> Some Weblogs are banding together to do fact > checking of journalists. In > a kind of 'adopt a journalist' format, where > everything a particular > journalist says / writes is recorded, analyzed and > checked for facts > consistency and so forth.
That's all well and good, but then who's going to check *their* facts? I'm reminded of a book I bought some years ago. It was a published response to a Reagan administrations analysis of Soviet Military Power, '86 edition. The analyst was correct in debunking the report, and challenging the facts, figures, an analysis of the report. But in many cases it went too far. One example: the report discussed a new piece of Soviet equipment due to enter service, an SP AAA platform. The report gave it the designater ZSU-30-2 (twin barrelled 30mm AAA vehicle). The analyst debunked it as being completely ficticious, down to criticizing the artists impression of the equipment. Come the '90s and its revealed to the west the Soviets *indeed* have a new weapon system, the 2S1 Tunguska SP AAA, which was *even*more* capable than what the Reagan analysts forsaw (4 30mm cannons and 8 SA-19 missiles in an interesting, capable hybrid system). The point is that if you become too myopic (like this analyst) you may indeed be debunking something that *might* just be true. I'm not neccessarily defending journalists here either; for a long time I've been disgruntled with the level and quality of news reporting in general often biased or sensationalist), but the point I'm trying to make here is that a lot of Critical Thinking is neccessary when analysing these sources... Damon. ===== ------------------------------------------------------------ Damon Agretto [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum." http://www.geocities.com/garrand.geo/index.html Now Building: ------------------------------------------------------------ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time. http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
