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Idiocy, meet Distributed Competence
An interesting look into something I (and much of the rest of the web) have been saying for some time. This past week or so has been a good one for blogs. Two rather incompetent folks (Ben Domenech and Howard Kaloogian) tried to lie online. Domenech was more of a generally unqualified (and not particularly eloquent) columnist, and I imagine that would be enough to get him fired, even if he hadn't plagiarized (as well as accused Coretta Scott King of being a communist) earlier in his career. Kaloogian (or someone on his staff), on the other hand, straight-up lied. Look at this photo of "Baghdad" and it's not too difficult to spot the problems.
We took this photo of downtown Baghdad while we were in Iraq. Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be. But, each day the news media finds any violence occurring in the country and screams and shouts about it - in part because many journalists are opposed to the U.S. effort to fight terrorism.
I have to say, that kind of statement, with that bad a lie is going to be uncovered. And here we come to my point. That's the brilliance of blogging. That is the thing that most large-scale media critiques miss when discussing blogs' lack of editors. Everyone who reads becomes a potential editor. In real time.
If a blogger lies (especially on blogs with large bases), people will notice. They will quote you, find data, previous posts, photos, whatever is required, and prove you lied. And then they will compare notes with the other people who also realized you lied. That is the brilliance of the web. There is a written, accessible record of your lie and a forum (either in your comments, or on another blog) to publish that rebuttal. And due to the brilliance of most search engines, a search for one will also call up the other. No more corrections a week later on A2. Real time. Distributed.
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