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KAY RAND: Political blogs not always factual; opinion masquerades as ‘truth’

Political blogs and special-interest websites are showing signs of having a disturbing impact on public affairs.

Just ask Shirley Sherrod. Sherrod used to work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Georgia until she was fired by the Obama administration because of a post on a blog that turned out to be camouflaging the truth.

Andrew Breitbart, a conservative blogger, posted a video containing only excerpts of a speech by Sherrod at an NAACP event. In the excerpt, Sherrod, an African-American, shares a learning experience she had when a white farmer requested assistance from her agency.  Turns out that the learning was that poor people were colorless, but the blog only contained the portion of her speech where she talked about the irony of a white farmer requesting assistance in Georgia from a black woman.

Sherrod was immediately fired when the posting on the blog caught fire in cyberspace, only to have the firing rescinded after the truth became known.

Then there’s the recent poll by CNN which showed that 27 percent of Americans still believe that President Barack Obama isn’t qualified to serve as president and commander in chief because they are convinced that he wasn’t born in the United States.

While this story has been thoroughly debunked by CNN and other reputable news sources, it persists. Check out www.birthers.org, a website dedicated to “the renewal of our constitutional government, starting with insuring that the President and Commander in Chief is a natural born citizen.”

Apparently 27 percent of Americans believe that Obama was born in Kenya instead of Hawaii, even though he has provided the same proof of U.S. citizenship that the rest of us use to get passports.

As a consultant for First Wind, the owner of two out of the three operating wind farms in Maine, I am very familiar with the anti-wind blogs and websites.  A website called Industrial Wind Action is there to “counteract the misleading information promulgated by the wind energy industry and various environmental groups,” as though only one perspective has a monopoly on the truth. 

Anecdotes become facts. Professional observations become conclusive science-based studies, as if they have been peer-reviewed by scientists who are expert in the field.

The roar of the Internet can become deafening. The danger happens when the views of the periphery are allowed to take center stage, as they did in the case of Shirley Sherrod, or when opinion leaders such as Liz Cheney or Lou Dobbs defend the uninformed vitriol of the “birthers.”

It’s tempting to blame technology for the frenetic discontent that is getting harder and harder to ignore. While there is reason to be concerned about the echo chamber that the Internet creates, allowing opinion to ricochet until it resembles truth, there is also reason to be relieved that the anger is there in a way that forces all of us to recognize it.

Anger toward government and authority has always existed. In the past, it was channeled in media that a lot of us didn’t pay attention to. It went underground in ways that made it silent to most of us.

The Internet makes that anger accessible to everyone. It can’t be ignored. That may be a good thing, if it prompts all of us to become a little more vigilant.  It should serve as an incentive for more of us to work up the courage to make sure that extremist views that represent narrow viewpoints are challenged. 

All the bloggers and online commentators have every right to express their opinion. But that’s what it is — opinion. It is not fact, it is not unbiased reporting.

Newspaper readers are trained to expect opinion from columns such as this one that appear on editorial pages. The Internet doesn’t separate the opinion pages from the reports.

It can be dangerous to accept “facts” contained on Internet blogs and websites as truth. Just ask Shirley Sherrod. It can be embarrassing to act hastily based on those “facts.” Just ask Tom Vilsack, the secretary of agriculture for the Obama administration who has accepted full responsibility for the politically expedient action.

May it be a lesson we all learn from.



Kay Rand is former chief of staff for Maine independent Gov. Angus King.

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