John Seigenthaler/USA Today 29.11.05that pillow is a metaphor
I[John Seigenthaler Sr.] phoned Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder and asked, "Do you ... have any way to know who wrote that?"
"No, we don't," he said. Representatives of the other two websites said their computers are programmed to copy data verbatim from Wikipedia, never checking whether it is false or factual.
Naturally, I want to unmask my "biographer." And, I am interested in letting many people know that Wikipedia is a flawed and irresponsible research tool.
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Posted by: keith"At my request, executives of the three websites now have removed the false content about me..."He could have removed it himself. How many other information sources can you say that about?
- John Seigenthaler
to a post on the Seigenthaler/Wikipedia incident
by Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly
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Aside from the assumption that there's no substance to the accusation - it passes without even a smidgeon of proof, just the statement that there's no truth to it - there's the venue from which Siegenthaler shouts his innocence. It may be unfair to lump USA Today in with the NYTimes and CNN and FOX and the LATimes and MSNBC, because they are distinct news media, each with a kind of character all its own - still it's a pretty natural response. Them. Those guys. The ones who are only now beginning to step away from Bush and his sinking ark of iniquity.
Last night one of the brunette news goddesses did a hit piece on Hugo Chavez that was more nuanced than Siegenthaler's bio, but it was, considering the power and influence it had over a far more credulous audience than Wikipedia's, far more damaging in impact and a much greater threat to Chavez' person. It was nominally a story about Telesur, the Latin American response to the thoroughly lapdog CNN, but what it really was was an exercise in Orwellian hate-building. And of course there was no mention of CITGO's providing heating oil to the poor in the US Northeast.
The difference between "a flawed and irresponsible research tool" and the virtual eyes and ears of the people that the media are now is very great.
Research is one thing, but the media are creating the will of the people, and that translates into life and death decisions. People are dying in Iraq every day because of deceitful impressions created in the public mind by the media.
So the context isn't what I'd call an atmosphere of unbiased reporting, but exactly the opposite - a climate of sly deception, insinuation, and virtuoso propaganda in which the vulnerability of Wikipedia to short-lived, easily correctable inaccuracies, intentional or not, is among the least worrisome threats to truth, justice, and the American way.
The media now stands back from the President as though the problem was between him and the people all along, they were only running messages back and forth. Poor gullible people, bad incompetent President. Innocent chirpy newscasters.
But the fact is the President was nothing without the complicitous media - they elected him, they created his support, they spread his untruths - and they did it at the bidding of the same men who were pulling Bush's strings, and who've now jerked the whole country into a ditch.
