Akkam’s Razor

Valeria Maltoni wrote a short post heralding the power of Meet the Press, giving examples from host Tim Russert as to the power of the medium. 

There is a tremendous problem with the use of Russert as a sterling example of journalism, but as an example of public relations, absolutely. 

Despite his claims to the contrary, Russert gave none to at best weak contrary arguments to many of the most important ideas of our time, particularly the war and issues surrounding Valerie Wilson.  For example, any conversation with a source is assumed to be off-the-record, as opposed to having the entirety on-record excepting portions.Furthermore, when it came to the selling of the Iraq War, Russert was used nearly-exclusively by the Vice President due to his agreeability and lack of confrontation to Cheney's assertions.

The role of the punditsphere seems to be no more than opinion laundering and viewpoint confirmation.  Various "experts" show up with their partisan pedigrees and spout conventional wisdom, which the viewer then either accepts or rejects, with whatever action confirming and solidifying their world-view.  Drop some liberal or conservative names and I could tell you why they should be believed or rejected based on their resumes - as in particular stances on issues, work experiences, or other entanglements.

The establishment criticism of blogs is the anonymity - why should we trust these people - we don't even know who they are?  How do we know they are experts?  As we have seen, sometimes the particular focus of experts leaves them blind to a host of biases, leading them to jump to the wrong conclusion.  The beauty of blogs, especially in the political realm, is that the personality, baggage, and party affiliation, at least in comparison with the mainstream punditry, is largely ignored, and the idea can be viewed, debated, accepted, or rejected on it's own merit.Blogs