Same question, second verse

Whig article sampling public reaction to State of Union speech: Person quoted in article says Obama claimed "unemployment would be 'twice as bad' without actions taken in 2009."

Obama: "Because of the steps we took, there are about 2 million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed."

The Whig source's paraphrasing of Obama's claim is off by roughly 13 million people. [Corrected my math from an earlier version of this entry.]

Did the Whig have an obligation to correct the person's understandable but obvious misstatement? I think so.

Reflections on the State of the Union Address

Overall, I thought it was a good speech....a little too laundry-listy in the middle, but otherwise well focused.

I enjoyed watching the Supreme Court members in the front rows squirm when Obama called them out on their recent decision. Alito wanted to pull a Joe Wilson but managed to salvage his dignity by just mouthing something nasty instead of hollering it out.

Obama has obviously mastered the piece of advice that the Virginian gave to Trampas: When you call somebody a name, smile when you say it.

What were those shiny gizmos on the counter between him and the VP & Pelosi? Art? The one in front of Pelosi looked like a model roller coaster, or a silvery version of one of those bead threading toys you see in the doctor's office. The one in front of Biden looked like a very ornate highball glass.

The speech seemed aimed more at Congress than at the general public. Not sure if a speech is what Obama needs to deal with Congress. The train wreck of health care reform could have been avoided with some better legislative strategy. For all his reputation as a legislative genius, Rahm Emanuel appears to have accomplished very little to get Congress to follow the President's lead. Either Obama has been unwilling to get into the trenches and work toward what he wants to see Congress accomplish, or the strategy his team has chosen was a poor one. Either way, what he needs now is not standing at a lectern giving a speech, but better retail politics with members of Congress.

Signs of the apocalypse

"The Quincy School Board voted unanimously Wednesday."

I need to go sit down. I'm feeling dizzy.

Thanks

. . . to anonymous commenters #2 and 3 on my last post for their reflections on my question. Yes, the traditional journalistic instinct is to let "[truth] and falsehood grapple," but I am not sure if that precept should still govern. As anonymous commenter #1 demonstrated, the online model favors flippant remarks with little or no regard for truth. I fear that we are being overwhelmed by that model, in which the clever bullshitter wins out over the dull truth-teller in the attention-deficit world of the Web. Witness, for example, the decline in Quincy's blogs and discussion boards, and the rise of the tweet as the dominant mode of online communication. There is no place on Twitter for nuance or detailed examination.

Thus I look at the print media through different eyes today. It seems to me that if the print media have a future, it has to be in complete, utter devotion to accuracy at every turn. Think about the difference between a letter to the editor and an anonymous comment, for example. A letter to the editor is a document of some length, often composed in several sittings, to which the author must attach a name. It is a part of the public record. An anonymous comment is often a single sentence or less, tossed off in a moment, and with no personal accountability. The letter I referred to in my previous post was written by someone with a serious idea, a suggestion to be taken up by the public, and an invitation to reply. I wonder if the newspaper didn't owe it to her (and to us) to make sure her claims were correct and to give her the chance to revise her letter before it got printed.

The Internet's standards of accuracy are low indeed. I fear that the marketplace of ideas may turn out like most of the other marketplaces in our current economy: the fast, cheap and shoddy thrive, while the careful and well-crafted suffer. If the print media don't have a demonstrably better product to offer than their online competitors, the quality of our public discourse is in serious trouble. So I am starting to doubt a lot of the received wisdom that has governed print journalism for so many years.

Conundrum

A letter in today's Whig claimed that of the members of the County Board, 16 live within the city limits, with the implication that this is a problem. A cursory glance at the membership list indicates to me that of the 16, only 9 actually live in the city limits while the other 7 have Quincy postal addresses but live outside the city limits. I may be a bit off on this count because I didn't stop to look up every single address to check whether it's inside.

My question is: does the editorial page staff of the Whig have any obligation to double-check fact claims by letter writers, or should they just print letters even if they have apparent errors?

Amusing Untruth of the Day

From Jeffrey Dean, an author who unblushingly describes himself as "an authority on teens and teen culture":

"The revenue of the pornography industry is larger than the revenues of the top technology companies combined: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix, and EarthLink."

Uh, no, it's not. By a factor of oh, maybe a thousand.

And how the heck did EarthLink get in there? Oh well, he's an authority, so I guess he must know something I don't.

Not to be too snarky,

But you'd think the City of Quincy Arts Awards could come up with something better to give its recipients than a painting by a high school student.

Come on, a gift certificate or something.