Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 15:49:02 -0400
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Spy plane crash?

At 08:45 AM 6/22/05 -0700, N Lynch wrote:
>--- "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com> wrote:
>> I'm always skeptical of reporters' abilities to get
>> facts straight.  I've
>> seen too many stories where they got them wrong to
>> believe otherwise until there's confirmation.
>
>If reporters can't get it right, how could something
>be confirmed?  Who DO you trust?

Logic, multiple independent sources and general knowledge.

When things just don't make sense, I figure something has been mis-reported
or left out.

When lots of reporters are saying the same thing, it helps confirm things
to some extent...provided they aren't all reading from the same wire
service report.  When those actually involved make public statements about
it, and I get to hear what they actually say, this helps...if it confirms
the other reports.

When things I already know from experience tell me the reporter got it
wrong, I tend to doubt everything in the story.

For example, when a reporter reports that a small plane stalled and crashed
on approach to a runway, and that this means the engine quit, they've just
lost their credibility.  When a car stalls, it's the engine.  When a plane
stalls, it's the wing (angle of attack and usually airspeed).  A misreport
like this tells me the reporter assumes they understand the situation well
before they actually do, and so I wonder what *else* they've done that with.

Another example is the Washington Post reporting and editorializing on the
Maryland Handgun Ban back in the late 80s.  I read what they said, and I
heard a short debate between supporters and opponents on the radio.  What
the Post was saying (that it was just a ban on cheaply made "Saturday Night
Specials", not on all handguns) directly contradicted what the opponents
were saying.  I resolved the conflict by calling the Legislative Law
Library in Annapolis and talking to a librarian there.  She sent me a copy
of the actual legislation (less than 3 pages long) and it confirmed that it
was a ban on all handguns, not, as the Post said, just on "Saturday Night
Specials".  Since repeal of this was on the ballot as a referendum
question, it was important to know what the law actually said...and most
people probably relied on the Post's description and were mislead (the
repeal lost 48% to 52%).  I doubt very many actually read the law as I did
and found that out though.

There are other instances...such as a report that a "top secret NASA
network" was broken into by "hackers"...when it was actually the SPAN
network, which is anything but "top secret" (I was system manager on one of
the four main routing nodes at the time).  The Space Physics Analysis
Network was a large DECnet network connecting NASA sites with universities
and other research organizations...some of which were behind the Iron
Curtain (Warsaw and Prague for instance).  The folks who broke in (The
Chaos Computer Club, of Germany) used a fault in the operating system that
was known internally in the company but not yet patched...one of the
members of the club was a recently departed DEC employee, so no "hacking"
was really needed...and they are more properly called "crackers" anyway.
"Hackers" is a much broader term that includes lots of non-criminal
activities, so calling all computer criminals "hackers" is like calling all
officeholders who take bribes "politicians".  Ok, bad example...
;-)

-- Mike B.

--

"The national budget must be balanced.  The public debt must be reduced;
the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled.
Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn't want
to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on
public assistance."

                             -- Marcus Tullius Cicero, 55 B.C.