Maybe Let's Slow It Down A Little on New Claims of Fakery?

You can ignore me or not, but I wrote this the day after the Reutergate story first broke.

I'm specifically not repeating this because of Gateway Pundit; I think that was a justified story based upon the NYT's absurdly misleading captioning.

I'm not specifically repeating it because of any particular claim. It just seems to me that, as a general matter, we ought to be more cautious. "Sober, deliberate reflection" isn't really blogs' forte, but it would help our credibility vis a vis the MSM to exhibit more of it.

The net effect of dozens of new claims and speculations a day is that they all get kind of tuned out. There is a boy who cried wolf thing that will eventually set in.
It may be setting in already. One commenter at LGF was complaining about the recent spate of vaporscoops, and he's on our side.

Just my two cents.

Let's not ruin LGF's scoop by tossing out wild allegations about every single picture Adnan Hajj and Reuters have snapped in Lebanon. Where there is good reason to suspect further forgery, of course, say so.

But bloggers should be a little circumspect about just offering new claims of fraudulency based on little else but speculation and wishful thinking and just wanting to contribute.

There may be other forged photos out there. An quick look doesn't reveal any obvious candidates. That doesn't mean there aren't; Steven Glass claimed he'd only fabricated the Hack Heaven article when he got caught, but of course he actually had fabricated twenty or more (in whole or in part).

Still, any new allegations should be vetted first with other bloggers and with commenters/readers who are experts in photography and digital manipulation. A blog post is not really the best place to debut a serious allegation, nor the first time the allegation should be subject to outside scrutiny.

LFG scored big on Reuters. Really big.

Let's protect that score and not piss it away by taking wild, wing-and-a-prayer shots on goal that ultimately give the upper hand back to Reuters.

We don't want the Dextrosphere's credibility to sink to the level of Reuters'.

posted by Ace at 05:44 PM

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