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I love reddit, but some source-checking would do wonders.

[digg-reddit-me]The 17th most popular story on reddit at the moment is this hit piece by the Judicial Watch. The Judicial Watch, as some fact-checking reveals, is funded by rather right-wing sources:

Judicial Watch receives funding from mainly conservative sources. In 2002, Judicial Watch received $1.1 million from The Carthage Foundation and a further $400,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation. Both foundations are Managed by Richard Mellon Scaife. The year before the Scaife Foundation gave $1.35 million and Carthage $500,000.

In all, between 1997 and 2002 Judicial Watch received $7,069,500 (unadjusted for inflation) in 19 grants from a handful of foundations. The bulk of this funding came from just three foundations – the Sarah Scaife Foundation, The Carthage Foundation and the John M. Olin Foundation, Inc.

The Judicial Watch was also one of the main groups pushing impeachment over the Monica Lewinsky matter, subpoening Linda Tripp, and starting over 15 lawsuits against President Clinton. They are one arm of the Republican noise machine. And reddit is falling for it.

The list they give of the most corrupt officials fits a bit too easily into the Republican agenda. As Huckabee and Giuliani are the two greatest threats to the Republican coalition of evangelicals and everyone else, they are easy to include. Larry Craig is a gay Republican – who has embarrassed Republicans enormously. Finally, Scooter Libby who has been indicted. It’s an easy list. The list of Democrats though seems to be those conservatives fear most – Hillary, Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Feinstein, etcetera.

In short, Reddit is currently promoting a right-wing hit piece created by a propaganda organization that was created to promote the Lewinsky affair.  Most important – at least some of the facts included in the piece are wrong.

Defending Obama

I am only defending Obama here, although I am sure most of the other Democrats on the list – Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Conyers, Dianne Feinstain, and even maybe Hillary Clinton – are being unfairly targeted, because I am already aware of the bogus-ness of the charges against Obama. Or at least the flimsiness. And of course – I admit – I’m biased in favor of Obama. It took me a long time to come to see Obama as the best candidate; and although I am still open to another candidate, I’ve examined each of them pretty closely, and his views and temperament seem closest to my own.

Obama has certainly faced criticism for his ties to Antoin “Tony” Rezko who was a big supporter of Obama’s career from the beginning. The senator explained the appearance of impropriety that the reddit submitter referred to thus:

“It was simply not good enough that I paid above the appraised value for the strip of land that he sold me. It was a mistake to have been engaged with him at all in this or any other personal business dealing that would allow him, or anyone else, to believe that he had done me a favor,” the senator said.

To me, it seems clear that Rezko was trying to do Obama a favor – probably expecting something in return at some point; and Obama should have realized this and rejected the offer. But aside from this lapse in judgment, it does not demonstrate corruption. And as the sale was a transparent process that was revealed as soon as it had occurred, it does not seem intentional on Obama’s part.

The charge relating to the $5,000 worth of stock really has no depth to it.

Barack Obama’s presidential campaign Wednesday defended two investments he made right after his election to the Senate, saying he was unaware of the stock purchases at the time and did nothing to directly aid either company in its business before the federal government…

Obama purchased $5,000 in shares for AVI, which was developing a drug to treat avian flu. Two weeks after buying the stock, Obama pushed for more federal funding to fight the disease, but company officials said they never talked to Obama about his work in the area…

The reports found no evidence that any of his actions ended up benefiting either company during the roughly eight months he owned the stocks.

In other words, Obama’s broker (who kept Obama’s money in a blind trust) bought stocks which were related to some hot button issues of the day; and as a Senator, Obama gave a speech pushing for federal funding to fight avian flu.

The amounts of money involved in both transactions are minimal.

As for the final charge: “Obama was also nabbed conducting campaign business in his Senate office, a violation of federal law.” I have no idea what the Judicial Watch is talking about. Someone please enlighten me if you do.

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14 replies on “I love reddit, but some source-checking would do wonders.”

The original foundation of Judicial Watch is accurately described, but you are being a reactionary bigot nonetheless. They are seriously acting as watchdogs on the Bush administration, pursuing with effective legal means many of the hidden evidences of administration crimes. Diane Fiendstein well deserves her place on that list, as do Clinton and Pelosi. I think most Democrats would agree with me, and rejoice to see these people removed from positions of public trust by a person — of whatever party — who honestly represented their constituency without favor or personal aggrandizement. It does seem disingenuous to include Libby on the list, as he is not in a position of power, to the best of my knowledge, any longer, but including notably corrupt presidential candidates is a service to the nation.

“Promoting”? You know that the Reddit ranking is done by a formula not people, right? Anyhow, thanks for pointing out the link to the Scaife-Mellon family, the big funders of digging up dirt–that is, manufacturing dirt.

to Dave –

I understand how reddit works. I suppose I could have said it was the reddit community that was unknowingly promoting the link – but I don’t think my statement was off much.

to Ally Kendal –

I think calling me a “reactionary bigot” might be a bit strong.

You say that Judicial Watch is “seriously acting as watchdogs on the Bush administration, pursuing with effective legal means many of the hidden evidences of administration crimes”

Yet a quick news search reveals no lawsuits against Bush (I’m sure there are some).

