In action: Guides, not gatekeepers

In 1999 I declared that journalists must accept a new social role as guides, not gatekeepers. Today's New York Times has an excellent example of that principle in action, eviscerating the wingnut political online magazine Insight for publishing a stream of falsehoods.

The news peg is an "article on the Insight Web site asserting that the presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was preparing an accusation that her rival, Senator Barack Obama, had covered up a brief period he had spent in an Islamic religious school in Indonesia when he was 6." The claim was bogus, but nevertheless set off a stream of chatter among right-wing pseudo-journalists that quickly spread the falsehood.

Amusing, this graf:

"And in an interview, John Moody, a senior vice president at Fox News, said its commentators had erred by citing the Clinton-Obama report. “The hosts violated one of our general rules, which is know what you are talking about,” Mr. Moody said. “They reported information from a publication whose accuracy we didn’t know.”"

Pointing out info-falsehood and exposing political smear campaigns is, unfortunately, a growth industry.

When I did a search for Insight, Google identified it as being affiliated with the Washington Times, a connection that newspaper now disavows. However, both Insight and the Washington Times are funded by Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church and its right-wing Korean political affiliates.