The Iron Yuppie

MSNBC - Disclosure and glass houses

The attached link is a story by Glenn Reynolds (instapundit) which highlights a key problem with news coverage today. I think there are two major problems, both of which impune the news in any number of ways. The first was wonderfully identified by Steven Colbert during an interview on Fresh Air. It breaks down to this: there are a finite number of news items that occur every day (that are widely interesting), and that number has not significantly increased since the number of 20 years ago when there were 3 hours of news on TV (one per major network). Yet now we see 24 hours of news, blogs, etc... and how does the extra data get filled in? Opinion. Which actually leads to the second problem... all opinion is not equal (discussed briefly (warning: ugly self quoting follows) here )! Let me demonstrate:

A: Is the Earth flat?
B: Yes, I don't think there's any question the Earth is flat.
C: Uh, no, the Earth is not flat, you can fly around it, we have pictures of it from space, etc etc
B: Well, that's your opinion. I ask you, look around, do you see the Earth curving anywhere? When you drop a marble on the ground, does it roll away from you?
A: He has some good points, C how do you respond?
C: Just because you can't see it does not mean it's not happening. In fact the marble example you use would not even work because...
B: (Interrupts) So let me get this straight, you have not even SEEN the Earth curve, yet you expect US to believe it? I'm sorry, I need a little more proof than that.
C: I have proof, it's right...
A: (Interrupts) I'm sorry, we're out of time. Thank you both for this important discussion. Later on "365 New Talk Show with Yelling Guy" we discuss, "If the Earth WAS round, how would it affect you?"

And so on.

To the point covered in the original story, my only problem with the different "scandals" when it comes to opinion being funded, or voter fraud, or whatever, is that they are all made to be equivalent. As these debates go on, I hope the main stream media (or whomever is covering the story) at least makes SOME attempt to put the two opinions about a given story in perspective. There are some things that seem pretty clear (disclose where you are getting money from, no matter how much) and others that just muddy the waters (don't blame Armstrong Williams, everybody does it, just look at DailyKos, etc).