[summer]

Sorry to say, but aside from changing headlines, I have recently seen all too often a similar phenomenon on FR - a knee-jerk reaction of people who see headline and jump on the bandwagon without reading or thinking on their favorite target or punching bag of the day - Bush, Condi, Rumsfeld etc..

I want to write back to everyone who wrote to me on this thread, but I felt a need to write to you first, because I disagree with you.

True, what you said in terms of there being "knee-jerk" reactions everywhere -- but, for a blog itself to intentionally incite such a response, by tossing out a news headline, omitting the actual news photo, slapping a different photo on a small excerpt of an article -- and keeping the original journalist's name on the newly created fake article -- is another story.

And, FR does not do that because there is a real effort here to archive news, by title, so that you can search it for it by title and retrieve it later. Posers here sometimes add a comment AFTER the original title, but not before it, and not instead of it.

Furthermore, Arianna's blog is responsible not only for allowing this to happen, but for actually DOING IT - her blog administrators, not posters, created and published that fake news item.

Finally, I am not against "fake" news per se -- so long as people know it's satire or know you're altering the original source. Most of those posters on Huff post didn't even realize they were deceived.

[CutePuppy]

... I felt a need to write to you first, because I disagree with you.

We don't really disagree, it's just that in my comment I put an emphasis on a different part from the essence of your post, which was about changing headlines on Huff and some other lib blogs, hence my "aside from changing headlines" caveat at the very beginning.

The reason I did that also reflects the fact that so-called "mainstream" media (they can only be called such by sheer volume, but not the reflection of mainstream opinion, which is why they are suffering drastic declines in circulation and advertising revenue) have been using similar methods to deceive and provoke their readers for a long time, predating the use of such tactic by liberal bloggers. So it's not unique, the lib bloggers just adapted the tactic, while they really have no need to do so - liberal media have already done that. Also, headline writers in "news" media are generally different from the writer[s] of articles, and even those are edited differently for different publications.

That's why my emphasis was on reaction to a known tactic - that, unfortunately, many of us are prone to respond in similar fashion to the headlines done by the people we know are out to confuse us and get different impression from actual substance of the article or just an opportunity for them to repeat the same propaganda or hit piece. I am glad that FR doesn't allow changing headlines - one of the reasons I feel good about joining FR - yet we're getting the misleading and inflammatory headline writers courtesy of "news" media headlines nonetheless, so I concentrated in my comment on the reaction to this.

I didn't disagree at all with the premise of your post, it's good to bring attention to their chicanery, and you didn't disagree with the substance of my post. We just emphasized different aspects of media and blogosphere today.

Thank you for your response. Hope I made the reasons for my post more transparent.