Azure.
The Post adopted Indexer as a key component of its Truth Teller (truthteller.washingtonpost.com) truth-verification prototype. In addition to Indexer, other key components of the Truth Teller application include: A local database of fact-checked
statements from the newspaper’s own Fact Checker blog and sites such as Politifact.com and Factcheck.org.
A proprietary algorithm created by The Post that uses statements in the database to evaluate the transcripts produced by Indexer.
Visitors to the newspaper’s Truth Teller site can choose from among a growing library of videos, including the recent Virginia governor’s race and the president’s State of the Union address. The Post plans to use Truth Teller extensively during the 2014 U.S. midterm elections.
The Post isn’t using Indexer just for Truth Teller, however. One of the most heavily used functions on the paper’s website—as on most websites—is search; it’s a key way for visitors to discover and consume Post content. Yet searching video content has typically been difficult and limited to a few keywords.
The Post now uses Indexer to transcribe all of its video content—making that content fully accessible to visitors through searches based on any word spoken in it. A search
result shows where in the video clip the word or phrase appears, and the video can be played from that location.
BenefitsWith Indexer in use for a year, The Washington Post can more easily share its political expertise with website visitors. The Post brought Truth Teller to market quickly and has made search more useful to website visitors with the new service.
Shares Expertise on the Web“The Washington Post is renowned for its political expertise,” says Ghatti. “We used Microsoft Azure Media Services Indexer to help build a revolutionary way to share that expertise on the web.”
“Live fact-checking can provide incredible insight to journalists and audiences alike, and we are excited to start the process of creating something as unique and valuable as Truth Teller,” says Cory Haik, Executive Producer of Digital News at The Post. “Microsoft Azure Media Services Indexer is an important part of making this possible.”
Speeds Time to MarketThanks to its use of Indexer, The Washington Post launched Truth Teller relatively quickly and cost-effectively. It took one week for the company to use Indexer REST APIs to establish the necessary link between Truth Teller and Indexer. It would have taken six months to build this link with open-source technology, according to Ghatti.
Makes Search More UsefulBefore The Post adopted Indexer, its video was a significantly underused asset, because site visitors couldn’t discover all relevant content in it. Now, search results turn up more video, with a high degree of relevance. According to Ghatti, website visitors stay longer and come back to the site more frequently.
This case study is for informational purposes only.MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published June 2014
