The uselessness of op-ed pages (another entry in a continuing series)
[Updated]
[Update II]
Joe Klein hits one of my favorite whipping posts today in a post over at Swampland. I am shocked, shocked I tell you, to see that The Washington Post has published yet another factually challenged piece, this time by Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee. By my count, that’s the fourth dubious piece since the beginning of the year that’s appeared in the WaPo (the George Will global warming farce, Palin’s cap and trade piece that was tarnished by its many omissions, Martin Feldstein’s fatally flawed column on health care, and Michael Steele on health care).
It’s probably time for Fred Hiatt to call for another blogger ethics panel.
For more on this subject, check out this Matt Yglesias post challenging Chris Matthews’ assertion that “bloggers don’t fact check”. What’s funny about that claim, at least in the political blogosphere, is that there’s almost real time fact checking going on, and most bloggers (the intellectually honest ones, at least) will update if someone has pointed out an inaccuracy in a post. I’m not sure I can recall the last time I saw a major opinion page issue a correction for publishing misleading information.
[Update]
Dirty hippy bloggers do the hard lifting required to point out Michael Steele’s hypocrisy on Medicare funding.
[Update II]
Ezra Klein think the problems with lies being allowed to stand in opinion pieces are structural, which is in keeping with Tim Fernholz’s assertion that these lies continue to pop up because nobody is willing to call a spade a spade.
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The national news media is now viewed more like Fox News by most people I know. We are not hearing anything meaningful about the healthcare debate they only report the lies from the GOP that will make headlines and sell papers or advertising. You are right on about blogs having almost instant feedback. Let’s throw all the bums in Washington out of office and just have internet “town hall” meetings to vote on issues and cut out the lobbyists.
It is just plain laziness on the part of the main street press and the Washington press corp and the business press not to fact check in the computer age. They are in the fact business and if our better newspapers, especially the New York Times can not do a better job newsroom editors had better find a Public Relations job where facts play a small part in the business.