| akuma587 said: Good work madskillz. Sqrl put up some good links too. But how is a Palin aide supporting Palin a reliable source? That's like me going on record to defend the Democratic Party. Not really risking very much. Some of the other ones are at least relatively non-involved. But you act like someone issuing a statement that allegations aren't true automatically negates them. Plenty of people did that for the Obama-Ayers' connection but that still seemed to be at the forefront of a lot of people's minds. And why does not going on record automatically make a source unreliable? It might even show that they aren't trying to get any personal credit for breaking the story. Hell, the guy's identity who broke the Nixon scandal wasn't revealed until a year or two ago. |
If you guys would like to base your views and opinions of a person on those who refuse to stake their claim to their own words then that's fine by me, it speaks loud and clear all by itself as far as I'm concerned. I'd gladly be the person in any debate who was standing on the side of the issue that places more faith & believability in those who stand by their words than those who do not, and that places more faith & believability in those who were most intimately familiar with the subject/person, than those who are not. If you concede that higher ground, as you seem to be doing, then I gladly take it.
Now on the issue of Ayers I'll speak briefly since its a complicated topic and not the subject of this thread. Ayers was not an issue of anonymous sources versus named sources. It was named sources supplying documents to support themselves VS named sources with no documents to support themselves.
If you want a good example of vetting your source before you go to print, check out this story(interesting in its own rite). The article is about the naming of Omaha & Utah beach and explains a bit about the 3 years they've had this information and been vetting it...and it was from a named source. The issue was as simple as "How was this beach named?". Note the list of sources and places they checked to confirm to see if things added up. The situation is far from identical (that's not the point I'm making though) and I'm not suggesting they should have sat on the Palin story for 3 years. What I am saying is that I've yet to see any cross-checked facts or even an attempt at the kind of investigative thoroughness that we see in this Omaha/Utah Beach article. This kind of work is called journalism, and is what a real journalist would do as part of basic journalistic integrity before running such a story to begin with (even when its not a story that could ruin someone's livelihood). It seems to me that the only support for the rumors so far is the previous round of debunked rumors, which in all likelihood came from the exact same source(s).
In fact the only cross-checked fact that I've seen mentioned thus far was the conversation involving Africa in which Steve Beigun (the guy who was actually having the conversation with her) said “Somebody is taking a conversation and twisting it maliciously,”. Beigun is not a palin stooge, the man is a former NSC with an impressive resume and no reason to poison his own political career by throwing in with an idiot. You would have to believe that both Beigun and Palin are co-idiots for this story to have believability at this point. Because if Palin were even 1/10th as clueless as Madskillz and yourself seem to believe Beigun would be taking a massive risk that only a moron would take, because he gains literally nothing by helping her if she is an idiot. His only play here is to set himself up for a future play in the event that she were to gain power in Washington down the road. Now, if he thought her to be an idiot he likely wouldn't put any weight behind the notion of her future prospects, and thus none behind her defense as well. Speculation to be sure, but far more reliable speculation than your speculation on the potential altruistic motives of an unnamed source.
This is why named sources for rumors are important, because in addition to opening themselves to scrutiny of their motives, if they are proven wrong they are forced to take the responsibility. An anonymous source can simply move on to the next rumor without need for rehabilitation or cause for concern about their future reputation. The paper does take some risk, but it is largely mitigated by the fact that they routinely shift that blame back to their source when it proves wrong. Even then a paper only attests to the fact that things their source has said in the past were reliable, they have no actual knowledge of the current situation.
So again I say, I've named my sources, who are yours?
PS - You really should read that story I linked in this post, its a fascinating WWII story.
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| To Each Man, Responsibility |
