05 March 2015

Naomi Wolf and her wondrous verification process

I wouldn't go back to the fairly sorry subject of this post, but some of my Facebook friends have been discombobulated by her recent attempt to revive the depleted uranium story circa 2013 (why, by the way?). The story itself fizzled out after a great debunking job by Elder of Ziyon, so the outcome was another egg on the face for Ms Wolf. Not that there is much room for new eggs, of course, but it doesn't make no nevermind to the lady.

But there was another curious snippet I noticed on Ms Wolf's FB page. This is the way the queen of the Facebook citizens journalism (or "global citizen's newspaper" as she sometimes calls it) presents her journalism "methodology":
A reminder that this site verifies so I do not uncritically post anything -- I wonder how many times I need to explain that -- I post as the start of the verification process, not its culmination. If something is wrong it is your job to provide the counter evidence; that is how we find out what happened.
This is simply fabulous. And I naively thought that her "two sources" verification practice is the peak of stupidity.

According to this theory, the citizens journalism of that "global citizen's newspaper" works in a very simple way: first you publish something, then you just wait for somebody "to provide the counter evidence", in other words to prove that what you have published is a big smelly load of bunkum. If no one cares to debunk whatever you published, it is declared a true statement.

My only hope is that the media moguls don't get a whiff of this practice - although sometimes I suspect that at least some of them have already got it.

As for Ms Wolf: I got me quite an interesting tidbit of info recently: she was caught in a high school boys' restroom, soliciting underage boys - no, not for sex, we are not interested in stuff like this here* - for news items to be used in her global citizen's newspaper.

Now it is up to Ms Wolf to confirm or to disprove this tidbit. I think a week will suffice.

(*) Well, up to a point.

4 comments:

BHCh said...

Incidentally, this proves that the earth actually is flat.

The following list provides 270 times the required verification evidence: http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/cms/index.php/about-the-society/membership-register

And if you and me were to agree, it would make it a verified fact that Naomi's intelligence is comparable to that of an average shovel. And the results of that comparison are unfavourable to Naomi.

peterthehungarian said...

My only hope is that the media moguls don't get a whiff of this practice... Snoopy I have a feeling you haven't read any newspaper during the last fifty years...

SnoopyTheGoon said...

It is simply that I am too slow. Have you noticed I say "I suspect that at least some of them have already got it."

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Yep. Deeply unfavorable, shovels are useful.