Lesson on Internet-time scoops


I just found out that an arti­cle from July 9th, What Did the Pres­i­dent Know has been debunked by the very web­site I got it from. Turns out there was a guy pass­ing him­self off as an ex-CIA reporter, telling sto­ries of non-existant debrief­in­gs with Pres­i­dent Bush him­self. Like any good inter­net rumor that gets around, it had the hint of truth: its easy to imag­ine the Pres­i­dent mouthing off an a CIA oper­a­tive, telling him to man­u­fac­ture evidence.
The big­ger dan­ger with news blog­ging how­ev­er is that one is always glean­ing over the lat­est main­stream news tid­bits. There’s a push from the kind of long-view reflec­tive pace that is need­ed to real­ly under­stand non­vi­o­lence. It requires some bal­anc­ing to remain top­i­cal while not get­ting swept away in each pass­ing media frenzy.