[IP] more on Coursey on IP WITH NASTY EDITORS COMMENTS dhf
Begin forwarded message:
From: Bob Drzyzgula <bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: September 23, 2005 10:35:55 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Ip <ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, david_coursey@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [IP] Coursey on IP WITH NASTY EDITORS COMMENTS dhf
On Fri, Sep 23, 2005 at 05:36:26PM -0400, David Farber wrote:
He sent this to me and I disagree djf
First newspapers often do not check that well and they have
exstensuive staff to do so.
...
Dave,
Mr. Coursey's article is one of the silliest and most
reactionary things I've read in a while. I see the the
following problems with it:
* When I received that first message, it made no
sense to me to conclude that NPR was "censored" in
any systematic or official sense. My first thought
was that a local station operator had either made
an error or, worst case, decided (s)he didn't like what
(s)he heard. I figured that in the first option,
there'd be an apology coming soon, and in the latter,
there'd be an apology coming later. In any event,
I had already listened to the program as a download
from Audible, and knew that it was silly for anyone
to think that the segment would -- or could -- be
suppressed in any real sense. The *last* thing I ever
would have thought was that this was a fact-checked,
verified truth. My experience with your list is such
that I imagine that the vast majority of your readers
would react with similar skepticism. This was a raw,
first person report, nothing more.
* The thing that impressed me the most about the
incident, though, was the quickness with which
authoritative reaction came in. I recall saying to my
wife, who I had told about the initial report, that
this was the most remarkable thing about your list --
the ability it has to reach the people at the core of
so many of these stories. I can recall several other
examples of this; Intel's reaction to the reports of
DRM embedded in new processors comes to mind. This
does *not* mean, however, that I consider any of
these things settled. I know -- and believe -- what
NPR and the TAL folks had to say about it, but none
of it directly explained with any certainty why this
specific incident occurred, just as I still don't think
I really know for sure what's going on with DRM in
Intel processors, although I'm pretty certain that it
is not as nefarious as the initial reports suggested.
* As far as I can tell, the only remedy to the problem
that Mr. Coursey appears to see is to roll back the
clock at least twenty years. I'm not sure when your
list started (the archives start in 1993) but I know
that Peter Neumann's Risks Digest started in 1985.
This form of information exchange has been well
established for decades. The days of journalists as
gatekeepers to the current events information flow
are long gone, and I'm shocked that Mr. Coursey has
only just noticed.
* An email list, even a moderated one such as yours
and Mr. Neumann's, is fundamentally different than
a newspaper, magazine, or even an online, edited
journal. I think that one of the most important
differences is that, although it is delivered to
many subscribers like a newspaper, it is in effect
a conversation among the subscribers in a way that
the older forms of media can never be. What you are
delivering is *not* "The Dave Farber Report".
* If Mr. Coursey wants a target for his scorn, he really
should have no trouble finding one within the more
traditional media. For example, on the same day as the
censorship story was being discussed, you also carried
a discussion of a report of UK food donations being
incinerated. This story came from, of all places,
a *newspaper*, presumably one subject to editing and
fact-checking. But no, this too was quickly shot down
by your readership. I just looked, and that story is
*still* on The Mirror's website, and I see no sign of
any corrections -- to any stories (admittedly I didn't
look that hard, I'd love to be corrected on this). Thus
-- and this is far from the first example of this --
your list is providing a mechanism by which readers
can get corrections to stories appearing in more
traditional media. The yellow journalism practiced by
The Mirror is as old as gossip and is still all too
common today. It is being delivered to a eager and
credulous public via every available broadcast channel
-- television, magazines, newspapers, Internet, and
every radio band from shortwave to satellite. Perhaps
Mr. Coursey should do some complaining about *that*.
--Bob Drzyzgula
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