Colbert vs. Kyl and spread of 'misinformation' - CNN.com
Yeah, it's an op-ed piece, but well worth the read. It describes quite a few posters on this board very well, I think. Perhaps this will help raise the level of debate around here, but I doubt it.
Some snippets:
Perhaps not surprisingly, a man responsible for pushing the birther myth -- and a reported recent Trump adviser -- Joe Farah of the fringe website World Net Daily freely admitted to Salon.com this week that his site publishes "some misinformation."
"Misinformation" is a fancy word for lying with an ideological agenda in mind. It has become more acceptable and more influential with the rise of partisan media. It preys on the gullible and the stupid and the ditto-head alike.
And another one about a popular C-D thread topic:
A little-noticed local example of this strangeness caught my eye this week, courtesy of the website ThinkProgress. It seems that Texas state Rep. Leo Berman put forward a bill to ban sharia law in the Lone Star State.
When he was asked why such a step was necessary, he cited the city of Dearborn, Michigan, six times in testimony: "It's being done in Dearborn, Michigan ... because of a large population of Middle Easterners. The judges in Dearborn are using and allowing to be used sharia law."
This would indeed be troubling (and unconstitutional) if true, but when Berman was pressed about the source of his facts, here's what he told J. Patrick Pepper of the Press and Guide in Dearborn: "I heard it on a radio station here on my way in to the Capitol one day. ... I don't know Dearborn, Michigan, but I heard it on the radio. Isn't that true?"
No, it's not, as Dearborn Mayor Jack O'Reilly has been forced to make abundantly clear, stating that "these people know nothing of Dearborn, and they just seek to provoke and enflame their base for political gain."
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