The New Bulletin Boards

Take a look at this conversation, and the threads of thought and counter-attack that appear on it. It's hard to tell how any of this is an improvement on the conspiracty-theory Web of yore or the institutionally biased (right or left) mainstream press. But then someone somes up with a gem like this:

One can, of course, pick the news outlet that tells one what one wants to hear, in the way one wants to hear it. And, if one is reasonably intellectually honest, one has to go to a lot of different places to try to gather enough information to synthesize an opinion. Not to get too philosophical or anything, but none of us really knows The Truth about what is going on in Iraq (or, for that matter, in our back yard). I'd be willing to bet that, with the exception of Scipio, few, if any, of us who comment on this board have been there recently. So, we're all getting snippets of information that are filtered and reconstructed to tell a story that reflects what the reporter, editor, or government briefer believes, or wants us to believe. And we, in turn, present the information in ways that confirm our innate biases. Hell of a way to inform a conversation.

Amen, brother, Amen.