Like many people, I read the works of Charles Johnson over at Little Green Footballs on a regular basis. I don’t necessarily agree with everything written at that site, but it’s definitely a solid outlet for finding articles and other tidbits about politics, the War on Terror, and other news. That said, I definitely have an issue with the way that Johnson picks at media outlets and journalists in some cases. There are definitely times when he is right to call out bias, but the repeated use of “al-Reuters” and other such names definitely don’t breed a community with any constructive behavior towards articles or commentary that he doesn’t agree with.
On Friday, LGF had a post entitled “New Flight 93 Details; AP Lies.” The post was in response to an article the Associate Press released, “Panel: Flight 93 Crashed Without Struggle.” Johnson claims that the AP “Lies” when it says that the plane “crashed without struggle” and I think he’s taking the article’s headline a bit off. A commenter at the site clarifies that perhaps the AP could have said that there wasn’t a struggle in the cockpit. But instead, it’s all out there like the AP is horrible, they’re trying to mislead people, and that they are l-y-i-n-g when that’s obviously not the case by the content of the piece!
Sure, sometimes an editor drops a headline that we don’t agree with or people think really stinks, but you know what? Send the editor or author an email or call them up and state your case. Instead, we go on the bash-fest that has become a reason why people get tired of hearing about comments on sites like LGF, Daily Kos, or MetaFilter. Hell, MetaFilter (informally) doesn’t allow links to LGF, and the crew at LGF immediately responds to anyone visiting from MeFi as “moonbats,” which in my opinion shows a lack of cred on both sides. It epitomizes what is wrong with political debate in this country (well, not just this country).
In this case, I can see why someone might feel that the headline wasn’t perfectly clear after reading the article - but to suggest, more or less, that a lot of the work coming out of an organization like the AP is going to be a lie or misleading is just ridiculous. It’s like picking for the sake of picking. Do something productive and make a statement about how the AP could have fixed this. Inciting a riot of readers to bash an organization does nothing more except create a fury on the “other side” of the political world. But perhaps that’s what some people want, and I’m preaching to those who don’t care.
