Kevin at Fanblogs pointed out an article in the Des Moines Register by one Nancy Clark which said, in a nutshell, that newspapers are awesome and other media (most of all Blogs) suck: Blog ‘reports’ lack media’s credibility
Kevin’s response is adequate, but I’m always up for piling on, which is what I’m about to do.
A commenter at BoiFromTroy pointed out an interesting thing here…
In the new “journalism of assertion,” as the report calls it, information is offered with little time and little attempt to independently verify its voracity.
Voracity… voracity… hmm… does she really mean excessive desire to eat? Or does she maybe mean… “Conformity to fact or truth; accuracy or precision” which would be veracity.
Well, everyone makes mistakes. Typos happen. That’s how things are… isn’t it?
Know that if the information is coming from the mainstream media - the accredited reporters, broadcasters and photojournalists - they are following strict professional guidelines that the looser outlets don’t require. The information has been verified, has been scrutinized by editors, has been fact-checked and proofed.
Verified… scrutinized by editors… fact-checked… proofed. So, if we take this to be true, that her article “has been verified, has been scrutinized by editors, has been fact-checked and proofed”, then her previous paragraph she is concerned that bloggers are not taking enough time to independently verify the information’s appetite… either that or she along with her fact-checkers, proofers, and editors do not know the difference between appetite and truthfulness.
Aside: what’s interesting to me is that in that paragraph she says ‘verify its voracity’. “Verify” and “veracity” share a latin root ‘verus’ which means ‘true’. (Note: I know nothing about latin) So these two words were mere milimeters apart, something that should’ve leapt off the page to someone as learned and professional as herself… but it didn’t.