I know we're cool

I need to tidy up my links over on the right there as I'm going through a Brit news phase, so it's always Harry's Place and Samizdata first thing in the morning plus the Times Online with Little Green Footballs and Drudge in the afternoon.

The Sunday Times continues to reward my heart by publishing articles that confirm what I've been saying for while now, here too.

"Murphy made a fortune smuggling oil, cattle, cigarettes and grain over the Irish border. He became notorious after the Sunday Times revealed his involvement in the IRA bombing campaigns in Britain......Murphy has been the IRA chief of staff since 1997."

I hate that the media, even the wonderful Sunday Times, calls this lot of criminals 'the IRA'. They're good at propaganda but it's time to label them correctly. It's time to label all the different groups of evil doers correctly, maybe add elements of derision and humour. So the Animal rights terrorists could be called "corpse teas" as that's what they are, grave robbing thieves.

There's no time at the UK Independent to think up funnier names today as they're too busy reading "confidential" reports and reporting them incorrectly. Did you know that the Iraq war delayed Katrina relief efforts? Well, the Independent has made that leap. By putting that in the headline of their article, they're implying a significance that just isn't the case. Since the bulk of the problems related to the New Orleans police, the mayor and the governor of the State, you have to be really biased to raise up the role of the army to headline levels. The US constitution doesn't allow the federal government to become involved until a number of hoops have been jumped through, like declaring martial law or just, ahem, being asked by the governor.

It's ubiquitous. There's a wonderful example of how the San Francisco Chronicle cropped a photograph to miscommunicate about a young participant at a rally here.

Anyone with a passion for truthful news who isn't consulting the internet these days will one day do so, that's inevitable. The tipping point is coming. One day it will be as hard to remember what it was like when you couldn't consult the internet for the truth about oh, US army recruitment statistics (this will help), or Katrina urban legends (way too many to mention), or whether the coalition is doing well on the battlefields of the world as it will be to remember what it was like before all your friends had mobile phones.

I bumped into the expression: "invincible ignorance" over the weekend and I have to say I don't believe in it. I know there's supposed to be a bell curve that relates to intelligence in the population but my experience as a market researcher has been that there are really very few people who are truly dumb. Tons of people have closed their minds to new information, either through fear or laziness. However, that's different and it should serve to inspire us to learn better ways to persuade.