Thursday, September 1, 2005
Here's another entry I wanted to bump up and emphasize. In Palestine Day in Connecticut - Part 2, I berated a Danbury, Connecticut paper, The News-Times for printing a completely uncritical story about an International Solidarity Movement terror dupe, Chris Towne, which probably contains not a single factual paragraph.
The response a reader got from The News-Times' Managing Editor (included in full in the comments of the original post) is stunning, though at this point, it shouldn't be. The Editor believes that since the piece appeared on what's something of an opinion page, the facts don't really count, and further, that really, since everyone has their own opinions...the facts don't really count. Besides, it's not his problem. A snip:
But readers can't be expected to do the primary research necessary to always separate fact from fiction. We expect some level of gate keeping from our information providers, especially when no measure of skeptical voice is provided in the presentation. I don't believe the average reader understands the level of skepticism they need to bring to their news consumption. They have a right to expect some level of fact-checking, and they are left completely exposed when that doesn't occur.
It reminds me of much of what I discussed in my interview with Richard Landes below':
And honesty is what's gone out. The radical-relativists say, 'Hey, the Palestinians have their story.' Well I say, sure they have their story, and by all means listen to it. But how accurate is it? Just because you need to listen to it, doesn’t force you to believe it."...
But fear not, The News-Times provided space to follow-up letter responses -- one from a Rabbi critical of the article, and one from someone who states that Israel started the war in 1967. But hey, at least it's balanced...
