Who's on first? A question of trusting the news

We judge the credibility of what we hear based upon how what we hear corresponds with the reality around us and based upon the tested truthfulness of the herald. If you are unfamiliar with the person, you will be more skeptical of their story.

So it goes with the news. Truthfulness does not generally prove itself the moment a story breaks. Over time as we glean more and more about the event, we learn whether or not the particular media component has handled has handled it in an honest and unbiased manner. That's a good reason to try and collect your ideas about what's going on in the world from a number of typically reputable sources.

When the crisis in Georgia broke, I didn't know to whom I should listen or who would paint the clearest canvas? Did Georgia provoke Russia's wrath? Were horrors against humanity being perpetrated against the South Ossetians?

The fog lifted when I read Pravda and other Russian news outlets accuse the New York Times and the LA Times of being tools of Western propaganda. An example from Pravda today:

"The opinion piece in the online version of the Los Angeles Times (2008.08.12) is a clear and classic example of the type of material western readers are being bombarded with in what appears to be an orchestrated campaign of disinformation to shape public opinion against Russia."

After I'd picked myself off the floor and wiped the remnant tears of one of the best laughs I have had all summer, my continued reading of the neo-Soviet opinion led me to believe they were completely serious.

Over time, I have come to learn that the Times of either coast, LA or NY, paints in a brush that richly favors liberal ideology, socialist even. Statistical analysis bears that out. So when the Stalinists began asserting that their greatest allies in the west were churning out right-wing-pro-West propaganda, it was like trying to deny the cookie heist while chomping down the evidence.

Go Georgia!