Margo Kingston - webdiary: "If Baer is right here, the quality media allowed itself to be used by Iraqi dissidents to bolster the case for war. Here's where it's vital that sources are checked and not reported as fact until checks have been made. This basic journalistic duty seems to have almost disappeared in some quarters, and at times is not even being fulfilled in the quality media. The media has been TOO TRUSTING, not too skeptical. In Australia, we now know that we should not have trusted the government's word on children overboard. We should not have reported the claim as fact, and we should have focused from the very beginning on the lack of supporting evidence for it."

In some ways Margo is a good journalist and her webdiary is in fact the only corporate funded journalistic weblog that I look at, the best part of the SMH and nearly as good as the alternative internet. But this statement betrays a kind of naivete, as if she has never heard of Chomsky or read Manufacturing Consent. Or perhaps her critical remarks are deliberately crafted to be able to reach the typical readership of the SMH.

Margo Kingston - webdiary: "If Baer is right here, the quality media allowed itself to be used by Iraqi dissidents to bolster the case for war. Here's where it's vital that sources are checked and not reported as fact until checks have been made. This basic journalistic duty seems to have almost disappeared in some quarters, and at times is not even being fulfilled in the quality media. The media has been TOO TRUSTING, not too skeptical. In Australia, we now know that we should not have trusted the government's word on children overboard. We should not have reported the claim as fact, and we should have focused from the very beginning on the lack of supporting evidence for it."

In some ways Margo is a good journalist and her webdiary is in fact the only corporate funded journalistic weblog that I look at, the best part of the SMH and nearly as good as the alternative internet. But this statement betrays a kind of naivete, as if she has never heard of Chomsky or read Manufacturing Consent. Or perhaps her critical remarks are deliberately crafted to be able to reach the typical readership of the SMH.