After the recent excitement over Anonymous claims related to the UDID and GoDaddy incidents, some are starting to point out that credible source information is lacking in the news. This is not really news itself but it still gives me the urge to write a big long post on the political and economic history of news reporting and the forces that lead to corruption.
Anonymous as a concept is both good and bad as source, since it protects signal (whistleblower) but also noise (lulzer). One could also argue that it doesn’t matter that Anonymous used the FBI to draw attention to weak Apple security, since more people now pay attention to a real problem (ends justify means).
However, for now it might be easier just to post a link to HBO’s “The Newsroom,” a new series with an inside look at cable television reporting. They recently did a fantastic job with a dramatic interpretation of the problem. Wait for this line:
It’s a person. A doctor pronounces her dead. Not the news.
Update to add: Poynter provides 7 ways to make your work easy to fact check
…or as they used to say at the London School of Economics: Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas