I’ve been very favorably impressed with the work of the American Independent News Network, of which the Michigan Messenger is a part. They seem to be about going out and researching and solid information gathering. As I’ve written many times, I’m less concerned about balance–an ephemeral concept in my opinion–than about thoroughness. If you gather good facts, I can correct for bias.
In any case, the Michigan Michigan messenger is doing some reporting on militias, first here then here, and some of the content might surprise you. It sounds like these folks may be out of the mainstream, but the range of views is quite variable.
I really don’t have any first-hand knowledge or anything to add. Just read the reports. I found them interesting.
(HT: Dispatches, where you’ll find some additional commentary.)
Whether one agrees on precisely how much bias there is in media and what the bias is–I happen to think the largest bias is to stupidity–one will surely note the concern that traditional journalists have with blogging and other means of public information exchange.
Now doubtless bloggers do irresponsible and stupid things. People with cell phone cameras get pictures that might not be up to standards. Sometimes people can get the wrong impression. Journalists in the mainstream media point to this sort of thing as a good reason to lament the fading of “real” journalism and the rise of citizen reporting and commentary.
That line runs into a problem. As I like to point out in Bible classes, if you read just one position, it will often sound convincing. Why? Because the author has presented the positive points. You won’t have the full picture until you look at the negative points. Usually I’m illustrating this with presentation of two competing interpretations of a text. After students have heard one, complete with references to well-known, credible interpreters who espouse it, they will be ready to settle down and go on to the next text. Then I present the second (or third or fourth) view, complete with similar references. Now the first view doesn’t look quite a unsullied.
What journalists are trying to do here is to make themselves look good by running down bloggers. There’s plenty of fodder for them to use in this task. The blogosphere will provide you with examples of just about any sort of bad behavior you might find in writing or photography. The problem is that the journalists think that somehow this should make us revert to the default, their default.
But you can also find examples of just about every lousy journalistic practice in the mainstream media as well.
Well, someone objects, but there are less of them. OK, let’s make that assumption for a moment. If the mainstream media misbehaves what do I do? I can complain. I can sue. I can hope that some other media outlet will pick up the other side(s) of the story. But really, I have very little power as an individual reader or viewer.
In the blogosphere I can get my keyboard in position and bat out a piece properly skewering whatever person committed the misbehavior. Does this solve all problems? No, it doesn’t. But if we’re looking for something approaching the ideal, then neither the blogosphere nor mainstream journalism is going to make the grade.
I think there would be a great place in society for journalism–if we had real journalism. But that’s not what our newspapers and media are feeding us.
For example:
There are not just two sides to every issue
If you get a Republican and a Democrat to comment, you have not necessarily covered the field
Not everyone who provides a sound bite is an expert
Reading press releases is not journalism
The value of balance depends on what you’re balancing
Just because a question is rude, doesn’t mean it’s penetrating
… and many more.
If journalists actually sought for information, researched their material, sifted it carefully, and the presented it logically and completely, there would be a point in paying more for it. In such journalism, accuracy of the data would be more important than the reporter’s personal biases. I’m willing to adjust for bias myself, if the information is accurate. As it is, too often news reports are actually less in-depth than blog posts about the same news. At least bloggers know how to read multiple stories on the same topic before they write.
(Note: The material here tracks back through NewsBusters to The Daily Beast, where Lloyd Grove reports on Helen Thomas’s remarks to him.)
I marked this story a couple of days ago. In my view, merit pay is such an obvious idea, not to mention merit hiring, merit promotion, and lack-of-merit firing, that I don’t see why it would be controversial, except, of course, amongst those who lack merit.
But there is one valid area of controversy–measuring merit. Whatever you tie merit to will be what teachers must strive for. If that’s graduation, you’ll get one result. If that’s success in college, you’ll get another. If it’s standardized tests, then you’re going to get people taught to pass the standardized tests.
