I can't stand garbage reporting. I can't stand it from the right, and I can't stand it from the left. But I mostly just can't stand it. I hate lies. I hate exaggeration. I hate hyperbole, and I hate, hate, hate anonymous sources.
I hate having to argue against a guy who won't reveal the basis of his information. I hate fighting mythology. I fucking hate baseless accusations. I mean, how do you argue with a ghost? And that's what anonymous sources are: ghosts that reporters claim are whispering to them. If you don't have any evidence, if you don't have any objective criteria, then it's fucking rumor, and journalism 101 is that you don't write an article based on rumors.
So imagine my level of hate when I read this garbage from the AP.
Follow me under the fold for why...
UPDATE: Fixed link, fixed spell.
the 'writers' of the article, all SEVEN of them{Brett J. Blackedge, Richard Lardner, Pauline Jelinek, Lolita C. Baldor, Eileen Sullivan Pamela Hess, David Dishneau}, spend about 3/4 of the articles essentially telling the wingnut lie that the shooter @ Fort Hood was flagged for wierdness, but that Political Correctness kept anyone from asking about it too deeply.
Somehow, after having grown up around marines and soldiers my whole life, I don't think that political correctness kept them from doing anything. If these guys really saw something weird, then they were piss poor soldiers for not reporting it.
More likely, it seems to me someone wants to advance a point of view that muslims are monsters in disguise, and that we need to treat them like communists during the Red Scare. But, since reality doesn't support that view, they need to create 'anonymous sources' that will say anything they want them to have said. Further, I suspect that no single person was willing to sign off on this piece of non-reporting, so the 'writers' decide they would share guilt.
I seem to remember a time when reporting was based on fact. WTF happened to that?