If you look at their recent news page, every story seems to be about Hillary or illegal immigration – and, oh, wait – another story on on how HPV vaccines are dangerous. At a glance, none of the items strong criticizes the Bush administration.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/pr.shtml

Some other prominent stories from a Google search: the Judicial Watch attacked Judge Anna Diggs Taylor a week after she ruled that President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program was unconstitutional because she served as Secretary for a group that donated some funds to the ACLU, a plaintiff in the case. http://thinkprogress.org/2006/08/24/judicial-watch-smear/

Then Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit against Eliot Spitzer “over those insane illegal alien driver’s licenses”.
http://michellemalkin.com/2007/10/31/taxpayer-lawsuit-filed-against-spitzer-over-illegal-alien-licenses/?print=1

Then of course, they are investigating Harry Reid for some land deal.
http://www.onenewsnow.com/2007/09/judicial_watch_investigates_senate_majority_leader_harry_reid_.php

The problem with Reddit politics is not that it’s 95% progressive, 4% Ron Paul, 1% under-the-radar articles like this one.

The problem with Reddit politics is that it’s 95% progressive.

Of course, if you’re a progressive, you have no problem with that. You suck it up like so much red meat. But life in an echo chamber isn’t healthy in the long run. In the long run, it’s critically important to get all kinds of perspectives.

And the net is where we could reach for that sort of connection, but it’s not happening. We’re segregating into groups that are further and further away from each other. We’re always lecturing and never listening. We’re always trying to figure out whether somebody is “on our side” or “on the other side” when in the long run we’re all on the same side… the human race, on the planet earth… and we can work better together, than we can if we’re desperately split apart.

I agree with you about the problem of segregating into groups – and I’m a progressive. But every time I try to submit an interesting article on reddit from a mainstream conservative website that I read regularly, such as the Weekly Standard or the National Review mainly, it gets voted down.

I disagree with your analysis of Reddit politics. It is 20% lies (mainly of the left, some of the right); 40% mainstream opinions turned radical in the face of Bush (both conservative – Andrew Sullivan for eg, and liberal – a lot of people), 20% Ron Paul; 10% libertarian; and 15% progressive; and 5% a mixed bag.

The biggest problem with Reddit are the lies that make it through. Though Reddit has a much better record of correcting those lies than other editor-driven media publications. The second biggest problem with social media in general is the partisanship and segregation of ideas that occurs on all sites – including Reddit.

Anti Bush != Progressive. You see a lot of anti Bush, anti torture, anti war stuff on Reddit, but that does not mean its 95% progressive. People are pissed with the damage Bush has done, Democrat, Republican, and Independent alike. People on the internet typically hear less bullshit spin from (ala, old school TV news). Therefore, you have more of a pissed off anti Bush crowd on the internet. Don’t fall for the Republican, anti blog, anti internet, anti tech talking points that paint the internet as a bunch of crazed liberals.

I thought the point of reading Reddit is to learn from stuff you normally would not see. What you learn is up to you, but a broad cross-section of sources must help.

@joe: I was responding to the original post’s apparent suggestion that “one arm of the Republican noise machine” should be automatically banned from Reddit, with its backers and political angle seeming to matter more than its rather weakly disputed facts. “Yes, it’s literally true but you have misunderstood the context” is pretty small on the scale of political accusations of lying, and doesn’t seem to justify a ban from consideration in a reader-voting system.

@jj,

the only person here who mentioned banning is you jj. I don’t think anyone should be banned from Reddit, aside from spammers – and certainly not anyone for content I disagree with.

but I do think that lies should be pointed out. and the political angle of the coverage is important to note when the author is attempting to disguise his or her intent, as the Judicial Watch was.

that is the key issue – that the Judicial Watch got this information out there posing as an objective news source. still, i don’t think they should be banned – rather their claims should be skeptically judged, as with all partisan sources.

So “some source-checking would do wonders” doesn’t mean some sources should be excluded, but means what? Some posts on Reddit should be automatically labelled in red “Lies”? Or they should have “[Joe says check these people out carefully before believing anything they say]” inserted into the headline, as opposed to Joe saying it in the comments? What are you standing for?

What do I stand for? It’s hard to say, in that I don’t take Reddit-reading very seriously, and would gladly see some minor annoyances disappear from the site so as not to interrupt my relaxation. (Also I am not American and am merely an amused/horrified observer in these elections.) But I think political censorship is dangerous, and I know too many people who lead lives among people who think like themselves so that they never get exposed to alternate ways of thinking, or to alternate information sources that are shaping alternate ways of thinking.

How could we improve Reddit’s handling of sources which are suspect? Could you and I agree on the benefits of a tagging system? You could tag “dubious source” and I could tag “things that you should know are being said” (there must be a shorter tag). We would probably both like also to be able to link to a discussion page about the source, but I guess we can use the comments to refer back to earlier items from the same URI.

To be honest – I think Reddit’s system works as it is. With the caveat that the site needs more attempts to fact-check sources, of all sorts.

In this case, I saw an obvious political hit job that I knew was biased based on my previous understanding of the facts that were deliberately and misleadingly misrepresented.

I think the Reddit system worked in this case, eventually and more or less.

In terms of labeling sources, I believe it should be done on a case by case basis, with the submitter having the main responsibility of checking before submission. I’m not saying I’m perfect, but I think that is the way the system should work. Perhaps there should be some penalty for a submit-er who posts an item that is judged to be false by the Reddit community. but even that can easily become abused.

overall, i think the system is best as it is – perhaps some tweaks could be introduced, but i think we should be careful with them.

in other words, “some source-checking would do wonders” means reddit’s quality would be improved if more people in the community checked sources.

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