Speaker For The Diodes - Post a comment

05:35 am - QotD

"There is this notion that you have to be careful that you're not taking a side, and I understand that that's important to journalism, but at the same time, I honestly believe that if we just take two sides and devote equal space to each, that we are lying. It's is our job to inform readers. They need to come away with more information, not be more confused. Journalism is in disarray today.

"I think that's of course what happened with the Iraq War, and I think that's what's happening with so many issues.

"If someone were to go back and take a look at my first couple of stories, they'd probably see that they were pretty even. But that's because I hadn't done enough homework, and by 'doing homework,' I mean gathering information from both sides and sifting through and weighing the evidence. This 'fair and balanced' approach makes us like a sponge: We're supposed to just soak up the information and then wring it back out. But then we haven't accumulated any knowledge. That's crazy: It's denying everything I've learned. That night, my editor Randy tried to get me to change the lead because he thought we were piling too much on intelligent design. I was really scared because I thought he would take me off the story if I didn't agree, and there I was, three-quarters of the way through the trial ... but I also knew I couldn't lie, and that's what it would have amounted to."

-- Lauri Lebo, author of Devil in Dover, interviewed by Onnesha Roychoudhuri for AlterNet, 2008-06-20 [ thanks to sunfell for pointing out the interview]