Comments on: Newsfilter!

Newsfilter!

anastasiav — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 09:15:06 -0800

underreported.com :: Headlines for the rest of us

By: fenriq

fenriq — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 09:39:49 -0800

This is a good site. I'd like to see underreported combined with NewsMap to highlight the stories that slip through the cracks. NewsMap is neat but it makes the biggest stories, the biggest items on the page (and there's no search). Can you tell I almost FPP'ed the link?

By: soyjoy

soyjoy — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 09:58:19 -0800

Pretty interesting stuff, well sourced. Thanks, anastasiav.

By: tranquileye

tranquileye — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 10:04:26 -0800

Um, it has a sort of Birch Society/Lyndon LaRouche/New World Order sort of feel to it.

By: allan

allan — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 10:11:52 -0800

I have been wondering why the mainstream media was ignoring how Nixon was involved in the Russians shooting down an American plane in 1983, an 11 year old journal articles demonstrating the dangers of fluoridation and growing threat of legalized fornication. On preview: tranquileye got it. There's also a hostility to specie circular.

By: spock

spock — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 10:23:06 -0800

There's also a hostility to specie circular. *Runs for dictionary and mefi code book*

By: davy

davy — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 10:25:13 -0800

From the article on a couple of "illegal immigrants" who got a bank mortgage: "With U.S. birth rates down and U.S. population replacement coming from immigration, my fear is that the U.S. is becoming a nation of people not allowed to vote." Ah yeah, but their kids born here will be citizens able to vote, and with enough attention to public policy they might even be come educated enough to read a damn newspaper article stating something like, oh, just before the 2004 election even senior Bush Adminisdtration people were admitting publicly that Iraq's WMDs were (or turned out to be) fictional. *** And on preview, as far as LaRouche's ilk goes, even a raving loony can't always be wrong. Each claim should be evaluated on its own merits, not simply discredited because of the source; that's what "ad hominem" actually means. From the first Google result I got (which for some reason was Nizkor) : [begin quote] Description of Ad Hominem Translated from Latin to English, "Ad Hominem" means "against the man" or "against the person." An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting). This type of "argument" has the following form: 1. Person A makes claim X. 2. Person B makes an attack on person A. 3. Therefore A's claim is false. The reason why an Ad Hominem (of any kind) is a fallacy is that the character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not (in most cases) have a bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made (or the quality of the argument being made). Example of Ad Hominem 1. Bill: "I believe that abortion is morally wrong." Dave: "Of course you would say that, you're a priest." Bill: "What about the arguments I gave to support my position?" Dave: "Those don't count. Like I said, you're a priest, so you have to say that abortion is wrong. Further, you are just a lackey to the Pope, so I can't believe what you say." [end quote] In the above example, for example, lots of Catholic priests have quit being Catholic priest because they disagreed with one or another RC Church doctrine -- Martin Luther springs to mind, in which case the issue would be not about abortion but about the selling of indulgences (to start with). As an example of what's wrong with that logical fallacy, what if LaRouche said "most grass is usually green"? Would y'all start claiming that CAN'T be the case simply because LaRouche said it?

By: sninky-chan

sninky-chan — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 13:58:13 -0800

That was one hell of a long "on preview" just to explain ad hominem. I think most of us know how to use Google and Wikipedia, and for those that don't, hyperlinks work real good too.

By: PinkStainlessTail

PinkStainlessTail — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 14:56:28 -0800

Fair enough, but if a source/individual has proven to be consistently wrong and crazy, it's worth approaching them with trepidation, or not giving them the time to state their latest claim inthe first place. Good and true things may come some day from Ann Coulter, Lyndon LaRouche or Guerilla News Network, but past performance is an indication of likely future results.

By: PinkStainlessTail

PinkStainlessTail — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 15:01:40 -0800

or not giving them the time to state their latest claim Doesn't read right on reflection. Not giving them your attention is what I mean.

By: flashboy

flashboy — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 15:37:08 -0800

The point being, I think, that if LaRouche said the grass was green, you wouldn't believe it just because he'd said it. You'd believe it because you'd seen it. If you'd never seen grass, you'd be perfectly wise to be skeptical of LaRouche's "it's green, godammit!" claims, until the point when you had a good reason to believe the grass green thing. If extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs, ordinary claims from extraordinary sources must at least require proofs that root them back in the ordinary world. Which isn't that much to ask.

By: TBoneMcCool

TBoneMcCool — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 15:37:23 -0800

The site seems interesting, but I'm not sure I get it. It's supposedly exposing overlooked news? The site links to stories that have been published in the Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune and Reuters, to name a few sources. These are news organizations with an international reach, and it's hard to make a case that anything published by them could be underreported. Just because a person willfully does not read the Washington Post (until a link appears on, say, underreported.com) doesn't make Post stories underreported. What am I missing here?

By: elpapacito

elpapacito — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 16:10:01 -0800

Well if you want underreported news I think you should go here at Indymedia. I guess any news aggregator (including Newsmap, see quonsar's FPP above) that just cans the info into another interface, but uses as source reuters/ap et al ...is just another nice canning machine.