Reply #499: About shoddy journalism and freedom of speech

[jswordy]

About shoddy journalism --

There is no way, ever, that I as a journalist would take ANYTHING that I read, saw, or heard on the Internet from ANY source, including the so-called mainstream news media sources, as fact or for use as source material until I checked and corroborated it with at least one other source, and if necessary sought additional comment. Of course, as an ethical journalist I do this automatically, following the old scribe's rule that if your mother says she loves you, check it out.

I am incredulous that a paper like "The New York Times," which has been in the news itself for ethical quandries like allowing fictitious imaginings from its own writer (Jason Blair, see this Poynter asessment: http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=53&aid=33614) to see print without question, would then pluck out, inflate and unquestioningly print a single anonymous post from a Web site.

Such actions could be far more indicative of continuing internal problems at the "Times" than of anything else.

About freedom of speech --

I am a site moderator at two other sites. So I am fully aware that the Internet is not a bastion of free speech, but in reality a dictatorship, where moderators blow away at will the posts of others for any of a wide variety of reasons.

I would encourage the DU moderators to refrain as much as possible from doing so. Freedom of speech must be a highly-held principle, and to abrogate it because of a news media reaction denies what ought to be held as a basic right in the United States. We are giving up our rights fast enough as it is, without further need to encourage their demise.