About those "Reliable News Outlets"

Beldar is a lawyer. As a lawyer, he learned a few things in law school and over the course of a career, including how to make sure you're getting a true story.

One thing he hit on very early Saturday morning was the notion of qualifying witnesses:

my main reaction to the ABC News reporting is one of continuing, mouth-foaming frustration. ABC News made only the most clumsy efforts at doing what every lawyer is required to do for every single witness who testifies in court, and what every reporter should likewise do before reporting a purported witness' story: laying a foundation to show personal knowledge. ABC News' apparent standard: If the government minder let them talk to someone who appeared to be ethnically Vietnamese and was within range of their cameras and microphones, then each such person's claim to have personal knowledge was accepted as gospel. Yes, of course it's difficult — it requires persistence — to separately qualify each such witness. But the facts that the events occurred long ago, that they took place during combat, that there are language barriers, that there is a government watcher present — all these factors counsel more careful qualification of the purported eyewitnesses, not less.

Journalists must learn this in journalism school. I have to believe they do. But notice here, the news outlet that has failed to act on that knowledge is a major corporation that broadcasts news for a living. My friend who considers such news outlets "reliable" may wind up being the one who has to make the case.

And here, by the way, is where blogs fill a vital niche.

Beldar, a lawyer, qualifies witnesses as a matter of course. It would be unthinkable for him to introduce a witness and expect a jury to accept his testimony as gospel. And if he slipped up and failed to qualify one witness, you can bet opposing counsel would test those qualifications in very short order.

In this sense, bloggers act as opposing counsel. They can look at news stories and ask if the sources quoted in a story are actually qualified witnesses for whatever they're telling the reporter. And just as is the case in a courtroom, the reporter who wants to put forth a case had better be able to come up with reasons why his sources are qualified to bear witness, or his case, and his credibility, will suffer.