Hurricane Tibini (CONTEST ADDED)

Remember how the media published virtually every rumor flying out of the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina? Baby-rapes, murders galore, cops on rampages, etc.?

Remember how they kinda-sorta admitted their excesses and journalistic lapses and kinda-sorta promised to do better?

I guess that promise only applies specifically to hurricanes that hit New Orleans:

The Horiz family told me they walked for two days as Israel shelled their village.

"My three-year-old son didn't have any shoes," said the father.

Abeer Baz walked here, too.

"They bombed my neighbor's house and we had to leave," she said.

Just hours after she gave birth to her baby six days ago, Baz walked 10 miles to get here.

In the emergency room, we found 70-year-old Latifa Nasr. Dr. Nabil Harquosa said an Israeli shell destroyed her house.

Again, MSNBC: Thank you for reporting what people tell you happened.

I notice that you don't actually say what did or did not actually happen-- because you obviosly have not bothered to determine the facts before publishing.

Do you feel any responsibility at all to confirm any of this? You know-- minor things like fact-checking?

If I begin publishing, on my blog, stuff that Israelis, who also have some interest in shaping world opinion, "tell me" is going on without doing any sort of fact-checking or double-sourcing, would that be responsible?

Maybe I'll do that.

Israelis-- send me your biggest horror stories about the Siege of Northern Israel. I promise I will not vet your stories whatsoever, no matter how maudlin, propaganistic, or frankly unbelievable, and I will simply publish them for all the world.

I won't say "this or that did happen," which would require fact-checking for me to say. I'll just write that you said it happened, which requires no fact-checking at all.

Just like MSNBC taught me.

Thanks to Riehl World View.

CONTEST! And yes, there will be winners.

Please feel free to make up self-report your wildest, most macabre, most propagandistic, most maudlin, most sensationalistic stories from the Israel-Hezbollah War. You dedide which side to propagandize for.

I'll take the juiciest, I mean "most newsworthy" entries and do my own reportage from the conflict, enlisting you as stringers for my story.

Don't worry about strict accuracy; I won't check up on you, just as MSNBC doesn't. And don't worry that you're not technically even in Lebanon or Israel; I'm sure that you have wealth of stories that, while not strictly speaking "true," are nevertheless "accurate," or at least "illustrative of a greater truth."

Plus, you watch TV. That's almost as good as being a first-hand witness, right?

So go for it! Use fake names! Once again-- I ain't wastin' my time checkin'.

Fact checking is for nerds, man.

posted by Ace at 09:40 PM

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