Boastfully ignorant reporters [Was: Zergo can do secure TTPs]

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

On Tue, 14 Jul 1998, Peter Mitchell wrote:

> It was aggravating to hear the reporter introduced as a "self-confessed
> computer illiterate", even if he was. Imagine a presenter introducing an
> item with, "And here to report on the French general election is Joe
> Cringe, who tells me he isn't even sure where France is, let alone their
> politics, well there you go hahaha". CP Snow you should be living at
> this hour. 

I dislike posting "me too" messages, but I was just in the process of
composing an almost identical message (with a very similar example as
well).

While we are getting a bit off topic (or while I am taking us a bit
off-topic), it is worth pointing out that this is a general problem.

If journalists don't feel that the need to actually know about the areas
they are reporting on they can be little more than conduits for press
agents.  I have seen some terrible interpertations of statistics, for
example, let through or added to by journalists in ways that can
be truely damaging.

While it might be fun to have "someone just like me" investigating and
reporting something; as you say, we wouldn't watch Paxman if he didn't
know anything about politics and government.

But it was a decent report.  And I we shouldn't be too demanding.
Certainly we expect and hope that journalists will pick this up as a civil
liberties issue among others and not just as a technological one.

And for someone boasting of his ignorance, he didn't get that much wrong.

If I sound muddled in my view about this, it is because I am.

-j

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 J.Goldberg@Cranfield.ac.uk     http://WWW.Cranfield.ac.uk/public/cc/cc047/
Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice.