Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
The whole “TNR” blow-up has inspired Roger L. Simon to share his thoughts about this thing called “fact-checking”, what it really is, how it works, how it might…possibly…fall short.
Institutions like the New York Times have an evident vested interest and their editor Bill Keller laid out their case the other day at a lecture in the UK:
First: We believe in a journalism of verification rather than assertion, meaning we put a higher premium on accuracy than on speed or sensation. When we report information, we look hard to see if it stands up to scrutiny. Now, of course, newspapers are written and edited by humans. We get things wrong. The history of our craft is tarnished down the centuries by episodes of partisanship, gullibility, and blind ignorance on the part of major news organisations. (My own paper pretty much decided to overlook the Holocaust as it was happening.) And so there is a corollary to this first principle: when we get it wrong, we correct ourselves as quickly and forthrightly as possible.
At the Times, we are obsessive about owning up to our mistakes, from the petty to the egregious.
My personal experience of mainstream media fact-checking, New York Times included, has not tracked with Keller’s hyperbolic declaration….In short, mainstream media doesn’t do much. Essays I did for The New York Times Book Review were not fact-checked at all (though they did copy edit, luckily for me). Over at the Los Angeles Times, an amusing example is an article I did on a Siberian film festival at which I was a juror. After I submitted it, the LAT fact-checker called and asked, “Did this all happen?” “Yes,” I said. “Thank you,” she said and hung up. So much for mainstream media fact-checking.
Now, that’s the LA Times, not the NY Times which I’m sure must be much better. They must be. I mean, I think back on all those left-wingers who argued with me and in doing-so, “sole-sourced,” the NY Times, and mocking me for my failure to immediately and unconditionally accept as my own religious belief, something sole-sourced to the NY Times. Surely such a venerable institution must be doing something to earn all that fawning adulation.
It occurs to me that this barb-fest between the mainstream media and these things we call “blogs,” is an ancient exchange. It’s really all about, should truth be institutionalized? Or is it the property of every common man?
One point in favor of the blogs is one of necessity. If truth is not under the ownership of every common man, it is not the responsibility of every common man. We can then shuffle off the “fact checking” to our clay-footed institutions, confident that some nameless faceless fact-checker will verify the things we will be told to think we know.
And then we can read all the “Memo For File” copies we want to and believe every word without reservation. The ones from 1974. In Times New Roman font, with kerning.
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