Just the other day, I was talking to Ron over at 247 about the battle many souces on the internet have for legitimacy. Other than those established, time-proven, reliable sites, there is a wide perception that internet souces could be just as false as true. Luckily, as basketball bloggers, we have a general indicia of reliability, supported by the basic premise of our existence. That is, for example, why would a Hornets blogger take the time to blog about the Hornets and spout a bunch of lies? It wouldn’t make much sense. But that said, I think a lot of it has to do with content. If TT6 says the Hornets are in Berlin, you can verify that from official team sources. If I say D-West had 18 rebounds, go to NBA.com and double-check my stats. I’ll vouch for anything on this site, but we always welcome corrections when we’re wrong.
The flip side of this is reader/viewer/listener responsibility. I can tell you this much, I’m always skeptical of souces, but some are more inherently reliable than others. For example, Rohan over at athehive has a lot more to lose by saying something blatantly false, like the Spurs are owned by the KKK than some anonymous poster on his site. As an owner of a blog, if you lie, people will stop reading your site (or you may be a target of a defamation website). If you’re an anonymous poster, you have no stake. A grey area in this spectrum of reliability is that which is based on opinion and not “news,” such as blogs, TV talk shows, talk radio, and generally any souce of information that is not an established “news” source. Another issue is that the government does not generally have the ability to restrict untrue statements, but the public, I believe, has a responsibility to do so.
Where does this all come from? Well in the era, where we have downright lies in the public arena, this impacts the reliability of the internet at large. Take for example the blatantly false “Maureen Dowd” article which has circulated in emails accusing Barack Obama of being primarily financed by foreign investors (totally false), or internet postings of the Sarah Palin interview with Katie Couric that makes Palin look like a total moron, which are actually transcripts of SNL’s satire of this event. I raise these two examples, because as prominent as the presidential election is, there are people out there who believe the lies, who believe that something they get in an email from a friend or on a random website must be true: not because they’re dumb, just because it’s the only story they have, and they either have a predisposition to believe what they read or are unwilling to verify its authenticity.
Again, you may be asking yourself, why is this in a basketball blog? Because at the end of last week, two jackass talk radio hosts alleged that Magic Johnson had faked having AIDS. This is precisely the type of story that you will hear a year from now as if it were true. All because two guys, either totally ignorant, or so desperate for ratings, would say something so stupid. It’s unacceptable. Magic says they shouldn’t be fired, but he lashed out at them for trivializing both his own tribulations and the amount of work he’s put into helping others with the same disease. Fair enough. But it also highlights the onus that is on all of us to turn those stations off. To delete the stupid emails we get in our inboxes that are totally fake. And to turn off the news stations when you hear the [insert political party here] pundit trying to tell you that [insert politician's name here] had the greatest debate performance ever, or the best campaign, etc., and it’s obvious that the person isn’t even a source of news anymore, but just an advertising mouthpiece for that campaign. Spin is just that, a centrifuge of chosen presentation wrapped around the truth and shiny. Are you looking at the truth, or the shiny parts?
TT6 recently noticed a highly misogynist string of comments over at a popular website the other day, discussing the WNBA, and was compelled to speak out. The power of information is great, and its influence can be insidious. That’s why it’s always on the reader/viewer/listener, to recognize that they’re being given a filtered story, related through a focused lens, and spun however the relator wants to relate that story. Take it for what it is. Here, at this site, we don’t try and hide what we do. We’re about Hyping the Hornets. But we also try to do that in a truthful manner. And if we ever put something in an unfair light, we expect to be called on it.
Now back to your regularly scheduled Hornets blog.
A kernel of raw TRUTH.
Damn fine post, mW
I love this blog because you guys have an opinion; which is the premise of the blog. It’s not about statistics or accuracy, it’s all about love.
For the whole WNBA thing, I don’t think it’s necessarily sexist for most people, but it’s an easy target to place on the league. I remember one point they made promoting WNBA viewership was that the Shock swept the finals despite a strong Silver Stars squad. Well, that’s precisely a reason for me NOT to watch (in retrospect), since I didn’t watch ANY of the Spurs-Cavs finals, and we all know how that went (coming from a guy who watches the playoffs like a madman). To express my opinion in a justified and reasonable fashion on many of those sites is futile, which is a reason I avoid the commenting sections and always come back here.
However, my favourite active player is Becky Hammon (for all basketball), so needless to say, I’m pretty biased FOR the WNBA.
And don’t go and promote that anonymity postings hold no responsibilities. I still remember ticktock’s rants about those trolls during the playoffs, hahaha.
Trolls. I hate trolls.
It wasn’t the blogger that was being sketchy, it was the commentors, whose actions actually proved the blogger’s post to be exactly right. I don’t mind a reasoned argument, but I don’t like the idea that people can come on other people’s sites and anonymously be ignorant and disgusting. And then you wonder why people don’t think the internet is “legitimate.” I guess all you can do is never let it happen on your site. Which is a huge issue I have with the cesspools of racism that are Nola.com’s comment threads. They just do not moderate what is pure hate speech, and I don’t find it OK. Deadspin? Occasionally a funny site, but whenever there is a picture that remotely has a woman in it, even teeny in the background, the commentors all chime in with “yes” or “no” on whether they’d do her. Guess which site I don’t go to anymore to read funny sports news.
Which is my own rant, and not where mW was going, but I think if the internet is to evolve, people need to come to realize it’s important to keep their “property” safe from jackassery. I mean, I don’t go put on a mask and piss on your lawn and wave my body parts around. Which is roughly equivalent to what some people do on other people’s sites. And I do think it makes others avoid having discussions there, and the person who owns the site has lost out.
This is your time and your property and a piece of yourselves up here on the interwebs, and the effort and passion that goes into creating blogs like this and 247 and atthehive etc damn well deserves to be respected. I’m a firm believer in the power of example to change people’s behaviour, and when you allow the kinds of ignorance and hatred to flourish such as we’ve all seen on the web, we undermine the fabric of what we’re on here for in the first place.
Thanks MW. And thanks to all the Hornets community who get it.
Great post, mW.
The worst experience I ever had with comments on 247 was when Arvydas Macijauskas was a Hornet a few years back and Byron barely played him. We got a lot of Lithuanian commenters, and while some were cool, most were there just to make racist statements about Scott, how he didn’t like playing white guys, etc. It was unbelievable. I was glad when the team bought Macas out because I didn’t have to moderate that crap any more.
It’s a shame that people feel they can say whatever they want on the Internet. Just because they’re anonymous they think it’s okay, even though they’d never dream of speaking the same words in the real world. I loved what Mark Cuban did with the Josh Howard backlash, posting those e-mails he got on his site. Completely turned the tables on the haters, and I like to think he got some of those people to step back and take a long hard look at themselves.
Okay so seriously so far the Hornets have been doing great, I know it’s the preseason but still to be coming up with the wins we’ve been getting says a lot about our second unit, Sims has been impressing me as a backup big man and in regards to the wiz/hornets game I thought a guy named Butler would do well but I did not think it would be Rasual……maybe it was just one bad season because 06/07 he was pretty good only time will tell but I really think we can be a contender this year. I can’t wait for fridays game on espn just to see how the whole team clicks together will be great.
“they either have a predisposition to believe what they read or are unwilling to verify its authenticity.”
Actually… I think this does mean that they are dumb. If not dumb then willfully ignorant, which is even worse.
@ Michael: Rasual Butler looks awesome so far in preseason. I see him coming into games ahead of Devin Brown so far, and maybe one of the guys getting plenty of minutes this year.