I’ve been thinking about my previous posts on News vs. Knowledge, etc.
Just what is the “proper response” to this state of affairs? Should we point out when inaccuracies are published? And, if we do this, aren’t we just giving more attention to the inaccuracy?
Yesterday, Michael Barone commented on James Risen’s interview on the Today show… BTW, Risen is the New York Times reporter who co-authored the paper’s story about NSA surveillance of Americans. Risen seems to believe that Democracy is best served when decisions are left up to the civil service, and not up to elected & appointed officials, such as the Vice President or Secretary of State.
Now, in my mind, this is patent nonsense. But, 1: The Today show published these thoughts via an interview. 2: if these thoughts are not refuted, they become part of the public “conventional wisdom”. 3: if we do refute them, then we lend credence to the words, treating the idea as (in some way) valid.
I suppose, we could simply say that James Risen’s views of Democracy are ridiculous in the extreme, and probably self-serving, since he’s really just hawking a book he wrote and didn’t consider the topic newsworthy before the book was published.
In short, the man’s a hack, and Today should be ashamed of themselves for giving him a forum. Did you hear that, Katy Couric? Matt Lauer? Ashamed.
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