Politically Speaking
I'm a bit of a late-in-life political junky. I think this is more a result of the Internet than a philosophical conversion. The Internet, with all its highly partisan websites, has made reading political news far more entertaining than it ever used to be.
For all of that, however, it can be frustrating trying to get a straight story.
Case in point: I was looking at headlines from Little Green Footballs (I decline to attempt characterizing this website other than to say that it seems to give everybody a hard time), and came across this one: "Obama: My Uncle Helped Liberate Auschwitz (Bzzt! Wrong!) - Update: Video Added. (BTW, that must be some kind of record for the number of time a colon can be used legitimately in a single sentence.)
This article led me to the CBS news item (since updated) which told the story of the Senator referring to an uncle whose army troop helped liberate Auschwitz (clearly impossible as he has no uncles and the U.S. military did not liberate Auschwitz).
I hardly hold this mistake against him, as it turns out Obama's great-Uncle was part of the team that first entered Buchenwald. And I can't imagine what it must be like to be talking all day, every day, and having someone vet every sentence I speak.
That aside, what interested me was the number of websites dedicated to wrangling "the truth, " or some version thereof, out of "the news." (Aren't "news" and "truth" supposed to at least be in the same general vicinity?)
The LGF account of the story sent me to the Hot Air blog (which calls itself "the world's first full-service conservative Internet broadcast network!"). So then I felt I owed it to myself to check out the other side of the story, so I headed over to The Daily Kos where I found not only a watered-down version of the story, but a good reason to point out how many times Senator McCain had been caught with his foot in his mouth!
Had I read the story at only one of those websites, I would have a very, shall we say, limited sense of the story. Even the original post that I encountered (on Little Green Footballs), was followed by discussion in which one side at first attempted to deny the whole thing - that is, the Conservatives had invented Obama's statement. That was followed rapidly by a post of the video. That was then dissected ad nauseam, followed by the last refuge of the politically convicted: "So's your old candidate!"
So I started to wonder: where can I go to get the unvarnished "truth" of a given story? Surely there is a website somewhere that will just recount the facts, and not try to convince me of the spin?
Well, here's one that comes highly recommended: Real Clear Politics. It bills itself as an "independent" political website, that "has become one of America’s premier independent political web sites. Updated every morning and throughout the day, RCP culls and publishes the best commentary, news, polling data, and links to important resources from all points of the political compass and covering all the important issues of the day. RealClearPolitics has become a trusted filter for anyone interested in politics."
True to form, RCP reported the Obama Uncle story with video, no flap, and no comment on the Obama camp's explanation of the misstatement. I was impressed.
I also checked out FactCheck.org, another website that comes highly recommended as a source of unvarnished, no-dog-in-the-fight reportage. Fact Check says, "We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit, "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding.
The Annenberg Political Fact Check is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The APPC was established by publisher and philanthropist Walter Annenberg in 1994 to create a community of scholars within the University of Pennsylvania that would address public policy issues at the local, state, and federal levels.
The APPC accepts NO funding from business corporations, labor unions, political parties, lobbying organizations or individuals. It is funded primarily by the Annenberg Foundation."
Though the Annenberg Foundation (the source of the center's funding) does have close ties to PBS (and some would consider that an assurance of partisanship), a quick look at some of the foundation's programs suggests that they are relatively benign.
So, while the political website reading can be highly entertaining, we do owe it to ourselves to at least take a stab at stripping off the filters. These two websites are a good start. If you've got others, I'd love to hear about them. Email me at: nancy.roberts@gmail.com
For all of that, however, it can be frustrating trying to get a straight story.
Case in point: I was looking at headlines from Little Green Footballs (I decline to attempt characterizing this website other than to say that it seems to give everybody a hard time), and came across this one: "Obama: My Uncle Helped Liberate Auschwitz (Bzzt! Wrong!) - Update: Video Added. (BTW, that must be some kind of record for the number of time a colon can be used legitimately in a single sentence.)
This article led me to the CBS news item (since updated) which told the story of the Senator referring to an uncle whose army troop helped liberate Auschwitz (clearly impossible as he has no uncles and the U.S. military did not liberate Auschwitz).
I hardly hold this mistake against him, as it turns out Obama's great-Uncle was part of the team that first entered Buchenwald. And I can't imagine what it must be like to be talking all day, every day, and having someone vet every sentence I speak.
That aside, what interested me was the number of websites dedicated to wrangling "the truth, " or some version thereof, out of "the news." (Aren't "news" and "truth" supposed to at least be in the same general vicinity?)
The LGF account of the story sent me to the Hot Air blog (which calls itself "the world's first full-service conservative Internet broadcast network!"). So then I felt I owed it to myself to check out the other side of the story, so I headed over to The Daily Kos where I found not only a watered-down version of the story, but a good reason to point out how many times Senator McCain had been caught with his foot in his mouth!
Had I read the story at only one of those websites, I would have a very, shall we say, limited sense of the story. Even the original post that I encountered (on Little Green Footballs), was followed by discussion in which one side at first attempted to deny the whole thing - that is, the Conservatives had invented Obama's statement. That was followed rapidly by a post of the video. That was then dissected ad nauseam, followed by the last refuge of the politically convicted: "So's your old candidate!"
So I started to wonder: where can I go to get the unvarnished "truth" of a given story? Surely there is a website somewhere that will just recount the facts, and not try to convince me of the spin?
Well, here's one that comes highly recommended: Real Clear Politics. It bills itself as an "independent" political website, that "has become one of America’s premier independent political web sites. Updated every morning and throughout the day, RCP culls and publishes the best commentary, news, polling data, and links to important resources from all points of the political compass and covering all the important issues of the day. RealClearPolitics has become a trusted filter for anyone interested in politics."
True to form, RCP reported the Obama Uncle story with video, no flap, and no comment on the Obama camp's explanation of the misstatement. I was impressed.
I also checked out FactCheck.org, another website that comes highly recommended as a source of unvarnished, no-dog-in-the-fight reportage. Fact Check says, "We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit, "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding.
The Annenberg Political Fact Check is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The APPC was established by publisher and philanthropist Walter Annenberg in 1994 to create a community of scholars within the University of Pennsylvania that would address public policy issues at the local, state, and federal levels.
The APPC accepts NO funding from business corporations, labor unions, political parties, lobbying organizations or individuals. It is funded primarily by the Annenberg Foundation."
Though the Annenberg Foundation (the source of the center's funding) does have close ties to PBS (and some would consider that an assurance of partisanship), a quick look at some of the foundation's programs suggests that they are relatively benign.
So, while the political website reading can be highly entertaining, we do owe it to ourselves to at least take a stab at stripping off the filters. These two websites are a good start. If you've got others, I'd love to hear about them. Email me at: nancy.roberts@gmail.com
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