yelvington.com

Watch this.

(I was in Memphis late last week for a Journalism that Matters seminar and briefly crossed paths with the National Conference for Media Reform, which I didn't attend. Thanks to JD for the pointer.)

If newspaper editorial pages are to add any value in this anyone-can-publish era, that value will come from maintaining and defending a standard of truth. No discussion is ever improved by a deliberate misstatement of the facts. But the garbage that shows up on op-ed pages these days is full of it, and I'm not just talking about Ann Coulter.

From the Baltimore Sun, by telecom shills Mike McCurry and Christopher Wolf: "The 'neutral' proposal that companies like Google are touting will ensure that they never have to pay a dime no matter how much bandwidth they use ...."

Write this down: Google and Yahoo and every other information publisher, corporate or individual, all pay the telecoms for Internet connectivity. Google's SEC filing doesn't break out the Internet connectivity as a line item, but it is included in a $2.57 billion "cost of revenues" calculation.

Yet this "never have to pay a dime" lie shows up over and over in the press because editors aren't doing their jobs. They've lost sight of truth as a standard.

Editing in this era isn't about gatekeeping; bad information and good will flow around any pretend gatekeeper. But selecting and highlighting truth, and denouncing falsehood, is what I call the "trusted guide" role, and it's the key to creating journalistic value in an information-is-everywhere world.

We don't need a "forum page" just to create a forum; this world is full of conversational opportunities. We need a "forum page" to create and maintain a standard of value: conversation that is worth your and my time and attention. Conversation that is illuminating. Opinion and analysis that is rooted in truth, not in truthiness.

Writing for PBS, Mark Glaser examines just who's been posting pro-telecom comments on his weblog item titled "Should the government regulate Net neutrality?"

I don't know anybody who has warm, fuzzy feelings for their telephone and cable TV providers, so naturally my bullshit detector goes on red alert whenever I see "citizens" going to bat for them.

From where I sit, the telecom giants are trying to grab control of the Internet so they can put us consumers back into the tidy little cages we enjoyed in the 1980s. Remember those days? High local-access rates, high long-distance rates, metered service at every turn?

To do that, they have to stop us from using the Internet for audio and video networking -- unless they get a cut of the action. Spin it any way you want; it's a power grab.