Fact-Checking And Journalists

Here's two notes on posts I'm not going to write, and why, to add to reality-based thinking about blogs.

EFF's recent spam paper Noncommercial Email Lists: Collateral Damage in the Fight Against Spam has the following parade of horrible:

For example, the technology journalist Declan McCullagh reports that SpamCop blacklisted his email list ... Rectifying the situation proved difficult, and McCullagh was incorrectly listed as a spammer with SpamCop two more times after that.

Oh boy, is there more to the story than appears in that paragraph! But what's the point of my taking it on? Spam politics is a war-zone, and I'm unarmored. I don't need the fight. I'll just note a question for all the people enamored of the supposed power of blogs in fact-checking journalists:

What happens when someone fact-checks a journalist, and the journalist can just reply: "Sod off"? (or, for that matter, "Are you high?")

Further on the topic of blogs, facts, and journalists, the official report concerning the CBS forged memos scandal is due soon. This will be the result of the network's own internal investigation. I've thought of trying to expand a post I did on Gatekeepers of the Media vs. Blog Triumphalism, which examines the huge institutional support in going after Dan Rather. But the prospect of stirring up a hornet's nest of raving wingnuts, is not appealing. I'm not a club-member of one of the political alliances, so either nobody will hear it, or I'll just get slammed.

So much for the ability to be heard ...

Seth Finkelstein's Infothought blog (Wikipedia, Google, censorware, and an inside view of net-politics) - Syndicate site (subscribe, RSS)