Point taken. But it is worthy to note that I don't watch TV.

That alone does wonders. Really.

If not knowing what the ADA qualifies as a "wonder"...sure. As in "I wonder how you can discuss politics" perhaps. Not that you'd learn that from TV.

Of course PBS is radio too...and CNN, the NYT, Reuters and lot of other news sources are online.

So you highly recomend them as a good source of telling me what to think?
I couldn't bear it if I wasn't getting my spoon-fed opinions from fancy expert sources.

HEZBOLLYYWOOD !!!!!!!!!!!!!



New York Times has joined the fun. Some fake dead.

"New York Times Busted in Hezbollah Photo Fraud!

** Dead Men Walking! **

From the New York Times photo essay by Tyler Hicks on July 27, 2006 comes this unbelievable fraud!"

C'mon, could you tell? I read a ton of blogs on that one, as it was developing. It took a shitload of people that are knowledgeable on fonts, typewriters, military supplies, and the histories of each, batting in back and forth to come up with a consensus.
It was really fascinating to watch the dead ends and wrong conclusions reached. Then someone would chime in with another tid-bit of information, that would have to be checked and cross checked with several sources, then added to the verified info at hand.

It took the input of dozens of people, with sometimes obscure knowledge, to finally come to, not a guess, but a verifiable answer. No one person could say yes or no.

And you say how could anyone overlook it? :eyebrow:

Or what you perceive to be bias.

How can they admit to your perceptions of their position, if they don't feel they are bias:question:

Yes.

I suppose I qualify as "knowlegable on fonts and typewriters", as well as having been in the military in the 1970's. A lot of my work in the 1980s was in typesetting and what was called at the time "word processing".

But an alleged memo from the 1970's in Times New Roman? Please.

It only took a ton of people to overcome the outlandish scenarios concocted to try to save the theory that those crude forgeries were genuine.

Maples and Rather had the paid advice of experts, and ignored it because it contradicted what they wanted to beleive. Too much of the press longs to become the living reincarnation of Woordward and Bernstein...more faux nostaligia.

I knew it immediately too. It's partly a "computer person" thing, partly a lifelong interest in fonts and typesetting and printing. You remember how documents were created and how they looked through history. How expensive it was to print certain ways.

I looked at it for about three seconds and knew they had been caught. Like my eyes had been sensitized to spot things - it felt at first like a "Beautiful Mind" moment. And then I proceeded to laugh my ass off for the rest of the week as various sides lined up as they looked to first defend the document, and then to say it was fake but accurate. It was great entertainment.

I wound up not voting for Bush... I point that out to say, all my excitement for this has little to do with the politics of it, and everything to do with the Internet, enabling this army of fact-checkers to go to town. And how news changes in the net era.

In fact it will be a great sign that things have changed when the lefty bloggers do the same thing. But they have bigger fish to fry - they've just caused a powerful incumbent Senator to lose a primary on issues, something that just never happens without a scandal.

Whereas the doctored photo is visible to the naked eye, with no specialized knowledge or training necessary. We have evloved to intuitively pick up on patterns seen in nature. Also...nobody could theorize that "the crude forgery was genuine" because the wrong-ness of it is clearly visible, at a glance, to anyone who is not legally blind.

"Paint versus Word" is a very clever comparison, but doesn't quite get there.

How can they admit to my perceptions of bias? Good question I think they should just stop trying to say they're not biased. Stop trying to say that what's being presented is the objective Truth.

People say to me how can you watch that Fox News crap. It's simple, you just watch it with the thought in the back of your mind that it's biased and crap. Then you get more information. You don't even have to like them. I don't like my neighbor's dog, but his barking does give me information. I don't like all the blogs out there, some of them are just "echo chambers" for people who like to be with other people who think just like they do. But they come up with good information.

At the root of this is the fact that there is no such thing as objective truth.

But we won't go there in this thread.

I dislike Michelle Malkin, I think she is annoying and a total bitch and often completely wrong. This morning her post on more Lebanon coverage is must reading. First a NY Times caption is shown to be bogus as an injured man in one photo is shown in other photos to be merrily walking around.

Then a US News COVER is shown to be entirely bogus as the fire and ruins of an Israeli jet turn out to be... a tire fire!!!

I listen to Sean Hannity's talk radio show sometimes. Surprisingly, I don't always disagree with him 100%. But seriously, if you don't percieve a bias in your favorite news source it just means they share the same bias as you.

Yes Sir, Sir! ha ha ha :::slinks off to philosophy forum:::

I'm getting very irritated with news coverage. A "funny" bit about this stuff is that civics teachers are always telling the kids not to believe anything on the net, check with legitamit news sources. Then we have these situations where the net has to do the fact checking on our media filters.