{"id":564,"date":"2006-06-18T00:01:57","date_gmt":"2006-06-18T04:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/000af36.netsolhost.com\/wordpress1\/2006\/06\/18\/a_lie_is_a_lie\/"},"modified":"2006-06-18T00:01:57","modified_gmt":"2006-06-18T04:01:57","slug":"a_lie_is_a_lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/2006\/06\/18\/a_lie_is_a_lie\/","title":{"rendered":"A Lie is a Lie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mike Shear of The Washington Post, the <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.sorenseninstitute.org\/blog\/_archives\/2006\/6\/17\/2037849.html#attachments \">final speaker<\/a> at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vablog.org\/\">Va. blogger conference<\/a>, said we probably wouldn\u2019t agree with anything he had to say.  Then he sought to provoke with his basic message that bloggers irresponsibly truck in rumor, gossip and basically are pretty lax on the fact checking.  If we don\u2019t know it to be true, we shouldn\u2019t say it.<\/p>\n<p>I agree.<\/p>\n<p>He also said that the difference between bloggers and newspapers is that journalists \u201cattempt always to make sure that what we have written is true.\u201d  While he equivocated, he seemed pretty sure he was on higher ground.  He even quoted the Society of Professional Journalists\u2019 code of ethics.  It is an \u201coptional code,\u201d I might add.<\/p>\n<p>I also think it\u2019s irresponsible for a newspaper to report that, say, a presidential candidate did not deserve medals he received while a soldier, when in fact, as the paper reported a week or so after the Swift Boat Veterans attacks on John Kerry, that the charges were not true.  Yet, The Post reported the story before checking to see if it was true, and once it found otherwise, kept repeating the story.  <\/p>\n<p>When asked about the contradiction, Shear, to his credit, said it\u2019s \u201ca hard charge to deny.\u201d But he tried to defend papers by saying that they try to find out the truth whereas bloggers rarely do.  <\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s too broad a charge and too weak a defense of papers who report rumor or charges if they echo long enough on Fox News or other pseudo news media.  In other words, they adopt the lowest standards of truth and decency.  That that is better than no standard is higher ground only in a relative sense, and not a place I\u2019d anchor my moral superiority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mike Shear of The Washington Post, the final speaker at the Va. blogger conference, said we probably wouldn\u2019t agree with anything he had to say. Then he sought to provoke with his basic message that bloggers irresponsibly truck in rumor, gossip and basically are pretty lax on the fact checking. If we don\u2019t know it&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/2006\/06\/18\/a_lie_is_a_lie\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}