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WikiPedia Founder Wales Speaks About Wikinews
sebFlyte writes "One of Wikipedia's founders, Jimmy Wales, has given an interesting interview to news.com.com.com about the new WikiNews project. He talks about his dissatisfaction with IndyMedia's bias, the problems with traditional news media and how to make Wiki content credible (a problem WikiPedia faces, as previously reported)."
Neither is Indymedia.
The reason that many in the US Armed Forces don't like Seymour Hersch
Apart from the fact that he routinely fabricates important parts of his stories, you mean? Conspiracy theories about 30-year-old grudges are all well and good, but the whole "lies a lot" bit is kind of a show-stopper, don't you think?
That story marked a seminal moment in US journalism, demonstrating the power of the media by uncovering the truth and the lies of the Viet Nam conflict.
Actually, what it did was demonstrate the power of the press to shine a really bright light on a really small spot. Was what happened at My Lai a big deal? Absolutely. It was tragic and inhuman. But was it representative of the conduct of war? Absolutely not. It was an aberration. But thanks to the news media, an entire generation of Americas --possibly including yourself, I gather from reading between the lines --grew up with the idea that My Lai was typical.
The media frenzy of My Lai, and, later, Abu Ghraib, was a case of well-intentioned people spinning completely out of control and failing to put the news in perspective. Ultimately, a great disservice was done in both cases.
Now tell me that Tommy Franks and others don't have an axe to grind.
Whether anybody has an ax to grind or not seems, to me, to kind of be beside the point. Hersch has been caught, repeatedly, reporting things that just aren't so. The most egregious example I know about was the one I cited before, where he completely made up a story about a military engagement in Afghanistan. Ironically, if he'd been less zealous, he might have gotten away with it. As it is, anybody who reads the story who actually knows how many AC-130s existed at that time will know that Hersch was just plain lying.
What somebody thinks about Hersch is, in my opinion, pretty much irrelevant. He went on record with a story that couldn't possibly have been true. He lied. It's nothing personal; that's just how it is.
My biggest regret these days is that there's no new generation of independant reporters with the skills and determination that Hersch is still showing.
My biggest regret is that there is, in fact, an entire generation of young, idealistic reporters out there who went into journalism because they wanted to change the world. It's an old saw that journalism is the first draft of history. It's a terrible disservice when somebody -- Seymour Hersch or Ted Rall, or more recently Dan Rather and Mary Mapes --sacrifices truth on the altar of their political agenda.
Someone makes wild-assed claims, backs it with weak evidence from a tainted source, and call it fact.
We're talking about Seymour Hersch again, right? He is, after all, the one who consistently goes on record with wild-assed claims that are in contradiction of documented fact, supposedly supported by "sources" that nobody else can find.