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September 2008
The fiction of bloggers
There’s a blog rumor that Gov. Sarah Palin, John McCain’s choice of a running mate if you’ve been off the planet somewhere, really didn’t have her baby; it was a staged pregnancy to cover up the supposed fact that her 17-year-old daughter had the baby. I put that rumor right up there with the one that saw Elvis at Ihop in Rocky Mount this morning.
Not far below the incredulity of that blog are those rants by proponents of the far right and left. Sean Hannity and Keith Olbermann are two of the cable’s red meat guys. But whom do you really believe, Huffington Post, Drudge, the list goes on and reflects every conceivable opinion out there.
My problem is that a reader can no longer trust anything read or said. These folks are in the entertainment business, not the news business. I’m all for discussing the pros and cons of McCain’s choice (really stupid or really brilliant based on your party affiliation), but rumors and fabrications serve no useful purpose. It’s an electronic version of the “yellow journalism” from the 1930s.
While newspapers make mistakes, we make a big effort to check our facts and we certainly don’t mislead intentionally. By all means read a blog when you’ve got time to kill and need a laugh. But if you’re serious about news, read a newspaper.
