Thursday, April 05, 2007

How far can I throw ABC News?

I don't have much to add to this Glen Greenwald post on ABC News beyond what Atrios has had to say on the subject except for this.

ABC says that they only use sources that they've had a long-standing relationship with. So we should trust them. Now someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm betting they've had long relationships with Doug Feith, Ken Pollack, Dick Cheney, Ed Gillespie, Mary Matalin, and various assorted other assholes.

And guess what? I was flipping channels on my teevee last night and lo and behold! there was mustache man John Bolton, flogging this same scary "Iran almost has NUKES!! Run for your LIVES!!" bullshit.

Who wants to bet that Bolton was one of the sources for this story? Of course, I'm just a g-list blogger who mostly posts cute kitty pictures, so what the fuck do I know?

Let me clue you guys into one of the dirty little secrets of journalism, a lot of stories like this get pitched, meaning that the source calls a reporter and says, "hey, I got something for you you might be interested in, on the super-secret Q-T." There are people out there with a definite point of view who are flogging it to whoever will listen and print it (or broadcast it, as the case may be.) So Greenwald is correct, don't trust stories like this if they don't give you enough information so that you can evaluate the truthfullness of it yourself.

I'm not against anonymous sourcing (to a point), but this "you gotta trust us" shit needs is ridiculous.

3 comments:

Sandy-LA 90034 said...

We said, 4Legs!

Sandy-LA 90034 said...

ahem...Should be: Well said, 4Legs!

Anonymous said...

Plush life on the "G list" of blogs?

No way. You're on the "C list," as in cat. Yesterday at Atrios' someone referred to "the cat bloggers."

Obviously Plush Life is among the elite of cat blogs. So you are at the top of the C list.