But in my view the value of paying people by merit is so important that we need to work through the controversy of how to measure it. That pay should be by merit should be firmly fixed. Then we should find a mix of standards by which to measure such merit.
I’m personally not all that excited about standardized tests, but they do provide something that is less subject to manipulation. With a longer view, one could use measures of success after students leave school.
I must leave one caveat–I don’t trust the school board around here all that much, so I’m not sure that they would be paying for merit. I’m not sure they’d recognize it. Hmmm! Maybe we should do some “lack-of-merit” firing on school boards.
When I get annoyed at the Democrats, which I do frequently, I’m often directed by smiling friends to the Republican party. Obviously you’ve seen the light. We’re the party of freedom.
In case you’re wondering why I don’t buy it, consider the working of the Texas Board of Education. (This is only one small point out of many.) You can get some idea from the live blogging by the Texas Freedom Network. I’m looking for some more complete transcripts, but all I can find are bits and pieces. I’ve read/viewed quite a few of those, but don’t have a single complete link.
I’m not interested in liberal or conservative education. Liberals and conservatives both seem to be trying to mold the curriculum to slant things their particular way. (Yes, this is an example of conservatives doing so, but there are some pretty lousy results from more liberal curriculum planning groups as well.)
But the party that harbors and even celebrates people like this won’t be getting my support. That’s why I remain independent as a voter. I can think of nothing better for American politics than that both our current parties collapse.
Complete with silly headline and flanked by an ad for a tee shirt that reads “Waterboarding Instructor” (obviously on an attractive female model), the supposedly Christian WorldNetDaily reports a hike to an inscription on rock as important news.
WorldNetDaily Page Image 3/24/2010
There are so many things wrong with this reporting that it’s hard to know where to start, but one of the most important is the citation of various experts without properly noting just why they are experts and what precisely they are verifying with regard to the inscription. One of the most amusing elements is the conclusion by Roger L. Williamson, cited in the WND article, that the one who made the inscription is of “Mosaic faith” but not of the “priestly class” (source). Concluding that of an inscription of this size and of doubtful provenance is ridiculous.
I’ll mention a few more of these experts shortly. But first let’s ask why this is a headline for WND right now. The reason can be found in the following paragraph:
Eidsmoe told WND that the message of the Ten Commandments is vital to the United States, because its system of law and societal values have for centuries been based on the laws.
Now who is this Eidsmoe and why is he interested in Ten Commandments inscriptions? He’s the legal counsel for the Foundation for Moral Law, founded by Roy Moore. Yes, that Roy Moore, who placed a ten commandments monument at his courthouse in Alabama when he was Chief Justice of the state and then defied orders to remove it.
Col. Eidsmoe reports on his trip here and manages pretty much the same set of errors that the WND manages in reporting on his trip.
One critical note is how certain scholars are represented. He cited both Dr. Barry Fell and Dr. Cyrus H. Gordon as claiming the inscription was consistent with ancient Hebrew. A couple paragraphs later he notes:
… It should be noted that although Dr. Fell was a Harvard professor, his academic credentials were in the field of marine biology, and although Dr. Gordon’s credentials in the field of archeology were impressive, he never actually visited the Los Lunas site.
Now it’s good to note that someone one has cited as a “Dr.” has their doctorate in an area unrelated to the field in which you’re citing him, though it might be better not to cite him at all. In the original citation he’s identified as “Dr. Barry Fell of Harvard.” It’s only two paragraphs down that we’re informed that he is actually a marine biologist.
But in addition, he fails to note that while Dr. Gordon was quite a well-known scholar of ancient near eastern languages, he became somewhat of a fanatic on early contact with the Americas from the old world. There was pretty much no inscription and no site that he wasn’t willing to accept in that pursuit. I am well acquainted with his work. I made use of his work on Ugaritic when studying that language, and later read some of his work on early contacts with the Americas.
