One thing I learned a long time ago is that reporters invariably get it wrong. There is a direct relationship between how much one knows about a story and how many errors one perceives. There are many reasons for this. Reporters are generally not very bright. They're generally pretty lazy. They're generally arrogant and will not make corrections or let an interviewee comment on a draft. And they generally exaggerate to grab attention. That's what I think after decades of dealing with lots of reporters. (Of course there are exceptions.)
A recent example of this are breathless stories claiming that Western Maryland plans to secede.
I still read the Drudge Report every day, because he's a master of oddball human interest stories, amidst the right-wing slop.
Today he has this link: "Rural part of Maryland seeks to break away and create 51st state." My goodness! This means war! Maybe they'll join West Virginia!
Not true! That's a link to this article in the Baltimore Sun, which has the somewhat more accurate title "Conservative group wants liberation for western Maryland." http://articles.baltimoresun.com/...
But the fact is, there is no sentiment in western Maryland to secede, for crying out loud, and there isn't even any "conservative group" supporting secession. It's just one single wingnut, a guy named Scott Strzelczyk. I've had tangles with him in Carroll County, Maryland. He is an over-the-top whackjob. Google his name if you wish. He's a close crony of the county's gun-packing super wingnut commissioner Richard Rothschild. They believe--and have extensively written and lectured about it--that the black helicopters of the United Nations's Agenda 21 sustainability initiative are coming to suck the life fluids from rural Marylanders. Seriously.
I believe this story started with these two stories from August and September in the Carroll County Times, which is a pretty good small town paper: http://www.carrollcountytimes.com/... and http://www.carrollcountytimes.com/.... The second article here was run by the Times just a few days ago on A1, top of the fold, as if it were actually news.
Strzelczyk (no, I have no clue how to pronounce that) is a genius of self-promotion, but there is exactly zero serious support for his idea. (Although this is a pet issue for some of the local Tea Party types.)
Recently there have been stories reporting rumbles of secession in Colorado, California, Texas, and other states. I suspect if you look closely you'll see that all are promotions by extremely tiny or even solitary wingnuts. There is no real move for secession anywhere.
Incidentally, I've been reading Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo for 10 years, and it's kind of a shame to see his formerly sharp analysis get diluted and Yahoo-ified. He's had at least a couple of articles recently claiming a secession movement in Western Maryland that are completely uncritical in accepting at face value bad reporting on this from other sources. I just spent 15 minutes and can't find a link, alas, due to TPM's funky search system.
So I urge caution about anything you read in print, even if it's the New York Times or the Washington Post. Indeed, perhaps especially if you see something published in those establishment papers. We all know that in theory, but gosh there are a lot of diaries here based on nothing but a single flimsy newspaper item.