Speaking of "undersourced" news, as I am
here and
here--today's news that King Fahd of Saudi Arabia is dead reminded me of another time the Right was faked out. And the pattern is remarkably similar to that of the Air America "swarm."
I wrote on May 28--
The Moonie Times published a UPI report that King Fahd of Saudi Arabia is dead, although the rest of the news media around the globe say he is hospitalzed and gravely ill, possibly with pneumonia, but still alive. In fact, UPI itself, on its own web site, is going with the "hospitalized with pneumonia" story as I keyboard. I assume the story published in the MT is an earlier one that has been retracted.
Weirdly, a number of righties (example) proclaim that the "Fahd is dead" story must be true. It might be true, but considering that the report says he died on Wednesday and Muslim law requires that a deceased person be buried within 24 hours of death, I doubt it. Funerals for princes tend to make a splash. It's possible his sons have the body on ice while they engage in some sort of power struggle, of course.
But note that the Saudi Institute seems to be some sort of Washington-based political advocacy organization dedicated to Bush Regime apologia and whose "board" is an associate professor at the University of Southern Alabama. And the Saudi Institute says they got their information from unnamed sources in Riyadh This is somewhat less than rock solid, in other words. Anyone with any degree of sophistication in the ways of news gathering would be skeptical.
Yet Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs (to which I do not link) says "reports are now coming from so many sources that it's likely to be true." The "so many sources" are not to be found via news google; there's just the early UPI story as picked up by a couple of other news outlets.
This is pretty much what the Right is doing with Air America. They pay no attention to where a source is coming from or consider how credible it might be. And then they treat subsequent news stories that do nothing but site the original source as "new" news items. This is either grossly disingenuous or just plain stupid.
Regarding Air America, this morning's New York Sun finally quotes someone in a position to know something saying that Air America received funds. Naturally, on my blog I'm already getting "nyah nyah nyah you were wrong" comments. This proves once again that righties cannot read. I specifically and repeatedly said over and over in the "Primer" post (here is the Kos diary edition) that my purpose was not to prove or disprove allegations against Air America, but to examine the, shall we say, cavalier way most righties site news sources.
My essential point, which continues to fly right over rightie heads, is that even if King Fahd had died last May instead of a few hours ago, and the original UPI/Moonie Times had been correct, it would still have been stupid to assume the story was true based on the flimsy sourcing available at the time. And news stories that do nothing but site another story are not "new" stories.
I am less than keenly interested in Prince Fahd's health than I am in the pure faith some place in the Moonie Times. And if it turns out the prince is still alive, don't hold your breath waiting for the righties to acknowledge the story was in error, or that anyone on the Right jumped to conclusions based on undersourced information. Only America-hating liberals do that.
I don't know if the righties admitted the mistake about the earlier "Fahd is dead" story or not. But it's pretty obvious they didn't learn anything from that sorry episode.