Speaking of not reading certain blogs

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Speaking of not reading certain blogs...

I got a comment a while back from another blogger, to whom I mean no criticism here, expressing the belief that blogs are the last place anyone should go for reasonable discourse on political issues. Indeed, at times it's hard not to agree, seeing as so many political blogs spew little more than partisan trash meant to defame, discredit, and villainize the "other side," though nary a critical word be heard about their guys' shortcomings. Some of the trash I've seen on sites like Redstate.com and Crooks and Liars, for instance, makes me cringe.

I mention these two sites, because they're not just voices in the wilderness, rather they see substantial daily traffic. I used to read both of them on a daily basis, too, but had to stop.

Now, I read Open-Left, for example, to get a perspective on liberal politics in the US. This site's long articles, full of statistics and links aren't exactly the stuff that gets your blood pumping (like, say, a video of Bill O'Reilly mis-characterizing Bill Moyers). Open-Left is magnificently boring and full of information, but it gets about a third of the traffic that Crooks and Liars does.

So, yeah, often it does seem that the internet has given a voice to those who refuse to accept that their lopsided political persuasion is anything but impeccable. I agree. In fact, the comment that inspired this post doesn't really say anything that I disagree with. It's what, to me, is implied by the belief that one shouldn get their news, at least on sensitive subjects like politics, from forms of personalized new media, i.e. blogs or Wikipedia, that bothers me. Knowing what I know about the commenter, I doubt he believes this, but his comment led me to this conclusion.

I believe that information should come from as many sources as possible. Wikipedia is not right. I know. I was once reading an entry on Buddhism, when the sight reloaded and the lengthy article had been replaced by one sentence that read "Travis is a bitch." In the time it took me to click "reload" the entire article had been restored. Another time, reading the entry on globalization, I noticed someone had entered phrases throughout the entry saying things like "WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT GLOBALIZATION????" and "BLAH..... BLAH..... BLAH..... BLAH." This too was quickly fixed.

This doesn't mean Wikipedia is useless (no matter what Steven Colbert says). Far from it. It gives you a good idea of the different debates and sides regarding a certain subject, as well as usually providing copious links to sources at the bottom of each page. It should certainly under no circumstances be one's only source of information.

The same goes for blogs. It takes a long time to whittle the list of blogs you read down to a trustworthy few*. It's taken me years to make the list I have, and, during the process, I've added and deleted hundreds of blogs.

Conversely, the problem these days, I think is that so few people seem to keep in mind the fact that the traditional media we hold so dearly is still written by people, who can and do make mistakes, sometimes serious. I think, for instance, there have been enough mis-characterizations of Taiwan and its politics in the international media to lead many people, no matter their political beliefs on the subject, to see that sometimes journalists don't know well enough what they're talking about. In other cases, of course, the journalists are just plain making it up.

Everything we see and read falls (far) short of any standard of absolute truth. Just look at the blog Regret the Error, a blog devoted solely to searching out and linking to retractions in the press, since most organizations publish these retractions in a corner, tucked away from anything you actually want to read.

Here are four examples I read yesterday:

Clinton's "dividing love" for her country:

In a June 7 transcript of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s concession speech, The Associated Press erroneously reported one word in the transcription. The New York senator said she has “a deep and abiding love for our country.” She used the word “abiding,” not dividing.
David Gest's herpes:

In The Independent Extra on 18 March 2008, we incorrectly suggested that David Gest had alleged that Liza Minnelli gave him herpes. Mr Gest has told us, which we accept, that he did not make any such allegation and that he has never had the disease. We apologise to Mr Gest for any embarrassment or distress caused by this mistake.
Wife not mother:

A photo caption on the front page of yesterday’s Spectator incorrectly said that John Lee was describing the death of his mother from a C. diff infection. In fact, he was telling a Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital meeting about the death of his wife. We apologize for the error.
Ozzy Osborne's health (this one's a doozy):

OUR February 21 report of the BRIT Awards headed “Ozzy’s Freak Show” reported that Ozzy Osbourne had thrown the BRIT Awards into chaos after he suffered a health scare, toppling over twice, just before the Awards ceremony.

We claimed that BRITS bosses held emergency talks about whether to send the Prince of Darkness to hospital and suggested that Ozzy may have had to withdraw at the last minute from presenting the Awards with his family.

We also claimed that as a result of his health scare Ozzy had to be ferried around in an electric buggy.

We now accept that such allegations are completely untrue. We are happy to make clear that Ozzy was fit and well, did not suffer a health scare and that there was no question of Ozzy having to go to hospital or being unfit to fulfil the engagement.

We apologise to Ozzy and his family for any embarrassment or distress caused by our article. As a mark of our regret we have agreed to pay Ozzy’s legal costs and substantial damages, which Ozzy will donate to the Sharon Osbourne Colon Cancer Program.

This isn't all about defending blogs, and certainly not about defending this site. I know I make mistakes. I make them as honestly as I can, at least. Nor is this article about maligning newspapers and television. Rather, it's about recognizing the reader's responsibility, which is first to remember that he or she is reading something by a person who can make mistakes and second to keep in mind that there are numerous perspectives on every issue that are not and cannot be encapsulated in every article. Moreover, the latter suggests that many sources are better than one, and in the end it is the reader's duty to decide where he stands after looking at the arguments.

The question of course is, "It's all fine and good to expect everyone to be scrutinizing readers. I'll tell that to my boss. I'll get him to let me off at noon every day and, why not, get him to send me back to college. Right? What do those who don't have all day to waste in front of the computer searching for the Truth do?"

That's a good question.

* By "few," I mean relatively few, considering the number of blogs out there. I have 97 feeds in my google reader right now, for instance.

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