Stinginess with the truth

Thursday, 30 December 2004, 00:51

The blogosphere’s miserable failure on the tsunami stor

One of the most widely-blogged issues of the tsunami so far has been the claim that United Nations Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland had accused the United States of being “stingy” in its response to the tsunami.

The IHT today mentioned that Colin Powell had, in a CNN interview, “indignantly rejected” that the US is stingy.

The fact that the Washington Times was the only source that initially made the claim should have rung alarm bells.

The fact is, as Gadflyer’s Joshua Holland notes, Egeland never did single out the United States.

Chalk up another success story for the fact checkin’ blogosphere.

Well, not really. Just Joshua Holland.

What’s interesting is how many blog posts refered to the Washington Times article without questioning what it said. I guess a skeptical view of the “mainstream media” gets suspended when it reports views useful to your point of view.

Entry Filed under: Blogs