When citing Dr. Gordon as an expert, one should be careful to note that he was not only known for his work in ancient near eastern languages, but also for a number of fairly odd theories. In my view, the Wikipedia article on him is a bit on the kind side, though of course his good work should be recognized as well.
But at least he’s not a marine biologist.
But it’s clear that the purpose of this article is not to present history. The point here is monuments of the ten commandments, something of a fetish for Roy Moore and his organization. Is it at all surprising that Col. Eidsmoe comes up with a proposal to date this monument early in the process of exploration? That his proposal (see here and search for the heading “A Third Alternative?”) is incredibly implausible and completely lacking in sound linguistic evidence (in fact, I see no linguistic evidence at all, just “could be’s” and “might have’s”) doesn’t matter at all. All that is necessary is planting the idea in people’s minds that ten commandment monuments are very early in the Americas is all that is necessary.
I think it’s pretty clear just from reading the ten commandments that this country was not founded on them. Certainly they are part of the history of laws and lawmaking, and an important part. But the first four of the commandments as protestants number them establish a strictly theocratic basis for government, and indeed this was the summary law code of a theocracy. Some people want to claim that the United States should be a theocracy, but they will find no comfort in our actual founding documents.
What amuses me even more is that these people, who claim such overwhelming respect for the ten commandments, and want to make sure they are posted publicly wherever possible ignore some of them. They make graven images all the time, though perhaps they don’t bow down to them or serve them, and they certainly do not keep the Sabbath holy according to the commandment.
Perhaps they ought to concern themselves with actions, and a bit less with monuments.
The Civil Justice & Courts Policy Committee, who ought to know better, has cleared CS/HB 31 with only three negative votes. I’m guessing someone is thinking, “What harm can it do?” I’d suggest a vote against wasting time.
Brian McLaren links to this article at the Huffington Post. It may be inconvenient, but is it truth? (I guess I need to tell my readers that I often like what Brian McLaren has to say, but then there are these moments.)
I’m also opposed to those who think Israel is always right. But there is some weird thinking that goes on in deciding who is oppressed and who is the oppressor in various circumstances. Here in America we threw a multi-year temper tantrum after a few thousand deaths. We decided it was alright to invade Iraq over this, which oddly enough had nothing to do with that terrorist attack. I’ll note that the international community generally supported us in Afghanistan, which did have something to do with it, yet quite justifiably (in my opinion) were more reluctant to do so in Iraq.
Yet Israel is supposed to just take it. Israel’s enemies, in general, negotiate on the basis that Israel has no right to exist at all. Laying aside all arguments over the validity of Zionism, ask yourself whether it is reasonable to expect the Israeli government to negotiate on the basis that it has no right to exist.
I think there are many things that the Israeli government has done that are not good. I don’t believe our policy must be attached to Israeli policy. We can be independent. I don’t support unilateral extension of settlements. The issue I have here is with making Israel the exclusive bad guys.
Yet at the same time we need to recognize reality on both sides. Israel faces a much greater terrorist threat than we do, and many of those terrorists would not be satisfied unless Israel ceased to exist. Your actions in your own defense might change if you faced such a threat.
Just look how ours changed when we faced a proportionally much smaller threat.
It’s Florida HB 31 (full text – original – committee substitute), and either version of it accomplishes pretty much nothing, thought the original version might have led some school boards to get into legal trouble, something many of them are quite adept at without help.
I am opposed to officially sponsored religious events, but am in favor of permitting voluntary religious observances when led by students, not people paid by the state. But that is largely constitutional, courts will generally uphold such rules, and thus school boards can take these actions without the benefit of the state legislature making the suggestion.
So some Florida State House members, including Dave Murzin from my district, are planning to waste time trying to look good with their voters (most of whom do like prayer in schools) by writing a law that will accomplish nothing positive and may well cause additional problems.
Thanks for your sense of priorities. With the state of Florida having problems with its educational system, I’m sure that taking the time to debate a bill that will leave things pretty much the same will solve so many problems.
